Question

What is the best method to disable email checking (polling), and any other maintenance tasks in order to do a dry run of the upgrade process without affecting a production site?

We'll be following the instructions to do a fresh install, then replace the database and run the database upgrade process. Following that, there will be a period of testing functionality - and during that time, we need to continue running our existing version of FogBugz.

So, after replacing the database but before running the upgrade process (or, indeed, starting the backend services again), it seems like we need to make changes to 'disable' things. What should we do?

Answer 1

Once you have a copy of your database installed on your FogBugz test machine, it's important for that database to not interfere with your current install. We have the same issue at Fog Creek when we bring a customer database in house to troubleshoot an issue. Here's the sanitizer script we run over the database to make sure it doesn't mess things up.

DELETE FROM MailQueue; 

DELETE FROM Licenses;

UPDATE Person SET fNotify = 0, fEscalationReport = 0; 

UPDATE Mailbox SET fDELETED = 1; 

DELETE FROM Subscriptions; 

UPDATE Setting SET sValue = 'NONE' WHERE sKey= 'sSMTPServer';

Here's the statements we run to make sure we can log in as anyone.

UPDATE Setting SET sValue = '0' WHERE sKey= 'fPasswordEnable';

UPDATE Setting SET sValue = '0' WHERE sKey= 'iAuthType';

If you do these, you shouldn't have to worry about running the FogBugz Maintenance Service on the machine. It will only do search indexing and regular maintenance tasks on the database.

Answer 2

I would contact FogCreek directly (a phone call is probably the best bet, since this seems to be rather involved). Your case seems to be pretty specific and you are likely to get faster and better results by going directly to them.