Newbie to Zimbra, a few questions and problems...

[Eclipse]

Hey guys, I've slowly been getting acquainted with installing Zimbra on Cent OS 5.6. I've done 2 install so far, the first one went okay, I combined multiple tutorials to get it installed correctly, the only problem I had with it was I was unable to receive emails externally after forwarding all the ports, I was able to send externally just fine though.

Right now I'm currently using an Exchange 2007 server for my email needs, but I've setup servers for hMail and iRedMail so I was confused on why I was unable to troubleshoot the email receiving problem as I could see them coming in, in the log but it never delivered them to the account.

Anyway I reinstalled everything and setup Zimbra again,

Here are a few problems / questions I have,

1. The Zimbra server will not start after I restarted installing all of Zimbra, I did a zmcontrol Status and none of the core services were running, when tried to start it, it couldnt even start LDAP saying "Failed to start slapd, TLS: error: 0906D06C: PEM routines: PEM_read_bio:no start line pem_lib.c:696" theres another error under that saying "SSL_CTX_use_certificate_file: PEM lib ssl_rsa.c: 491

main TLS init def ctx failed: -1"

2. I've never had to setup MX records for the email servers I've made as they were the same as the domain and didn't have the need for a backup mail server, so I'm confused if I should be making them...

3. On one of the tutorials I followed it was telling me I needed to put a lot of information in for BindDNS for A-records and forwarding, on exchange and hMail I know the only real thing that was needed to make the email work was to add my ISPs SMTP server to the send connector on exchange, where do I do this for Zimbra?

4. What is the named server for, is it needed?

5. I plan on completely migrating from Exchange 2007 to Zimbra, whats the best way of winding down Exchange 2007 to move over to Zimbra? Is there a thread with tips on this?


I noticed that Cent OS isnt officially supported, but I've been told by numerous linux users that Cent OS was the best distro to run a server on, should I use something besides Cent OS for Zimbra? Perhaps Debian? I'd just like to find a fast easy distribution for Zimbra, Apache, and other services...

[gvillaran]

Use Ubuntu, is great, the installation is very clean and easy, dont use a distro that is not officially supported. (64bits preferable)

As for the migration you can use a tool called imapsync to migrate all the emails for each account is very easy to use and u can run it in batch mode (thats if you are using imap connection on your exchange), but first you can use zmprov to provision the accounts in batch mode aswell. (u can find how to use it in the wiki), thats how i did the migration but i only got 520 accounts.

If your using PST archives there is a tool to migrate the pst, but need to be run for every user one by one, dont know if there is another more automatic method.

MX Records, i have them pointed to my Mailscanner relay, thats another box that clean emails and send them to my zimbra, if you dont have another box to do the job you can use the engine that comes with zimbra, is not bad but it consumes resources so make sure you have a good CPU and pleny of memory, just point your MX at the zimbra box and make sure the antispam and antivirus are up and running.

The backup strategy, you will need it for sure, probably not another server but u need to backup your email data every day to prevent data loss, strategy will depend on your needs, i do a weekly full and then start to do incrementals until the new week starts and start over, but thats me, you need to choose what you feel is right for your company, but dont go without a backup strategy, is very dangerous.

a good thing to know is if you are using the Network Edition or the Opensource Edition.

im pretty new to this aswell you can find good information in the wiki. give it a look.

[Eclipse]

Originally Posted by gvillaran

Use Ubuntu, is great, the installation is very clean and easy, dont use a distro that is not officially supported.

As for the migration you can use a tool called imapsync to migrate all the emails for each account is very easy to use and u can run it in batch mode (thats if you are using imap connection on your exchange), but first you can use zmprov to provision the accounts in batch mode aswell. (u can find how to use it in the wiki), thats how i did the migration but i only got 520 accounts.

If your using PST archives there is a tool to migrate the pst, but need to be run for every user one by one, dont know if there is another more automatic method.

Thank you for the reply, I looked at the admin console of Zimbra and saw the Migration tool in there but I couldn't find a single piece of documentation for accessing AD and Exchange with it....

Could you perhaps send me the link you used?

I also tried multiple times to export PSTs with the exchange shell but it would never export the accounts correctly, they we're always 265 KB...

[gvillaran]

if your trying to export pst's is because your using imap connections, so use imapsync, migration will be easier than exporting pst's.

[Eclipse]

Originally Posted by gvillaran

if your trying to export pst's is because your using imap connections, so use imapsync, migration will be easier than exporting pst's.

Still confused....

[gvillaran]

Originally Posted by Eclipse

Still confused....

imapsync is a tool that runs in linux systems only i believe, you can check this link on how to use it :

How To Migrate Mailboxes Between IMAP Servers With imapsync | HowtoForge - Linux Howtos and Tutorials

check it out and let me know if you are still confused about that.

[Eclipse]

Originally Posted by gvillaran

imapsync is a tool that runs in linux systems only i believe, you can check this link on how to use it :

How To Migrate Mailboxes Between IMAP Servers With imapsync | HowtoForge - Linux Howtos and Tutorials

check it out and let me know if you are still confused about that.

But that's just for email's isnt it? I'd like to download all accounts with the same passwords into Zimbra from Exchange 07....

[gvillaran]

Originally Posted by Eclipse

But that's just for email's isnt it? I'd like to download all accounts with the sa0me passwords into Zimbra....

Yep.

that why i told you to check "Zmmprov" in Zimbra Wiki thats a zimbra console tool that will help you to create accounts in batch mode once you create all of them you can run imapsync to migrate all the email.

example : zmmprov ca user@domain.com password displayName 'User name' - this will create one account

[Eclipse]

Originally Posted by gvillaran

Yep.

that why i told you to check "Zmprov" in Zimbra Wiki thats a zimbra console tool that will help you to create accounts in batch mode once you create all of them you can run imapsync to migrate all the email.

So the account migration tool that has exchange / active directory, is undeveloped or unsupported in the open source version?

[gvillaran]

not really sure about that, you can test it with one account i guess.
i dont have exchange so i never used that one.