Migrating to CommuniGate Pro
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- If your system was already running some type of mail server, you may want to integrate your existing E-mail environment into the CommuniGate Pro messaging system.
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Migrating to CommuniGate Pro |
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The CommuniGate Pro Server keeps all user accounts and mailboxes inside its "base directory". On a properly configured system direct user access to the base directory is prohibited to ensure that account mailboxes and other Server files stay intact.
When you create a CommuniGate Pro account for a local user who needs mail access via legacy mailers, select the External INBOX option. In this case, the account INBOX will not be created inside the CommuniGate Pro base directory. Instead, the mailbox location will be taken from the user domain settings. Usually, you specify /var/mail/* or /var/spool/mail/* - the "standard" location where legacy mailers expect to see user mailboxes.
When the Server accesses these external mailboxes, it uses the OS file-locking mechanism to synchronize its activity with legacy mailers.
Note: legacy mailers were not designed to support simultaneous access to mailboxes. They can destroy data in your mailbox if you open two legacy mailer sessions with the same mailbox and delete messages in one of the sessions. CommuniGate Pro cannot fix this, since these mailers bypass the server, it can only guarantee (using file locks) that legacy mailers do not destroy a mailbox while CommuniGate Pro is working with it.
For more details, see the Sharing section.
Since most legacy mail systems use this format, the existing mailbox files can be used when migrating to CommuniGate Pro. You should either copy the old mailbox files into the proper places in the CommuniGate Pro account directories, or you can specify that some accounts have external INBOXes (see above), and the old mailbox files will be used "in place".
Note: when CommuniGate Pro stores a message in a BSD-type mailbox, it adds additional fields to the separator (From) line. These fields are ignored by legacy mailers and mail servers, but they allow the CommuniGate Pro Server to keep the message status and unique message ID information. When you make your CommuniGate Pro Server use a BSD-type mailbox composed with an old mail system, it issues warnings (Log records) about missing fields in the message separators. The Server still opens such mailboxes: it creates empty status flag sets for such messages, and it generates unique IDs on-fly. As users read, move, and/or delete old mail from their mailboxes, messages stored with the old mail system disappear, and the Server stops complaining when opening these mailbox files.
Since the OS Passwords are one-way encrypted, they cannot be used for secure SASL authentication metohds. The following procedure can be used to allow migrated users employ the secure SASL methods:
Users can connect to the newly created accounts using their old OS Passwords - i.e. the same passwords they used with the legacy mail system. When users try to modify their account passwords, the new passwords will be stored as CommuniGate Passwords. All users that have updated their passwords will be able to use the secure SASL authentication methods.
Sometimes you cannot use this method. For example, you migrating users from a different server, and you do not register them all with the Unix OS on the new server, but you do have the passwd file from the old server. In this case, you may want to enter the Unix-style (crypt-encrypted) passwords as the CommuniGate (internal) Passwords.
To make the CommuniGate Pro server process its internal password string as a
U-crpt (crypt-encrypted) password, store it in the Account Settings
with one-byte binary 002 prefix. If you want to create a user test using the
CLI interface, and the Unix (crypt-encrypted) password
for that user is AslUzT1JkPsocc, then use the following CLI command:
createaccount "test" {Password="\002AslUzT1JkPsocc";}
If you create users by importing an account list from a text file, place the Unix passwords strings into the UnixPassword column, not into the Password column. In this case, the Loader will automatically add the binary 002 prefix to all password strings.
Account Settings of the new accounts should specify one of the CommuniGate Pro password encryption methods (clear text or A-crpt). Users will be able to log in using their old Unix passwords. When they update their passwords, new CommuniGate Password strings will be stored using the specified CommuniGate Pro password encryption method. All users that have updated their passwords will be able to use the secure SASL authentication methods.
Some servers produced by the Netscape and Software.com companies store user passwords
using several encrytption methods. When passwords are retrieved from those servers, they
have the following form:
{method}eNcoDeD
where method specifies one of the standard encryption methods, and the eNcoDeD string
is a base64-encoded encrypted password.
