CINXE.COM

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html lang="en-US" xml:lang="en-US" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head><script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/bundle-playback.js?v=HxkREWBo" charset="utf-8"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/wombat.js?v=txqj7nKC" charset="utf-8"></script> <script>window.RufflePlayer=window.RufflePlayer||{};window.RufflePlayer.config={"autoplay":"on","unmuteOverlay":"hidden"};</script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/ruffle/ruffle.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> __wm.init("http://web.archive.org/web"); __wm.wombat("https://www.lsoft.com/news/techtipLSV-issue1-2016.asp","20231202055343","http://web.archive.org/","web","/_static/", "1701496423"); </script> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/_static/css/banner-styles.css?v=S1zqJCYt" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/_static/css/iconochive.css?v=3PDvdIFv" />  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width"/> <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge"/> <title>LISTSERV Tech Tip: How do I migrate my email list software to a new machine?</title> <meta name="title" content="LISTSERV Tech Tip: How do I migrate my email list software to a new machine?"/> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"/> <style type="text/css"> p.head { font-family: 'Segoe UI', arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; color: #333333; font-weight: bold; margin: 16px 0px 16px 0px; } p.subhead { font-family: 'Segoe UI', arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; color: #333333; font-style: italic; margin: 0px 0px 16px 0px; } p.sectionhead { font-family: 'Segoe UI', arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px; color: #333333; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 15px 0px; } p.question { font-family: 'Segoe UI', arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; color: #333333; } p.byline { font-family: 'Segoe UI', arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; color: #666666; margin: 0px 0px 14px 0px; } p.body { font-family: 'Segoe UI', arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 14px 0px; } p.body a { color: #4188d2; text-decoration: underline; } p.quote { font-family: 'Segoe UI', arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; color: #333333; font-style: italic; margin: 0px 0px 14px 0px; } li.body { font-family: 'Segoe UI', arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; color: #333333; margin: 0px 0px 14px 0px; } li.body a { color: #4188d2; text-decoration: underline; } img.image-left { margin: 5px 20px 10px 0px; padding: 0px; float: left; } img.image-right { margin: 5px 0px 10px 20px; padding: 0px; float: right; } img.image-center { margin: 5px 5px 15px 5px; padding: 0px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; } div.tweet { text-align: left; } div.bigquote { width: 300px; padding: 2px 10px 10px 10px; float: right; } p.bigquote { font-family: 'Segoe UI', arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 17px; line-height: 23px; color: #4188d2; font-style: italic; text-align: center; margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px; } hr { height: 1px; color: #dfdfdf; border-style: solid; border-color: #dfdfdf; border-width: 1px 0px 0px 0px; } @media only screen and (max-width: 679px) { table[class="container"] { width: 100% !important; } img.image-left { width: 100%; float: none; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; } img.image-right { width: 100%; float: none; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; } img.image-center { width: 100%; } } @media only screen and (max-width: 550px) { div.bigquote { float: none; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding: 2px 0px 10px 0px; } } @media only screen and (max-width: 479px) { div.bigquote { width: 230px; } } </style> </head> <body> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="width:100%"> <tr> <td style="padding:5px 5px 5px 5px"> <table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="container" style="border:1px solid #dfdfdf; margin:auto; width:680px"> <tr> <td><a href="issue1-2016.asp"><img alt="LISTSERV at Work" src="/web/20231202055343im_/https://www.lsoft.com/news/lw/header2016a.jpg" style="display:block; width:100%" title="LISTSERV at Work"/></a></td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background-color:#ffffff; padding:20px 20px 20px 20px"> <div class="tweet"><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20231202055343/http://twitter.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lsoft.com%2Fnews%2FtechtipLSV-issue1-2016.asp&text=How%20do%20I%20migrate%20my%20email%20list%20software%20to%20a%20new%20machine%3F&via=LSoftLISTSERV&hashtags=LISTSERV" target="_blank"><img src="/web/20231202055343im_/https://www.lsoft.com/news/lw/tweetthis.png" alt="Tweet This" title="Tweet This" border="0"/></a></div> <table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" style="margin: 15px 0px 15px 0px"> <tr><td bgcolor="#0f40d8"><p style="font-family: 'Segoe UI', arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px; color: #ffffff; margin: 5px 10px 5px 10px"><b><i>LISTSERV</i></b> Tech Tip</p></td></tr> </table> <p class="question">Q: How do I migrate my email list software to a new machine?</p> <p class="byline">Answer by Ben Parker<br/>Chief Corporate Consultant, L-Soft</p> <p class="body">With the recent end-of-life for Windows 2003, there have been a lot of queries to L-Soft support about how to move LISTSERV or LISTSERV Maestro to a new server. The old method of doing this for LISTSERV was simply to upgrade in-place on the old machine and copy the files over to the new machine. However, since Windows Server 2008 and 2012 R2 are both 64-bit operating systems, this requires a different migration process.