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