We get a ton of people who have downloaded and installed zimbra (155,270 from sourceforge total)
For the FC4 Binary, 160 Downloads.
As kevin has said, this hasn't happened since the early days. I agree, that there is something that triggered it.
During the install, the packages are removed, but the message store and DBs remain in the same place.
The fact that the /opt/zimbra dir was removed leads me to belive that somehow the lines from the -u switch got envoked.
You said this was the second time that the install failed. It's important that if the -u switch was kicked on without you knowing, that we find out why.
We need to get the /tmp/install.log.xxxx files from you.
Just as a clairification, we are community supported and try to help out as much as we can.
However, I know the feeling. One time, I totally erased the /opt/zimbra dir, and I DIDN"T have a backup. Boy did I take a lot of heat for that.
So now, the typical rule I use is i ALWAYS backup before any type of maintenance. I even do this with all of our servers, not just zimbra.