On Wed, 19 Jun 1996 21:14:49 EDT Roger Fajman <[log in to unmask]> said:
 
>Greg had the fun job of bringing up LISTSERV on Solaris and handling the
>Unix  side  of the  conversion  from  VM  LISTSERV without  having  used
>LISTSERV before and with very little documentation.
 
I can certainly  see the difficulty. Migrating a list  base of NIH's size
is no easy task to begin with, even for a LISTSERV expert. In general the
most  successful  "migration  stories"  have been  from  sites  like  VT,
American or Syracuse (this isn't a comprehensive list so don't kill me if
you're not listed  :-) ) where there was significant  local expertise for
both  source and  target systems.  I've seen  people who  know everything
about LISTSERV  and VM  run into  serious trouble  because they  were not
familiar with the target system, and conversely unix wizards who can find
errors  in  the sendmail  books  can  make mistakes  due  to  lack of  VM
knowledge. NIH also  had the misfortune of starting a  full migration (ie
with no  option to  keep "just  a few lists"  on VM  for a  while longer)
before the  file server or database  functions were available, even  as a
beta. I am soon going to migrate  SUNET's lists from SEARN to SEGATE and,
while  my list  owners  are not  the vociferous  kind  (with one  notable
exception  ;-) ),  I  can certainly  see that  having  a database  search
function  plus the  ability  to let  them manage  their  own archives  of
academic papers is making them a lot nicer than they might otherwise have
been. This is  why I am pushing  for releasing 1.8c ASAP  and keeping all
the  enhancements that  are still  on the  "to do"  list for  later. Many
people will  be migrating  soon and  I can  see first  hand what  kind of
difference this  makes in  list owner  response. A  poll I  had conducted
about a year ago wasn't quite what  I would call positive :-) I have also
carefully pointed  out to the  list owners that  they would gain  the web
archive interface  (which you can  preview at http://segate.sunet.se  - I
know that  the image link is  bad and it's  on purpose) and most  of them
appear to see the move as a positive thing.
 
Another category of "migration successes" is people who keep the lists on
VM and  migrate the  deliveries elsewhere, because  it's so  much simpler
technically and operationally. SJU is  the perfect example, they were #10
worldwide before their migration in SEP95, and now they are #2 (yes, they
have overtaken  UB!) All right,  now the 4381 is  starting to run  out of
steam just forwarding the deliveries to the AlphaServer, but it's a small
machine and it's  the #2 worldwide LISTSERV site too.  The main advantage
of this  approach is  that on the  day the traffic  is migrated  there is
pretty much no visible change to the users, other than mail arriving much
faster. For  a successful traffic migration  you don't need to  know much
about VM or  LISTSERV, in fact what you  need to know is how  to tune the
mail system on the target  machine and install/configure a basic LISTSERV
system  with no  list  and no  user.  It's  a *lot*  easier  than a  full
migration and can buy you time  during which L-Soft will continue to port
the remaining VM functions.  I don't work for SJU but I do  know a few of
their list owners ;-), and I think  there would have been a minor natural
disaster in  their general area  if they had  decided to migrate  all the
lists to VMS last  summer :-) Now it just might  work, especially if they
can keep a small number of lists on VM for a while.
 
  Eric