</p> <p class="sectionhead">Migrating LISTSERV</p> <p class="body">LISTSERV *.LIST files are a proprietary binary format, which is OS-agnostic. This means that the files are the same format regardless of operating system, so they can be freely moved from one machine or operating system to another without any problems. The rest of the LISTSERV data and configuration files (including *.*TPL, list message archives, etc.) are in a plain-text format that again is easily transportable across platforms or operating systems. There is one exception: permvars.file is also a binary file but is still generally portable across platforms.</p> <p class="body">Knowing this, it's pretty simple to just make a list of all the necessary data and configuration files and just copy them from the old source machine to the new destination machine. Of course, you must first install a new version of LISTSERV on the new destination machine and test this new instance (under a temporary domain name) to be sure it runs correctly. Now you have a place to put the data files that you copy from the old source machine.</p> <p class="body">As far as possible, you should try to mirror the same disk structure between the old and new machines. Otherwise you will have a lot of extra work to do changing notebook paths for each list. On the other hand, if you need or want to re-organize your LISTSERV installation, a move like this is a great time to do so.</p> <p class="body">To make migrations easier L-Soft has built a "kit" containing a detailed instructional document and several *.cmd or *.sh scripts to assist you with the migration process. It is available at:<br/><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20231202055343/https://dropbox.lsoft.us/download/docs/FastMigration.zip" target="_blank">https://dropbox.lsoft.us/download/docs/FastMigration.zip</a>.</p> <p class="body">After studying this kit, if you have further questions and have current maintenance, you may write to: <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20231202055343/mailto:support@lsoft.com">support@lsoft.com</a>.</p> <p class="sectionhead">Migrating LISTSERV Maestro</p> <p class="body">While the migration of LISTSERV is relatively simple and easy, this is not necessarily the case with LISTSERV Maestro. LISTSERV Maestro keeps its data in files on the file system, and some data is also stored in the Maestro system database. Fortunately, however, these files are in a binary format, which is OS-agnostic. So, as with LISTSERV, you only need to copy all the necessary files to the new system, as well as dump the database contents and then restore and rebuild the database on the new system.</p> <p class="body">If you had to do this by hand, it would be tedious and error prone. However, LISTSERV Maestro performs an automatic nightly backup that captures all of the necessary data files as well as including a dump of the system database contents. The backup data is stored in three files, one each for HUB, LUI and TRK components. Further, LISTSERV Maestro has an additional feature that makes it easy to use these backup files to restore the system to the exact status of the moment in time that the backup was made.</p> <p class="body">So migrating LISTSERV Maestro consists of forcing a backup on the old system, verifying that the backup is complete and successful, copying the three backup files to the new system and configuring that system to restore from backup. Obviously, as with LISTSERV, you will have already installed and tested the new instance on the new machine so you know that it's working and simply needs all of the jobs and user data from the backup set. Even if you install a newer version of LISTSERV Maestro on the new machine, Maestro will first restore from backup, then automatically perform any necessary data format conversion or updating.</p> <p class="body">All of this is discussed in more detail in a special manual:<br/><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20231202055343/https://www.lsoft.com/resources/manuals-download.asp?id=254&format=PDF" target="_blank">LISTSERV Maestro Admin Tech Doc 4 - Moving LISTSERV Maestro</a></p> <table width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0"><tr><td style="padding: 10px 0px 10px 0px"><hr/></td></tr></table> <p class="body">Subscribe to <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20231202055343/http://community.emailogy.com/list/subscribe.html?lui=fe03n4zc&mContainer=71&mOwner=G312p362z2t382x322v&mListId=HL%2397">LISTSERV at Work</a>.</p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="background-color:#faa705; padding:10px 10px 10px 10px"><div style="font-family: 'Segoe UI', arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px; color: #ffffff; text-align: right">© L-Soft 2016. All Rights Reserved.</div></td> </tr> </table> <br/> <table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="container" style="margin:auto; width:680px"> <tr> <td> <br/> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://web.archive.org/web/20231202055343js_/https://platform-api.sharethis.com/js/sharethis.js#property=651f3fbd6ee9de001217ae6d&product=inline-share-buttons&source=platform" async="async"></script> <div class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons"></div> <br/> <script async src="http://web.archive.org/web/20231202055343js_/https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=UA-3167554-2"></script> <script> window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);} gtag('js', new Date()); gtag('config', 'UA-3167554-2'); </script> </td> </tr> </table> </td> </tr> </table> </body> </html>