Sympl and Symbiosis

General Discussion
1

Hi There,

I have gone through the forum posts and I think the docs, and I was looking for some help .

I currently run several websites (easch has a few email addresses) from a bytemark (now iomart) server, which was running symbiosis, but I broke symbiosis (lost dovecot and symbiosis-email) (this is on debian bullseye)

I have reinstalled dovecot, but I still can’t retrieve emails (luckily exim is still accepting email for me!)

Could I install sympl on the server and would it restore the functionality of the email as it used to be in symbiosis before I broke it?

All the migration from symbiosis to sympl guides suggest starting from scratch on a new server, and I don’t have access to a new server right now, so this isn’t really an option for me.

Can anyone help? could I just install sympl-email, and would this work?

tad8

2

I used to have a bytemark symbiosis server, but iomart very quickly became ohnomart and I fled, eventually ending up with a mythic-beasts dedicated server, but you really don’t need to go to M-B to use Sympl.

What is best for you depends on your requirements and your budget, but take it from me that it is far easier to set up a new server and migrate than it is to fix a broken server running out of date software.

Neither symbiosis nor sympl are actually needed. They both configure other software on your behalf, but the learnng curve can be very steep without them to help.

What I suggest is renting a virtual server from intovps.com or bitfolk.com or mythic-beasts.com (in rising price and performance order) and setting up a test server, play at migrating a test site, then when you are happy, migrate the lot.

Then consider whether you want to wipe and rebuild then migrate back to iomart. They’re not who I’d choose, but sometimes people feel happier with the devil they know.

3

thanks @hairydog

I massively fucked up basically, and made a whole load more work for myself! I’ll do some digging and see what I can come up with. I would have well over 100GB of archive storage data to shift, so I have to plan carefully. :fearful:

Your advice has been much appreciated.

4

Migrating from one internet server to another is really easy and quick, as long as you have shell access at each end. Of course, if you have 100GB of old stuff, you’re going to need more than 100GB of storage space to move it to, but it will only take a few minutes.

5

yeah - I know. I have just never tried a nextcloud migration before, so need to read up to be prepared!

If anyone comes across this thread, I did eventually manage to massage dovecot into working again - the clincher for me was the following in /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf:

mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir
passdb {
  driver = passwd-file
  args = scheme=SHA username_format=%n /srv/%d/mailboxes/%n/password
}
userdb {
  driver = static
  args = uid=<user> gid=<group> username_format=%n home=/srv/%d/mailboxes/%n
}

Where <user> and <group> are the ownership details of the mail folders.

The only wrinkle was that I had to reformat the password file for each user in the standard passwd file format. i.e. I had to add <username>: before the hashed password in the file on the same line.

YMMV

Ideally follow @hairydog 's advice above!

tad

6

A nextcloud migration is a bit of a nightmare, because nextcloud is in itself a nightmare. Their keenness for “new shiny” exceeds their wish for reliability, testing and properly getting rid of bugs.
Owncloud is too far the opposite: they seem to be stuck in the past.

Install Sympl on the new server, dump and restore the databases, then rsync the /srv/ directory over. That’s more or less the whole task.

7

In theory, you could remove Symbiosis and re-install Sympl, but theres no supported version of Sympl for the old Stretch or older Debian versions.

You may still be able to reinstall the Symbiosis packages though with something like apt install symbiosis-*

You’re probably best off migrating to another server at this point.

Yes, its specifically set up that it should work anywhere, but they do help by employing me and giving me time to work on Sympl :slight_smile:

8

Yes, M-B is a good choice, and the one I made, but other hosts are available, possibly more cheaply. However, cheapest is never best value, in my experience.