Mac OS X Leopard Beta: compatibility with Tiger

[ewilen]

I brought this up in another thread but since I was piggybacking and haven't gotten an answer I'll try a new thread instead.

I'm trying to test backup replication and disaster recovery using Zimbra 5.0.10 NE and two Mac Minis as servers. However, one of the Minis is running Tiger and the other is running Leopard. It's not possible to install Tiger on the newer Mac Mini; I haven't tried upgrading the primary to Leopard yet.

Since I'm doing something similar to How to: cold standby server (no cluster), my first step is to create an identical Zimbra installation on the backup (Leopard) machine.

Note that on the primary (Tiger) machine, I'm running 5.0.10, while the backup (Leopard) is running the install called 5.0.10 BETA on Zimbra - Products: Network Edition Downloads

I've been trying to use the instructions at Moving ZCS to Another Server » Zimbra :: Blog to do the initial transfer of /opt/zimbra/ from the primary to the backup, but every time, the mta fails to start after I rerun the installer (the very last step). If I stop and start zimbra, I get

Starting mta...FAILED
postmap: fatal: file /opt/zimbra/postfix-2.4.7.5z/conf/main.cf: parameter mail_owner: user postfix has same user ID as _postfix
postalias: fatal: file /opt/zimbra/postfix-2.4.7.5z/conf/main.cf: parameter mail_owner: user postfix has same user ID as _postfix
postfix failed to start

This is similar to what was reported in Upgrade OS X 10.4 to 10.5 breaks zimbra but although someone posted a link that ultimately led to Bug 21441 - Requesting Apple-Server (10.5, leopard) support for ZCS which is marked fixed...it isn't working for me.

So this raises two questions:

1. Has anyone successfully transferred an installation from the Tiger version of 5.0.10 to the Leopard Beta?
2. Can the Leopard Beta be run under Tiger?

If the answer to (2) is "yes" then I can at least, hopefully, have two truly identical versions of zimbra even though the underlying OSes are different, which (again hopefully) would let them both work with the same /opt/zimbra/

Any advice would be appreciated...

[ewilen]

Well, since that post I was able to find a way to get Tiger running on the "backup" installation, and I have been able to move ZCS from one machine to the other. The instructions on the blog didn't quite work for me; ultimately I found that I needed to do part 4 step 5 by running ./install-mac.sh -d and pointing it to the .dmg file, as root, from /opt/zimbra/libexec/installer.

However I am still a bit concerned about the apparent non-ability to migrate from Tiger to Leopard. If anyone can confirm that they've done this under 5.0.10, or reproduce the problem, that would be great.

[akhindaria]

Ewilen, could you please keep this post updated on your experience, I am trying to move from 10.4 PPC (5.0.11) to 10.5 intel (5.0.11) and running into problems.

Thanks.

[ewilen]

Hi, akhindaria. I've since upgraded our test installation to 5.0.11 running under 10.4 Intel, but I haven't done any further testing under 10.5.

What you're trying is similar to what I was attempting, without success, except that you are not only changing the host OS but also the underlying hardware architecture. Would it be acceptable to run 10.4 on the target hardware? If so, then my solution to getting Tiger onto the backup machine was to install the OS onto an external firewire drive. (Actually, it was an old G4 running in target disk mode!)

I do not recall if it was necessary to hook the drive up to the primary Mac to do this. If so, then I doubt you'll have any luck installing 10.4 (Intel) onto a disk that's attached to a PPC machine.