CommuniGate Pro can use these passwords in the same way it uses the Unix-encrypted passwords, and they should be entered in the same way: you should use the binary 002 prefix in the CLI commands and/or your should place those passwords into the UnixPassword field of the Import file.
The following encryption methods are supported:
Sample Import file:
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The CommuniGate Pro software package includes the MovePOPMail program. This program connects to the old POP server, logs in, retrieves all messages, and submits it to the new SMTP server:
MovePOPMail [--verbose] [--delete] POPserver POPname POPpassword SMTPserver SMTPrecipient
Sample:
MovePOPMail --verbose 192.0.0.4 john "jps#dhj" 192.0.1.5 john
The CommuniGate Pro software package includes the MoveIMAPMail program. This program connects to the old and new IMAP servers, logs into both, retrieves the list of mailboxes in the old account, creates all missing mailboxes in the new account, and copies all messages from mailboxes in the old account to the mailboxes in the new account. The program also copies the list of "subscribed mailboxes".
MoveIMAPMail [--verbose] [--list search] OldServer oldName oldPassword NewServer newName newPassword
Sample:
MoveIMAPMail --list "Mail/*" 192.0.0.4 john "jps#dhj" 192.0.1.5 johnNew dummy
The CommuniGate Pro software package includes the MoveAccounts program. This program uses a tab-delimited text file that contains account names and passwords. It can be the same file you have used to Import Accounts to a CommuniGate domain.
The program scans the file and uses either the MailPOPMail or the MailIMAPMail program to move messages for each account. These programs should be located in your current directory.
MoveAccounts [--POP | --IMAP] [--verbose] [--delete] [--list search] file sourceServer targetServer
The first line of the file should contain the data field names. The fields with names Name and Password must be present.
If the field NewName exists, it is used as the SMTPrecipient parameter when the MovePOPMail program is started, or as the newName parameter for the MoveIMAPMail program. Otherwise the same Name field data is used.
If the --IMAP parameter is specified, the program checks if the NewPassword field exists. If it does, the data in that field are passed as the newPassword parameter to the MoveIMAPMail program. Otherwise, the same Password field data is used.
All fields with other names are ignored.
Sample:
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MoveAccounts --POP AccountList 192.0.0.3 192.0.1.5
If you cannot obtain the clear-text passwords for all accounts you want to copy, and the old server is using the Unix passwd or shadow file, you may want to create a special version of that file where all encrypted password strings are replaced with the encrypted string of a known password. If you use the --IMAP method, then you should enable the Use OS Password option for all target CommuniGate Pro accounts, and, if the CommuniGate Pro Server runs on a different computer, you should also copy the modified passwd file to that system. After all account data are copied, you may restore the original passwd file(s).
Very often it is essential to switch to the new server without any interruption in the services you provide.
If you install the new CommuniGatePro server on the same system as the old mail server, you should:
All this can be done while your old server is still active.
Now, you should stop your old server activity by either changing its port numbers to non-standard values, or by disconnecting it from the external network.
Use the AccountMove program to copy all messages from your old server to CommuniGate Pro.
When all messages are copied, change the CommuniGate Pro SMTP port number back to 25, POP port number - to 110, and IMAP port number to 143. Now CommuniGate Pro will operate as your mail server, without any interruption in the services you provide.
You may want to keep the old server running for several hours - in case its queue contained some delayed outgoing messages. Just check that the old server does not try to use the standard ports.
If you create several Secondary domains in CommuniGate Pro, you may want to move accounts from your old server(s) to a Secondary CommuniGate Pro domain, not to its Main Domain.
In this case, you should add the NewName field to your account list file, and copy all names into that column, adding the @domainname string to each name.
If you use the IMAP protocol to move messages between the servers, you may use a simpler method:
If you want to move your users from a CommuniGate for MacOS server, you can build the account list file using the CommuniGate/MacOS extractor utility.
If you want to move your users from a Stalker Internet Mail Server (SIMS), you can build the account list file using the SIMS extractor utility.