[SOLVED] Open Source Restore Issues

[Cryophallion]

I am working on possibly moving my zimbra machine to a virtual machine, and at the same time doing a disaster recovery test, and I am running into issues trying to restore the email to a new server (in this case on a virtual machine).

Following the Restore policy on the wiki, the steps are as follows:

1. set hostname and hosts to the same as the old server
2. decompress my backed up zimbra folder to /opt/zimbra
3. install the same version of zimbra
and this is where I get stuck, with the following issues, and attempts to fix:

First overwrite seems to start to work. It asks to delete the directory, I say no
It installs the requisite packages, and goes to the saveconfig loading. At this point, it seems to detect my old config, but has issues with ldap or forgetting the port numbers. Even if I reenter this info, it won't continue.
I usually end up having to quit at this phase.

If I try to re-run setup, it attempts to upgrade, but with a blank saveconfig, which won't work.

I have also try zmfixperms at every step. I have installing with the hostname etc set to the same as the backup, then overwriting or merging directories, etc.

Can anyone guide me as to which step I am doing wrong? I restored about a year ago, but I remember that there was a step that I had to tweak from the wiki, but I can't remember what it was.

I have now tried this from scratch at least 20 times with a 6 gb backup file, so to say it takes a while to go through every possible way of doing things is an understatement. I''ve run out of ideas, so I'd appreciate some help.

PS - I've tried checking for ldap issues, etc, but since this is a restore install, they didn't seem to apply, and since the re-install killed my save config, fixing it likely would not have helped.

[bdial]

i think your steps 2 and 3 are reversed. Provided your OS and processor (32v64) is the same, you should just be ablel to

1. yeah make sure hostname and everything is all the same
2. install the same zimbra version software on the new box, but use install.sh -s

the -s version tells it just to install the software, don't do any setup. This makes sure the correct stuff is setup on the system such as users, cron, and the rpm entries are made

3. now expand your /opt/zimbra backup overtop of the install you did

really this should be all you have to do

[Cryophallion]

That sounded familiar, but still not working.

I copied over the files, and ran perm fix.

Tried to start it, to see if I got really lucky, but no luck there.

So, I tried running the install again so it would remove the dummy package and install with the proper config. Once again, I only get the localhost for hostname, everything else blank.

Am I supposed to delete the zimbra directory before copying over the old data?

[Cryophallion]

I have deleted the old zimbra folder completely, copied over the old folder, run fixperms, and am now finally upgrading, and it appears like it is going to go though.

I think I'm going to look into updating the wiki to make it more clear in the future.

[Cryophallion]

So, for anyone else in the future, here are the proper steps for a restoration on a brand new server:

1. setup the hostname as the same as the old server

2. download the same installer version as your backup was running

3. run install.sh -s to install the dummy copy

4. delete the dummy /opt/zimbra directory

5. extract your backed up /opt/zimbra directory and move it if necessary

6. run /opt/zimbra/libexec/zmfixperms as root

7. run install.sh to "upgrade" the install

[bdial]

i'm curious why did you need step 7? were you restoring to a newer version than your backup was?

[Cryophallion]

It didn't recognize my settings for whatever reason. I tried starting it, and it failed immediately.

Maybe I'll do another test tomorrow.

My reasoning was that it was taking my saveconfig and fully applying it.

Thanks a ton for your help. I've edited the wiki accordingly, but will take out step 7 if it magically works this time. The -s was the key detail.

I was accidentally following the same server recovery at first as well when I redid it, so that's why I didn't catch deleting the dummy zimbra folder.

[bdial]

well your config is pretty much all stored in either the conf/localconfig.xml or in ldap. which is just a database stored under /opt/zimbra. so by restoring /opt/zimbra from backup you essentially are restoring all your original settings. it may be fixing something else though who knows, the fact that it worked was the important part

[Cryophallion]

You were right. I did something wrong to require the second setup. Will fix my wiki edits accordingly.

Thanks again, I can now rest much easier with the process officially resolved for me. That -s was the killer.

EDIT: Nope, I was wrong. Here's the issue - I have zimbra listening on port 81 as it is also a web server. I get this error:
HTTP ERROR: 404

NOT_FOUND

RequestURI=/

So, if you have a different port set up, you may need to re-run setup again to fix that.

[ceefus]

I'm getting the same error.. If anyone could help me with this I'd very much appreciate it... I'm not sure what is going on and I've tried about every option I could think of... Searched the forum's but didn't find a solid solution though I've tried every one I've seen.. I had a HDD crash and I've literally been working on this for 22hours straight.. I'm on fumes..