transfer problem

[Bill Tangren]

I have the unhappy task of replacing an aging Linux box with a newer 
one. The old one runs inn 2.4.1, and I am trying to get the new one to 
do so as well. We have no external feed, but we do have several internal 
groups with a few upwards of a few thousand postings each. I practiced 
this transfer and wrote down what worked. The trouble is, when I made 
the switch, it didn't work. This is what I did:

I set up the new server with the identical settings and configuration 
files as the old (the new server will have the same name as the old).

I tarred the old posts (all of which fall under the usno directory):

# cd /var/spool/news/articles/
# tar cf news.tar usno

I then ftp'ed them to the new server, and untarred them.

I then ftp's the contents of /news/db:

# cd /news/db
# sftp aa
sftp> cd /news/db
sftp> get *
sftp> bye
# chown news:news *

Finally, I logged in as news and ran makehistory and makedbz:

# su - news
-sh-3.00$ cd /news/db
-sh-3.00$ /news/bin/makehistory -b -f history.n -O -l 30000 -I -T /tmp
-sh-3.00$ /news/bin/makedbz -s `wc -l < history` -f history.n
-sh-3.00$ mv history.n history
-sh-3.00$ mv history.n.dir history.dir
-sh-3.00$ mv history.n.index history.index
-sh-3.00$ mv history.n.hash history.hash
-sh-3.00$ exit

This worked before (on a test platform), but it did not this time. I 
started the server, and then observed the logs as I used a news client 
(mozilla mail) to see how everything turned out. I didn't see any posts 
at all. The logs showed nothing out of the ordinary.

The /news/db/active file had funny numbers in it, like so:

usno.aa.questions 0000004808 00004905 y

There are 4808 posts in this newsgroup. And as I understand it, the 
second number should be the lower limit (1, in this case). With the 
server stopped, I adjusted these (by hand) to look like this:

usno.aa.questions 0000004808 00000001 y

What that did was allow me to see newer than about 2 weeks old. Nothing 
older than that, though those older messages are still there.

Would someone please tell me what I am doing wrong?

Bill