Given the recent and frequent failures of the mail server, I've decided to move the services to this server until I can complete the rebuilding of the new server (again, from spare parts).

This server is a nice, but a little old, 500MHz Sparc IIi with 1.5GB of ECC RAM and 100GB of HDD journaling storage that rarely hiccups, much less fails.

That server is a hand-me-down 366MHz Celeron with 640MB of slow RAM and only 6GB of HDD storage with an apparently failing power supply that was pressed into service when its predecessor (a really old 66MHz Pentium!) failed completely.

I have pledged to move the services to a newer more robust server several times. I've got half of an AMD Sempron 3200 set up. Still with only 512MB of DDR RAM, but with a large journaling HDD, and a planned and more up-to-date version of Solaris. I am taken from configuring this replacement by the maintenance required to keep the failing server running. Well, that and the fact that I haven't picked up a hard drive onto which I'll install the OS and software...

The new server will probably replace even this server as it'll have much more storage and punch. I'll probably drop another GB of RAM into it after it's up and running, but we'll see; even this server rarely breaks that first 1/2 GB, and this is also used as a workstation with two thin clients attached to it.

In the meantime, I've got to consolidate the services from the old server to the new one. The web services are relatively trivial, containing only a web-based e-mail program (already installed) and a web-based mailing list manager (not yet installed). The core of the services remaining on the failing server are all e-mail related. This server is running a mail server, but I need to relocate domains and ensure the mailing list works, as well as coordinate DNS changes to remove the failing server from the Internet's memory. All of this without losing any messages or user service.

Whee!