Topic: Migrating to a new boxen!

[Zee]

I've been extremely happy with e-smith 4.1.2  I have no plans to upgrade to V5 at all.  My company (20 ppl) rely heavily on e-smith.  We run a small gfx production company.  We've done several small tests and we have concluded that we need a more powerful e-smith server.  Right now the machine is a P3-450 with 512MB SDRAM.  We need more oomph.

So my question is.............

What would be the correct procedure to move my current e-smith to a new box.  (Tyan Tiger MP with dual 1.4Ghz Athlons).

I have installed many rpms such as awstats, ezmlm, and also we have modified mysql to fit our needs.  Is there some way we can just move the whole thing to a new machine without any problems?  

We need all the data that is on the server such as the e-mails as well as all the mySQL tables and such.  It is also imperative that all custom cron jobs and basically everything should be working once migrating to the new box.

Does the webmail backup and restore copy EVERYTHING over as well as the cronjobs for each user??

[sage]

e-smith does not recgnise the 2nd processor.  I tryed this and it did not work.  I had to use axonlinux for my dual processor box.  It will install fine but hangs during boot when you select the dual option.  It will start and run fine if you choose the option to use only one processor.

[Rich Lafferty]

ESSG 4.1.2 with all updates should work fine on a dual-processor machine, as long as the installer recognizes that that motherboard is dual-processor; SME Server v5 will work on dual-processor machines right out of the box (with the same caveat).

If the 4.1.2 installer is not recognizing your machine as SMP-capable, try SME Server v5; if that still doesn't recognize it, please let us know at bugs@e-smith.com.

(If we don't know about the problem, we can't fix it!)

Cheers,

  -Rich

[Zee]

Is this a Tyan Tiger MP specific problem?

Prior to our Athlon 700 we had a Dual 300Mhz Celeron BP6 motherboard and e-smith 4.1.2 picked up the dual proc from the get go and it worked fine.

The reason we upgraded to an Athlon 700 was that the on board IDE controller somehow went on the fritz, and we were experiencing large amounts of data corruption after extended uptimes.

[dave]

i didn't know 1.4g athlons could work in a dual-processor situation under any circumstances - it's why penguin, valinux, etc. have ads for lots of sinlge-proc athlon systems and dual-proc pentium systems...  as far as e-smith, i could be wrong but isn't it (4.1.2) based on redhat 7.0?  and hasn't redhat been smp-capable since rh5.2?

[Kelvin]

Dave is correct. As I understand it, Athlon MP CPUs are only available in 1.0 and 1.2 Ghz. If you are indeed using 1.4Ghz CPUs in your dual Athlon board, I suspect you are either overclocking (which might then be a stability issue) or the Athlons are only running single processor at the moment.


Kelvin

[andrew]

Umm, from memory I dont think the current e-smith kernel supports the dual athlon configuration. You might want to check the hardware compatibility list first to confirm.

Yes the axonlinux will support this setup, but that runs a highr kernel the the current.

good luck.

[Kelvin]

Hmm ... I thought Rich Lafferty's posting (3 or 4 back) implies that with the necessary updates, ESSG 4.1.2 does support MP systems and SME 5 supports it out of the box.

Can anyone at e-smith confirm this as I make recommendations from time to time to interested parties and would like to have a definitive answer as to whether or not ESSG 4.1.2 is MP capable or not.

Kelvin

[Des Dougan]

Kelvin,

The issue here is with the kernel, not specifically with e-smith. Andrew was indicating that the kernel version used by e-smith doesn't have SMP support for Athlon CPUs only. SMP support in general has been in the Linux kernel for a long time, so you could use Intel processors without a problem.

HTH,

Des Dougan

[Kelvin]

Thanks for the reply Des.

However, I am aware that the kernel is the main key here. As in any systems solutions, I asked e-smith because e-smith must be aware (or be made aware) of any capabilities / shortcomings of a system that they have put together (even if they did not write the kernel themselves). If nothing else, it builds up a knowledgebase for the benefit of any others who might seek to find similar answers and information.

I still would like confirmation that the 2.2.16-x kernel supports / does not support Athlon MP systems. Since the 2.2.16-x kernels support ix86 MP systems, does it also support Athlon MP systems ?

Anyone ?

Kelvin

[Chris]

All this MP stuff is great, and as a confused user a diffinative answer would be great.

But i am very interested in the back up part of Zee question, as I will have to rebuild my 4.1.2 server soon due to a understanding with a hdd. (see general phorum)

Althow my setup is nowhere near what Zee's sounds like, as a web developer i soon want it to be. (thats is i can get my head around PHP and mysql as i have been trained in ASP and Access. If anyone knows of a good tute to get me going i would be most greatfull.)

Maybe one of you over worked guru's out there could make a HowTo
please.....


Fodder......

[Rich Lafferty]

4.1.2 is SMP-capable right out of the box; it will run both processors on supported hardware. Some updates are required to get the entire system MP-aware (in particular, pppd comes to mind); the updates are available on ftp.e-smith.org.

-Rich

[Chris O'Donovan]

I'm wondering whether more CPU is what the original poster needs.

It is possible that the bottleneck is bandwidth and a faster network card would help more than a faster CPU. A linksys gigabit starter kit (one gigabit adapter and an eight port 10/100 + one gigabit port switch) is $US171 at buy.com.

Does anyone know if the linksys gigabit card works with linux?

Chris

[Patrick Basile]

What about the question of migrating the 4.1.2 server setup to V5 on the new box?

[Geoff Bennion]

What about the hard disk ? - I have found that this is our biggest bottleneck.
(Duron 800 with s/w raid udma 100).