Issues with Outlook Calendar Migration - ics

[soxfan]

We are in the process of migrating from a simple Linux/Postfix/POP3 email server to Zimbra, and at the same time we are trying to get our users to switch from Outlook (mostly 2000, some 2003) to the Zimbra Web Client. Because most of our users have Outlook 2000 we cannot use the .pst import tool, and instead have been copying email messages over to Zimbra through Outlook, and using Contacts .csv import and .ics import for the Calendar.

For the Calendar we found a free tool called outlook2ical, which allows us to save the Outlook calendar in ics format. We are then taking the ics file, and using the method described in the User Migration Wiki page (curl....?fmt=ics) we have been imported them into Zimbra. For the most part this has worked great and has saved us a great deal of time. However, we have run into a couple of issues.

1. On a few of the calendars (4 out of about 20 so far) the curl command starts the import, but them bombs out. I get several lines of error messages, ending in one that says "The full stack trace of the root cause is available in the Apache Tomcat/5.5.15 logs." This might help in troubleshooting the problem, except I can't seem to find anything in any logs related to this import. The other error messages on the screen don't give any indication of where in the file it stopped or why it stopped. So, I'm left with no idea of what got imported and what didn't. A couple of the problem files were small enough that I could kind of figure out what didn't get imported and work around the problem. However, the other two are rather large and I am totally lost. So, my question is am I just missing something in the logs and/or is there any way to find out what got imported and what didn't?

2. I have two COS's, the default and another one I called migrate. Somewhere along the line on both COS's the 'zimbraPrefTimeZoneId' got set to Pacific Time; I am in the Eastern Time Zone. I don't every remember being prompted to set this value, and I can't find any spot in the Admin web page to set/change it. I figured out how to change it with the 'zmprov' command, but the problem as it relates to the calendar migration is that all the events in these .ics files that I imported got stamped with the Pacific Time Zone, so they are three hours off. Of course, as my luck would have it none of the users picked up on this problem, and I only discovered it in troubleshooting problem 1. My question here is can I make a sweep of the user calendars using 'zmprov' or something and change anything with a Pacific Time Zone to Eastern Time Zone? If this is not possible, what is the best way to wipe out a user calendar so that I can start the imports from scratch?

Any help on either issue would be appreciated.
Thanks,
John

[bobby]

you should still be able to use the pst import wizard. is the problem that the wizard needs outlook 2003 (try just steps 1 and 3)? or that the PSTs are old (try steps 1, 2, 3)?

1. copy the oultlook 2000 PSTs to a machine with outlook 20032
2. open each pst in outlook 2003, and save as a new pst
3. run the import (on the pc with outlook 2003).

to answer your questions:

1. what version of zcs are you running? starting with 4.5, the log is /opt/zimbra/log/mailbox.log. on older systems, it's /opt/zimbra/log/zimbra.log.

2. i believe you can zmprov the cos and the accounts to use EST. you can empty a user folder like this:

su - zimbra
zmmailbox -z -m <account> emptyFolder /calendar

[soxfan]

you should still be able to use the pst import wizard. is the problem that the wizard needs outlook 2003 (try just steps 1 and 3)? or that the PSTs are old (try steps 1, 2, 3)?

Granted, I tried it back when Zimbra 3.x was the current version, but I ran into errors using the pst import wizard. Maybe there have been some improvements with the wizard since then, but I also ran into issues moving a pst from Outlook 2000 to 2003. Just didn't seem to be worth the effort. Maybe I'll try it again.

1. what version of zcs are you running? starting with 4.5, the log is /opt/zimbra/log/mailbox.log. on older systems, it's /opt/zimbra/log/zimbra.log.

I am running version 4.5.2. The log you mention, /opt/zimbra/log/mailbox.log, shows that the curl - import process was run, but doesn't show any details about what was processed, or when and why the process bombed out. I have also looked in the /opt/zimbra/apache-tomcat/logs directory. Based on the last error message I get I expected to see a stacktrace file, but none exists. the access_log shows similar information as the mailbox.log; shows the process being run, but not any details about the error.

2. i believe you can zmprov the cos and the accounts to use EST. you can empty a user folder like this

As I said in my first message, I found the 'zmprov' command to set the COS to use EST. Fixing the COS seemed to fix the accounts. However, that's for going forward; it did not fix the calendar items that I imported. Thanks for the tip on the 'zmmailbox' command to empty/clear the calendar. I had hoped to find a solution for updating the records without having to clear and re-import, but I guess it is something to work with.

Thanks again,
John