[SLL] Procedural advice wanted.

[Anand Vaidya]

On Tuesday 17 March 2009 10:09:45 Paul Franz wrote:
> I have a server I want to upgrade with a clean install. I don't want to
> take the server down until it the replacement is working. In order to do
> the upgrade I need access to the running server for files to transfer and
> existing configurations to reference.
>
> If I install the OS on a new machine in the network, it will have the name
> and IP associated with that name. Maybe I should do that and change the
> name before testing. It seems to me this will be frought with problems.
> Maybe the configurations for installed software such as bind, mail,
> dovecot, etc will take on the characteristics of the new machine, for
> example. Or maybe the test didn't work and I have to change the name back
> to something else.
>
> There are quite a number of files under /etc/ that have the server's name
> in it so renaming would be a chore.

Paul,
Why not create a VM from the running server and then tweak the VM offline? You 
can assign the same hostname / IP to the VM but leave it disconnected until 
you are ready to test. A quick cable switch can be used to test. If something 
seems wrong, you can always go back to the working server.

I did this recently for a Apache/SVN/bugzilla server migration and did not 
encounter any  problems. 

Regards
Anand
>
> Any advice?