Um... okay, I don't want this anymore

[LeFou]

I just installed this on my FC3 laptop, accepting I think all of the default options.

1. I immediately became unable to access my local webserver (apache). This hurts, as I am a freelance web developer.
2. I tried restarting and can no longer boot this machine. That is definitely not going to work for me.

bootup display hangs at "Starting zimbra"
Also for some reason I cannot enter "interactive startup", which I would like to do, in order to tell it "Please don't start Zimbra!"

[LeFou]

Okay, I was able to get the machine to boot again by clearing up some space and taking Zimbra out of the startup services.

But something has happened with my hosts; I use XAMPP to start apache, etc. and am still unable to connect to localhost
/etc/hosts has:
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost [etc...]

Does Zimbra do something permanent/irreversible to the local NS?

[KevinH]

Yes we know startup is slow and we are working to fix that. It also times out sometimes on my laptop when X is trying to start. I just boot into text mode or start Zimbra after I get logged into X.

We change iptables to map a few ports. You can simply run zmiptables -u to remove our mappings

[adefaria]

How do you run zmiptables when you've already removed the software?!?

Also, what's this create a domain thing? I have a domain already. I also already use exim for my email and run an Apache web server. It's not very nice to take over such things without telling the user that you are about to do so and giving him the option of not proceeding.

Having to shutdown MySQL just to install is not very acceptable either. I have other processes going on that require MySQL. What am I just supposed to let them fail while I'm installing Zimbra?!?

After installing this and not having it work right I was at first confused about how to uninstall this. Having no other option I tried using rpm to erase the packages installed. Of course there is residual left around and now my web, email, etc. isn't working at all!

I'm now reinstalling so I can try that zmiptables -u thing to see if I can get my system back together. Meantime I'm hosed!

Upon reinstall I receive:

Mysql appears to be running. Shut it down? [Y] y
Stopping MySQL: [ OK ]
./util/utilfunc.sh: line 593: chkconfig: command not found

Don't know if that's a problem...

Then I seem to be stuck at "Starting servers..." - waiting... Finally finishes.

Apparently this Zimbra thing takes over my whole website! Now http://defaria.com is Zimbra's login page. That sucks. Can I locate it to say http://defaria.com/zimbra or perhaps http://defaria.com/mail or something like that.

Gee I hope this uninstall gets me back to where I started!

Well that didn't work! Thanks guys for screwing me up. HELP! How do I get back to where I was before?

Ah got back up. Had to install again but not start services. Then use the zmiptables stuff to get my stuff back. Seems Zimbra also installs it's own MySQL (Why I have no idea as I also use MySQL - why install it again?) and that MySQL would not peacefully shutdown so I had to kill it.

It also seems that the uninstall (install.sh -u that is) does not fully remove /opt/zimbra - all the . files are left so I thwacked that too.

If there is a way to use this in conjunction with my own services that I rely on such as exim, imap, http, etc. such that this can become a subsection of my web instead of my entire web site then let me know...

[KevinH]

Sorry you've had all this trouble. You might try reading some of the documentation here:

http://www.zimbra.com/downloads/index.php

It talks about our architecture and the dependencies we use. It would have explained that we ship all our dependencies (MySQL, Tomcat, OpenLDAP, etc).

They are ways to make Zimbra play nice with existing http servers and databases. It doesn't come out in the installer so you've got to make some changes but many folks here on the forums have made it work.

[adefaria]

That's good to hear. I might explore that more later. Thanks for the link. Meantime I'm installing another 200 Gigger into my server...

[LeFou]

Yes we know startup is slow and we are working to fix that. It also times out sometimes on my laptop when X is trying to start. I just boot into text mode or start Zimbra after I get logged into X.

We change iptables to map a few ports. You can simply run zmiptables -u to remove our mappings

This did the trick for me. Thank god I didn't have all the issues that other guy had. I have a recommendation:

I used the "Quick start" installation guide as I just wanted to see the thing working. I had not realized that people already running webservers/ MySQL, etc. config'd for other projects need to look at the "Admin" guide and get a more complete feel for the package.

I think there ought to be a line somewhere in the docs that warn users about this.

[adefaria]

They are ways to make Zimbra play nice with existing http servers and databases. It doesn't come out in the installer so you've got to make some changes but many folks here on the forums have made it work.

OK I looked at that page a little bit and the Admin Guide, etc. I didn't see anything that described how to install Zimbra into a subdirectory and to allow Zimbra to operate with my existing MTA, Exim. Can you point me to any info about that?

Perhaps this is not doable, I don't know. I want to continue to run my own email server, Exim, as I have my own spam filtering system, which I like and wish to keep. I'd like to have Zimbra be the web face of my email and to be able to provide me stuff like calendar and contact services but not to replace my existing email. Nor do I want it to replace my existing web server. IOW I'd like to be able to go to my web site and then into say "mail" (e.g. http://defaria.com/mail) while http://defaria.com remains unaffected. I didn't see anything in the Admin Guide that describes that.

[KevinH]

OK I looked at that page a little bit and the Admin Guide, etc. I didn't see anything that described how to install Zimbra into a subdirectory and to allow Zimbra to operate with my existing MTA, Exim. Can you point me to any info about that?

Perhaps this is not doable, I don't know. I want to continue to run my own email server, Exim, as I have my own spam filtering system, which I like and wish to keep. I'd like to have Zimbra be the web face of my email and to be able to provide me stuff like calendar and contact services but not to replace my existing email. Nor do I want it to replace my existing web server. IOW I'd like to be able to go to my web site and then into say "mail" (e.g. http://defaria.com/mail) while http://defaria.com remains unaffected. I didn't see anything in the Admin Guide that describes that.

Out of the box you must use the MTA that we ship with.

A special install can be done as others on the forums have done it. We don't recoomend this for production installs since unless you know what you are doing you'll get into trouble. As such we don't document the procedure to do it.

[adefaria]

That's fine. Has anybody documented how to do this? Pointers?

A friend turned me on to this Zimbra thing and he was interested in it but didn't have Fedora. I just installed Fedora Core 3 so I went for it. I told him that essentially Zimbra takes over your web server and email. He's initial response - "That sux" followed by "I guess I won't install it".

I have to agree with him. Why take over the web server? Many people run their own web servers and don't want to supplant their web server. Why take over the email server? Same situation. Why not provide a way to configured Zimbra to co-exist with somebody's already existing web site and email.

Final question: Can I use my own email set up and instead feed Zimbra? I'd like to continue to use my own home grown spam filtering system which works very well. I understand that this might not be a standard configuration but I'm wondering if it is reasonably doable and if so if anybody has any notes or other scribbling about how to do this.