• Upgrading Dada Mail
• The Good News...
• Backup EVERYTHING
• Do not install Dada Mail over the previous installation
• When Good Lists Go Bad

Upgrading Dada Mail

This document will try to summarize how to upgrade your Dada Mail installation. If you're using a version lower than 2.4, these instructions should still work for you.

The Good News...

Your old lists should still work! Yes, you may thank me now. They should work because your list settings, archives and subscription list itself is saved wherever you set the $FILES variable (and friends). That means, all you have to do, is install the new version, and make sure you set the $FILES variable the same. If you are using an outside config file, you will only have to make sure you set the $DADA_CONFIG_DIR variable the same.

Backup EVERYTHING

Something may go wrong, you back up everything on your computer religiously anyways right? So, before you begin, backup.

• Download The Files
  
The simplist way to back up Dada Mail is to download via FTP whatever directory you store your list files in to your local computer This is the directory known in 2.5.1 and below as the directory you set $lists to in the CONFIG.pm file and $FILES in versions 2.6 and above. This is also the worst way, since some of the list settings files can get currupted. You've been warned.

I do this anyways, because I feel I'm in total control over everything if there are copies of the files physically on my computer.

• Move The Files
  
In Unixland, there's a magical utility called cp, which lets you copy stuff. You're amazed, I know. You can copy directories by using cp with the '-R' flag, observe:

        cp -R dada_lists backup_dada_lists_if_i_makey_a_booboo

• Compress The Files
  
You can also just compress the files for safe keeping and save some space:

        tar -zcvf dada_lists dada_backup.tar.gz

Do not install Dada Mail over the previous installation

This takes some prior thought, but it's best to keep the old version around until you see that everything is running just chipper. Yes!, two different versions of Dada Mail can work on the same lists without anything blowing up really good. This means that you should rename the old dada directory, the one that's in your cgi-bin. This also means that you have to change the $PROGRAM_URL variable in the Config.pm file to point to where mail.cgi is now.

        mv -R dada dada_2_8_9

works well. That way, when you do install the new version and everything checks out, you can just remove the old versionm or just change it's permissions to not to be executable. Just changing the permissions may be a good idea, since an unknown bug may get in your way, that wasn't an issue in the previous version.

When Good Lists Go Bad

If you're reading this, you're also swearing at something as well, eh? heh...

To salvage your list subscribers (you did make that backup, using one of the three ways mentioned above, correct?) just open up every file in your backup that ends in '.list' such as, listname.list 'listname' would be the name of the list they were on. This file holds probably the most important part of your list, the subscribers; so all, is not lost.

Note Dada Mail was never intended to be moved across servers. You may have complications if you find yourself in that situation. It's possible that the new server will be using a different DB package and downloading/uploading the list setting files in Dada Mail will corrupt these files.

If you are moving, the simpliest thing to do before moving any Dada Mail files is to actually compress them, before you transfer them to your new server. Compressing the files may save them from corruption.