SNOW LEOPARD SERVER PROBLEMS REQUIRE CERTIFIED CONSULTANT TO HELP

Question

I've had a pretty unstable Snow Leopard server install since it was upgraded from Leopard a few months ago. Some of the problems were said to be hardware related, but I've been unable to migrate it to a different computer (Mac Mini).
The current installation is running, albeit poorly.
We had a Mac consultant involved in these issues, but he has proven to be unstable and unreliable as well - so we're on a search for a new consultant to give us some paid assistance in straightening this thing out.
We're not on the US mainland, but can make the server accessible by ARD and/or SSH to someone.
Someone with Apple certification would be preferred.

Answer 1

Hi Brian,
I'm an IT consultant dealing with Mac OS Servers and Windows Servers as well as Linux. I can offer a few helpful suggestions since just recently I transferred data from a Mac OS 10.5.8 Server to a 10.6.2 Server.
My first question to you is what data are you immigrating from? example 10.5.8 Server Data to 10.6.2 server?
The reason why I ask this since IMAP data in 10.5.8 and before was using Cyrus and starting in 10.6 apple switched to Dovecot.
Initially, I did not realized that apple made the switch and had stalling problems using the apple migration tool. (Personally I don't think the tool works well since a lot of others are running into this problem when researching this issue).
In the end I decided it was best to important everything manually, mail and not use the apple immigration tool since I think it has some issues.
The first thing I would do is make sure the DNS is configure right so that the server can resolve it's name which is very important.
Hopefully you're been running Open Directory . Export the users from the old server and import it to the new 10.6.2 server.
Next transfer the IMAP mail from 10.5.8 server to the 10.6 server to the same locations.
Example in 10.5.8 server default location is
/var/imap
and
/var/spool/imap
note this is where cyrus stored imap data in 10.5.x and maybe before. I have to look at my old 10.4 server since I'll be upgrade my own server soon.
My clients Servers have been upgrade fine by doing the manual method.
anyway...
keep those two locations in mind of where you mail is stored.
next I would copy your old cyrus mail to the new server. Don't use the migration tool at all. Just setup the new server and get the DNS running so it can resolve itself before you do this.
also make sure mail server is not running and it's off.
open up a terminal window
copy and paste this but change the name of the volume/hard drive name (HD_name)
sudo /usr/libexec/dovecot/migratemaildata.pl --cyrusBin "/Volumes/HD_name/usr/bin/cyrus/bin" --database "/Volumes/HD_name/var/imap" --sourceSpool "/Volumes/HD_name/var/spool/imap" --targetSpool "/var/spool/imap/dovecot/mail"
ok do this will convert all of your cyrus mail to dovecot. Make sure you've already imported the users from Open Directory before doing this script.
after all of this
there's still one more step
for some reason the postfix "main.cf" file is configured to use cyrus in 10.6.2 update.
/etc/postfix/main.cf
you can use the pico editor if you like.
example
type in at terminal window
sudo pico /etc/postfix/main.cf
it should be near the end of the file
don't bother with anything that's in # which is ignored.
look for
mailbox_transport = cyrus
then change it to
mailbox_transport = dovecot
save the changes
edit settings in the mail server with server admin to what you had... I recommend don't importing the mail settings from the old server admin since some people reported that its better just to manually configure it.
however for other server admin settings you might try to export and import to the new server.
If you have any questions just let me know and I'm glad to help the mac community.