The mailing list for listmasters using Sympa

["Engels, Jan" <address@concealed>]

Hi everyone,

I am currently testing how to migrate a mailing list from one
sympa server to another sympa server. Currently my approach is:

# generate a dump from subscribers
sympa.pl --dump=${LIST}

# synchronize the following folders to the destination server
/var/lib/sympa/list_data/${LISTNAME}
/var/lib/sympa/arc/${LIST}

# check /var/spool/sympa for remaining files/folders...
find /var/spool/sympa/ -name '*${LISTNAME}*'


On the destination server I do the following:

# check if permissions are correct from the migrated folders
ls -l /var/lib/sympa/list_data/
...

# sync data from config files to DB
sympa.pl --sync_list_db --list=${LIST}

# import subscribers from dump files
cat /var/lib/sympa/list_data/${LISTNAME}/subscribers.db.dump.light | sympa.pl 
--import ${LIST}


That's it. The list + archives were immediately visible on the destination 
server, so I hope
that the procedure above is somehow acceptable for doing a list migration :)


Now I still have one question:

The "subscribers.db.dump.light" which I've used for importing the subscribers 
does not include
any subscription dates information. There is another file 
(subscribers.db.dump) which actually
includes this information but I could not find an easy way to use it in the 
"sympa.pl --import"
process. The workaround for me was to write a small script which reads the 
"subscribers.db.dump"
file and which updates the subscription dates directly in the DB, something 
like:

update subscriber_table set date_subscriber='$fdate' where 
user_subscriber='$email' and
list_subscriber='$lname';


Does anyone know if there is a better way for doing this? Besides this small 
issue, the
migration process seems to have worked very well.


Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers
Jan