Account stuck "moving" between servers

[Nicholas.Comeau]

Hello, world!

I'd like to start by introducing myself, as you'll all probably be seeing me around
My name is Nicholas Comeau, and I'm fairly new to Zimbra administration- I've been playing around with it at the surface for some time now, but over the next few months I will be digging ever deeper into this new realm.

On that note, my first task is to figure out what's going on with a users mailbox.

Background: We tried to move this mailbox (approximately 500MB in size) from one server to another via the web GUI. The GUI failed with some error (I didn't see it), but the account was marked as in Maintenance mode.
After a few hours, the account never showed up on the new server, and was still in Maint mode. We switched the account back to Active, and the user has been logged in and using the account on the old server all day.

This afternoon, I decided to try moving the account manually via the CLI.
I quickly learned when pulling up man pages that zmmailboxmove has been deprecated, and zmboxmove is the new command for this.

In reading about zmboxmove, I found there was not very much information around on it. So like any good administrator, I tried it anyway!

zmmboxmove -a user@domain.com -f <source> -t <destination>

what we got was this:

Error occurred: Account <user@domain.com> is already being moved to server <destination>; move started at Tue, 2012/01/03 17:37:16.934 EST

A quick search around the forums showed one or two people looking to cancel an existing move, but no definitive answers. I do not see any sort of cancel command built into zmmboxmove. The user is currently active and functioning on the old server, and the admin console gives no clues that the mailbox might exist on the new server.

There is a force option with zmmailboxmove, but I do not see one with zmmboxmove.

Suggestions welcome, I'd certainly love to find out there is a way to cancel a "hung" move for the next person in a similar situation!

-Nick

[GWilliams]

Hi Nick,

I am experiencing the same issue... Did you manage to get an answer?

Regards.

[Nicholas.Comeau]

GWilliams,
Unfortunately we never did figure out why the account was stuck.

The good news, however, is that a week later we were able to execute the zmmboxmove without issue.

My only theorey is that the full backup that would have ran between the time of my post and the time we tried again with success somehow unlocked the mailbox.

Good luck, and please let me know if that helps!

-Nick

[GWilliams]

Hi Nick,

I tested your theory by manually running a full backup on a single account:

zmbackup -f -a user@domain.com

I then tested:

zmmboxmove -a user@domain.com -f oldmbox.domain.com -t newmbox.domain.com

This failed... I suspect that I will just need to wait it out for now, unless somebody has another idea?

Thank you for trying

Regards,

[Nicholas.Comeau]

How inconvenient.

Another thought I had on my drive into the office today was that when I was trying to move the mailbox (and it was stuck) my syntax was completely standard:

zmmboxmove -a user@domain.com -f oldmbox.domain.com -t newmbox.domain.com

However, I was running the command on oldmbox.domain.com.

A week later, when it worked, we were running the identical command from newmbox.domain.com.

In my mind, this shouldn't matter. newmbox.domain.com happens, however, to be the LDAP master- Perhaps that does make a difference?

-Nick

[GWilliams]

Thanks for that Nick, but I've run it from both servers with no joy... I have also found that if I run "zmmboxmovequery" from the newmbox server, I get "No mailbox move in progress", however, if I run it from the oldmbox server, I get a list off all the accounts that are to be migrated, but with an interesting comment:

"
Account: user@domain.com
Type: move-out
To: oldmbox.domain.com (stranded)
Started: Tue, 2012/01/24 00:45:54.899 SAST
"

So, basically all the mailbox migrations that were run have become "stranded"... It looks like I'm going to have to wait for this to time out.

In the interim, I have also found that even with these "stranded" mailbox moves, I am still able to migrate other mailboxes from the oldmbox server to the newmbox server successfully. :/

I'll keep you posted as to the outcome.

Regards,

[Nicholas.Comeau]

Please do keep me posted- you've got me curious.

In my situation, when I ran a query on the mailbox move status it claimed the move was in progress.

What's interesting as well is we found a few buggy things in the stranded users mailbox later on- messages that wouldn't display until opened for a reply. Moving between servers didn't seem to fix those messages, though.
Our next step was going to be running a re-index of sorts on the stuck mailbox, but it simply became un-stuck later so we never did get to it.
Perhaps a re-index of a stuck mailbox would help?

CHECK MY SYNTAX please, I don't want to break your mailbox:

zmprov rim user@domain.com start

[GWilliams]

Thanks Nick,

Firstly, your syntax is correct, thanks.

I have checked this morning and the mailboxes still seem to be stranded (even after the weekend). I am currently running the re-index in order to determine if that will resolve the "stranded" mailbox, but I suspect that it won't.

I'll keep you posted though. Thanks for the advice.

Regards.

[GWilliams]

Hi Nick,

Even after a re-index of the mailbox, it remains "stranded".

Regards,

[GWilliams]

Well, after 2 weeks I decided to restart the server, which got rid of the "stranded" moves.

Regards,