FW: [cobalt-users] CMU Questions

["Jay Fesco" <jay@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I searched on CMU and found such a preponderance of diverse opinion that I
thought I'd try to phrase the questions a little differently than I've seen
it here...

The situation:

Current machine is a Raq3, colo'd about 200 miles from me and physically
inaccessible.  It's running CASP, SpicePack, Webmin, and MySQL.  All patches
up to date.  It hosts 80 sites with 22 MySQL databases.  We have about 30
actual pop email clients, the rest are forwards.  About 200 usernames total.
The machine is not overly tweaked - the only non-cobalt stuff I've done is
MySQL configuration (forwarding mysql.sock, etc) and setting permissions for
CGI execution and file uploads via browser.  I applied the httpd.conf patch
for SSL problems with CASP as well.  I had to rebuild this machine from
scratch at the beginning of the year thanks to a script-kiddie.  It took
about 2 days, and I'm not looking forward to doing that again unless I have
to.  The Raq3 is a rental.  I will be migrating everything from the Raq3 to
the Raq4i before the end of the month.

New machine is a Raq4i, located locally to me (I can get to it if I need
to).  It has one simple site on it at present.  It can be fully wiped if
necessary.  It is basically box-stock except that it's running WebMin.
MySQL is NOT installed, neither is SpicePack.

The questions:
Is it worth attempting to use CMU?  Keep in mind that the sites need to stay
live until installed and tested on the new box.  I know that the CMU
requires that all Vsites and sendmail be stopped while it's Tar'ing, and
that's ok, but not for days on end.

Does CMU attempt to copy any MySQL config?  I take a remote backup of each
database every night, so rebuilding is not a huge problem, just tedious.
It's going to be a little out of sync from the old box to the new in any
case, so the quicker the turnaround (old to new) the better.

Any input / opinion would be appreciated.  One thing I noticed in the
archives was the appearance of entries such as 'I just did it manually' with
no detail.  I know it's asking alot, but if that was your solution, a copy
of a project plan or specific tasks / potential gotchas would save the day
(and help many others in the process, I'm sure).

Thanks!

Jay Fesco

(Note:  This is a resend.  It never showed up in the archives as far as I
can tell.  If you received a duplicate I apologize.  JJF)