Restoring a zimbra server without proper backup

[jonnyRo]

Hello,

Before I started doing my regular zimbra network edition backups I had a basic disk level backup of the main zimbra server run every night.

When it came time to actually use one of these backups to restore some data I had a rude awakening. My thought was that I could just restore the backup to a subdirectory of my primary workstation, and then use the zm tools to extract out the messages I needed.

I didnt think about the mysql dependency in that the database is needed to know what messages go in what folder. So without starting up the zimbra service in total, there seemed to be no way to extract the messages.

Does anyone have any tips for getting this zimbra install up and running on another machine? I tried building a fresh CENTOS install and just overlaying the /opt/zimbra subfolder onto it, but I couldnt get zimbra to start up, it seemed to hang when running the startup script.

One of our users needs an old copy of his mailbox, so any help people could provide would be appreciated.

[dkarp]

Your best bet is to do a grep through the user's saved store directory to find the message(s), then use zmlmtpinject to add them to the user's mailbox. The messages re-injected in this manner will appear as if they were just received, but otherwise should be identical.