OES2 SP1 ID Transfer Migration Tips

By Glen Davis

Contents:

• Introduction

• Migration Tips

• eDirectory Roll Back

• Conclusion

Introduction

With OES2 SP1, Novell has released an “ID Transfer” feature as part of the OES2 Migration Tools. This new feature allows you to do what the former Migration Wizard did, which is allow a destination server to take the place of your source server. This new tool Transfers your source to an OES2 Linux destination, something the Migration Wizard did not support.

The great thing about this new tool, is it not only does what the Migration Wizard did migrating your edirectory, and data, but it also allows you to migrate several other services in the process including, iFolder, iPrint, Archive Versioning, NTP, FTP, AFP and CIFS. It also takes care of the changing of your ipaddress, hostname, lum, certificates, and fixes up iManager and Netstorage, to have them all working after performing the ID Transfer migration.

Figure 1 - OES2 Migration Tool

Click to view.

Migration Tips

Installing the Server

The destination server should be installed the following ways:

Install the destination server without a replica. Choose the “Pre-migration” Pattern in YaST when you install your server to take care of this.

Install the destination server into the same context as your source server. Remember your source server will go away and the destination will take it's place. Installing into a different context can cause unneeded lum and rights issues that would have to be fixed up, and also scattered edir objects. Keep it simple and install into the same context.

Install the services you will migrate. If you will migrate iprint, cifs and afp. Then install these on the destination server install. Configure these services so they are working in basic form on the destination before doing a migration. For example, for iPrint, install a print manager and driver store. For AFP and CIFS, configure these services so admin or a user can map a drive via afp or cifs, before doing the migration.

Volume Objects

Name the NSS volume objects you will migrate to with the same name as the source, and don't add additional volumes that will not be migrated to until after the ID Transfer Migration. If this is not followed, you will need to fix up your NSS volume objects after the migration.

SLP

Make sure SLP is working for proper name resolution. If your printers fail to migrate, this is the first thing to check. A simple way to check if slp is working on your server is working is “slptool findsrvs service:ndap.novell | grep -i <treename>. If your treename returns your slp is resolving.

Checking Services before ID Transfer

As part of the ID Transfer process, you are first given the ability to migrate OES2 services before migrating the identity. After migrating these services and before clicking on the “Transfer ID” button, you can check those services on the destination server and verify they are working on the destination before doing the identity swap. The one exception to this is iPrint, which does some changes as part of the Identity Transfer.

Figure 2 – Services to Migrate

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eDirectory Roll Back

During the ID Transfer process, if for some reason there is a failure after eDirectory has been locked on the source, and eDirectory removed off the destination, there is an easy way to fix the problem and try again. On the source, simple run a “dsrepair” and it will reopen the database. On the destination you can reinstall the original eDirectory by:

 cat /var/log/YaST2/y2log | grep ndsconfig

This will show something like:

/opt/novell/eDirectory/bin/ndsconfig add -t 'treename' -n 'ou=context.o=novell' -a 'admin.novell' -p 10.10.136.171:524 -d /var/opt/novell/eDirectory/data/dib -D /var/opt/novell/eDirectory -B 10.10.136.175@524 -L 389 -l 636 -o 8028 -O 8030 --config-file /etc/opt/novell/eDirectory/conf/nds.conf

Now just re-execute the same command but add:

 -w <edir_password>

Your eDirectory will be reinstalled and now you can go back and try the eDirectory step again.

Figure 3 – ID Transfer Screen

Click to view.

Migration Patches

Update your destination server with the latest Migration patches. A migration patch will be released soon after the shipment of OES2SP1, which should be applied to the server.

Log Files

By default your log files will be in /var/opt/novell/migration/<NewProj#gt;/. The most important log files to check are /var/opt/novell/migration/<NewProj#>/log/migration.log, debug.log and serveridswap.log. Having all these logs in one location is nice for zipping up and sending off for troubleshooting.

Source Server eDirectory

Once the source server is down, don't bring it up again. Remember eDirectory was only locked on the source, for an easy rollback, but this also means if you boot the server back up, you will have both source and destination with the same name and eDirectory running, which should be avoided.

Conclusion

Administrators have been asking for an easy way to migrate from NetWare to Linux, and Novell has delivered it with these tools. It will not only migrate your NetWare 5.1sp8, 6sp5, and 6.5 servers, it will also migrate your OES1 and OES2 source servers to OES2sp1 as well. I hope these tips along with the Migration Tools documentation will serve as a good basis for successful migrations to OES2sp1.