Migration planning - old system to new

[Erich Dollansky]

Hi,

On 23 January 2010 am 01:12:19 John wrote:
> Now that I've actually gotten the new system to boot, I need to
> figure out how I'm going to migrate everything - users, data,
> MySQL, NAT, firewall, apache, DHCP, gateway services BIND,
> Sendmail, etc., etc from
> FreeBSD 4.3-RELEASE #0: Thu Jan 22 19:44:16 CST 2004
> to
> FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE #0: Sat Nov 21 15:48:17 UTC 2009

this is real jump.
>
> Bit of a challenge, eh?

I have heard that somebody actually landed on the moon? Was it 
you?
>
> Not only that, but I'd like to update my UID scheme from a
> pre-standard version (most of the UIDs are down in the 100s) to
> the new convention so that I'm more in-line with the rest of
> the world.

Ok, I cannot imagine how you will do this with the access rights 
of the files?
>
> My rough idea:
>
> 1) Create a "migrate" account in Wheel with home as
> /var/migrate so that I can do a dump/restore on "home" without
> messing things up

Are you sure? Use /usr to make sure you will have enough space.

> 2) Start putting together all the pieces - trying to find
> update / conversion scripts whenever possible.

I think, this would only help if you would go the long way 5.x, 
6.x, 7x and finally 8.

Setup the new machine, install the applications you need, 
configure them as close as possible to the original configuration 
and see what happens.

> 4) Let people move in, try it out, see how things are
> 5) Fix everything found in #4
> 6) Try a cut-over and make sure all the network services work
> in the middle of the night sometime, then switch back

Oh, it is a life system in use while you migrate. 

Are you able to set the new thing up in parallel?

It might be easier for you to run both machines and move first the 
simple things over.

> 7) Nuke /home and /var/mail and migrate them again to get the
> latest version 8) Do the real switch
> 9) spend a couple of weeks fixing all the things that weren't
> so disastrous that they got picked up in #4.

I think, if you do it service by service, you have a better chance 
to avoid this.
>
> Ideas / scripts / project plans / outlines - whatever?  Maybe I
> should write a chapter for The Complete FreeBSD after surviving
> this...

Yes. It is a Le Must.

Erich