[SOLVED] upgrade NE to OSS

[captainmish]

Hi all
Sorry for the duplication, but I cant seem to find any posts that match (though I did a while ago).

We are getting lots of budget cuts, and wont be renewing our NE license but would like to use OSS instead. I seem to remember seeing some posts about just installing the OSS version on top of NE and it will work - can anyone confirm this?

Any other tips welcome!

Thanks,

[phoenix]

Originally Posted by captainmish

We are getting lots of budget cuts, and wont be renewing our NE license but would like to use OSS instead. I seem to remember seeing some posts about just installing the OSS version on top of NE and it will work - can anyone confirm this?

That will work, make sure you take a full NE backup first (stop any incoming mail by blocking port 25) then take a copy of the /opt/zimbra directory structure and you should just be able to run the installer to do an OSS 'upgrade' - it also needs to be the same release of the OSS Zimbra as you have for your NE install.

BTW, have you spoken to your Sales representative about the situation?

[captainmish]

Thanks phoenix, appreciate the confirmation - Ill be testing first on a snapshot of the /opt/zimbra volume in a vm, so backout should be painless if it all goes wrong. Not spoken to the rep, but we have 0 to spend and I doubt they will be able to be that flexible!
Thanks again,

[phoenix]

Originally Posted by captainmish

Not spoken to the rep, but we have 0 to spend and I doubt they will be able to be that flexible!

That's always a difficult budget to work with. Thank heavens for Open Source.

[captainmish]

First test has been run on a snapshot, and after some messing around with file permissions (the "source" box had different uid for zimbra, so files were owned by postfix not zimbra on the test vm - zmfixperms didnt work so had to manually chown zimbra.zimbra for /opt/zimbra/log) the server is running, but I still get a popup saying that the license has expired! zmcontrol -v shows im running NE as well... Ive installed from zcs-6.0.5_GA_2213.UBUNTU8.20100202225756.tgz, dpkg -l output seems the same as the NE server apart from zimbra-core, which shows:
ii zimbra-core 6.0.5_GA_2213.UBUNTU8 ZCS Network Edition
and on the OSS downgrade test vm:
ii zimbra-core 6.0.5_GA_2213.UBUNTU8 Best email money can buy
Have I installed the wrong packages? I thought the NE ones were zcs-NETWORK-xxx
Possibly its because I still have the NE admin zimlets installed, do these need to be removed manually? The installer claimed that "This will remove all Network features, including
Attachment Searching, Zimbra Mobile, Backup/Restore, and support for the
Zimbra Connector for Outlook." but maybe it didnt manage to do that?
Any tips welcome!

[phoenix]

It isn't normally necessary to remove the NE zimlets manually (at least I haven't found it to be), however as they still seem to be in-place you can remove them and then reboot the server.

[captainmish]

So far what I have tried:

* Snapshotted /opt/zimbra from the main (NE) server, synced this to another machine.
* Snapshotted the synced snapshot, and mounted this snapshot rw to /opt/zimbra on a newly made vm (same os etc as main server)
* Ran the OSS installer of the same version (from zcs-6.0.5_GA_2213.UBUNTU8.20100202225756.tgz), got the warning that it will remove the NE features, proceeded with successful installation.
* Logged in as client, got the license warning
* Upgraded to OSS version 6.0.7 (zcs-6.0.7_GA_2473.UBUNTU8.20100616234246.tgz), upgrade went smoothly.
* zmcontrol -v shows
Release 6.0.7_GA_2473.UBUNTU8 UBUNTU8 NETWORK edition.

Getting desperate now, I really dont want to have to transfer 150 users across "the hard way", any ideas anyone?

{edit} - is there any way this is because NE was not installed on the test vm? Possibly part of the uninstall of the NE that is missing?

[captainmish]

Finally after much weeping and gnashing of teeth I got it to work. For anyone trying the same as me:

The NE->OSS downgrade/crossgrade/upgrade will only work if NE is installed on the machine. I had a sync of the entire /opt/zimbra volume and tried it on a clean server, this upgraded the installation but kept it at NE, even when installing >{current version} of the OSS packages as an upgrade.

I made a sync of the root volume and tested again with this, and the install went differently (part of it was removing network components from ldap), this time success - zmcontrol -v now shows its the OSS version. profit.