Moving from old Fedora server (14) to latest Ubuntu

#1

Hi all,

I have inherited on old Fedora 14 box that I need to get updated. Looking at migrating it to the latest Ubuntu server. Need help/suggestions for things I need to watch out for and any migration tools that will help with the move.

Would I be better off sticking with Fedora since that is what it is currently running? I do understand Fedora is the latest and greatest and is updated every six months so it may not be the best for a full time webserver/mailserver. What is your opinion?

It is running sendmail with mailscanner, spamassassin, mailwatch etc. along with an older copy of Horde/Imp for the webmail. This will all need to be moved to something else as well since I believe Horde/Imp is no longer being updated. Are there tools for migrating the existing mail on the server? This is very important as there is a lot of mail. It appears to be stored in /var/spool/mail and under the home directories of each user.

As for moving accounts/passwords over easily, is this possible? Are there any good websites that can assist with this? I have been thru the tutorial on setting up postfix under ubuntu here by linuxbabe and that will be a great help. I want to use postfix and possibly iredmail for the webmail.

Any thoughts, suggestions, pointers to tutorials on doing any of this would be great apprecateid.

Tim

#2

Fedora 14 was released in 2010. As far as I can tell, you can’t upgrade it to the latest version (Fedora 36), so you will need to reinstall the OS.

There’s no Long Term Support release for Fedora, so if you choose to install Fedora 36, then you will need to upgrade Fedora every 6 months.

Ubuntu has Long Term Support (LTS) release that’s supported for at least 5 years. You can use ESM (Extended Security Maintaince) to get security updates for additional 5 years. It also has non-LTS release every 6 months.

In my opinion, Ubuntu gives more flexibility. If you want a stable server, use LTS release. If you want the latest and greatest software, then upgrade Ubuntu every 6 months.

It’s possible to keep the accounts/passwords and emails during migration. You just need to back up the correct the directory or database, then restore them to the correct place. However, I don’t know exactly how your old email server is configured, so I can’t give specific instructions.

You can also use Thunderbird to transfer old emails.