Trying out a migration to another server

sardaukar

I’m trying to migrate away from my current server into another one. Steps I’ve taken:

added DNS records (A, AAAA, PTR) for new server
installed Debian 12
installed Docker
git cloned the mailcow source code to /opt/mailcow-dockerized
copied over my old mailcow.conf, just changed the domain name to the new one
copied over backups
ran helper_scripts/backup_and_restore.sh restore all pointing to the backups folder
restored all parts of my most recent backup

It all finishes without errors, but I can’t login (none of my passwords seem to be valid) not on /admin for admin or the root path for my user login.

What am I doing wrong? Thanks for any replies!

PS - forgot to say that my old mailcow setup, the one the backup is of, is running an older version (before Moorch) so is there an extra step needed?

DocFraggle

Did you restart the stack on the new server after restoring?

docker compose down
docker compose up -d

sardaukar

Yeah, I tried an update which I think does that. Also did it again just now.

Is there a way to get debug logs to see why it’s not accepting the old passwords?

DocFraggle

Yes, check the logs

https://docs.mailcow.email/troubleshooting/debug-logs/

When I moved from Rocky 8 to Debian 12 last year I used the cold standby script, worked perfectly! It creates a perfect clone of your mailcow on the new server

https://docs.mailcow.email/backup_restore/b_n_r-coldstandby/

sardaukar

This is what the logs say: (IP and domain redacted)

php-fpm-mailcow-1    | [29-Mar-2025 10:36:49] WARNING: [pool web-worker] child 43 said into stderr: "NOTICE: PHP message: mail
cow UI: Invalid password for user@domain.tld by xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx"
netfilter-mailcow-1  | xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx matched rule id 5 (mailcow UI: Invalid password for user@domain.tld by xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
)
netfilter-mailcow-1  | 3 more attempts in the next 600 seconds until xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/24 is banned

How can I reset the password from a docker exec command or something?

OK, tried mailcow-reset-admin.sh in helper-scripts and logging in to /admin with the new (random) password still doesn’t work - with the same php-fpm-mailcow-1 invalid password log message

sardaukar

OK, have restarting all containers (again) I could reset the admin password, and restore everything. I think the reason the upgrade didn’t work was that both my old admin password and regular user password didn’t pass the complexity requirements! They were long, but missed a special character, so after adding one to my old passwords they’re now accepted. Maybe something to report as a bug? Otherwise, older backups won’t work…