Restoring zcs ce to new os install from tgz backup - my experience

[danioj]

Hello All,

I have been using zcs ce now for over 12 months for my and my families personal email and I am over the moon with it. It is a great piece of software. Running nice and steady on Debian 4 (etch) =:-)

Ever since my first install way back I have been running daily back-ups via a script (just tgzp'ing the zimbra folder), and last night was the first time I had to use it. HDD failure =:-(

Initially with the links that I found in the wiki and on the web I was 'shaking my head' thinking 'this is going to be a ball ache'. However it was surprisingly easy once I sifted through the mounds of information, and has only solidified my view that this mail server is awesome.

So here was my experience.....

1. came home and heard the HDD grinding .... uh oh!
2. grabbed a new HDD, swapped over and installed Debian 4 again (base system profile) and also upgraded some components.
3. installed zimbra required packages using apt
4. sorted dns out and removed exim4
5. did a clean 'new install' of zimbra (keeping install source in /opt for later)
----- now the restore stuff ----
6. stopped zimbra services
7. renamed zimbra folder in /opt to zimbra_old
8. extracted tgz backup to /opt/zimbra
9. ran ./install.sh from within zimbra source folder
10. hey presto ... once installation was complete, everything was started for me and up and running!

I was sure there had to be more to it ... but no. /me is a happy bunny!

Got to love Zimbra.

Dan =:-)

[dwmtractor]

Dan, it's great to see that this worked so well for you. I hope you don't mind, but I'm going to move this thread to "Zimbra Success Stories" where we like to wave the flags of things that go well.

What you describe is a system doing exactly what we said it was going to do. We like that!

Best of luck!

[danioj]

Thanks.

No worries about the move. Guess it is more appropriate.

=:-)

[liuk]

Hi Dan,
I don't understand the needing for the step 9! Why do you have to run ./install.sh ?
If you made a full backup of /opt/zimbra replacing the backup should be sufficient!
By the way, we use the same similar way with LVM snapshots and since our Zimbra server is a Virtual Machine, we have simulated a recovery from backup with success on a clone of the VM.
Cheers,
Luca

[dwmtractor]

Originally Posted by liuk

Hi Dan,
I don't understand the needing for the step 9! Why do you have to run ./install.sh ?
If you made a full backup of /opt/zimbra replacing the backup should be sufficient!
By the way, we use the same similar way with LVM snapshots and since our Zimbra server is a Virtual Machine, we have simulated a recovery from backup with success on a clone of the VM.
Cheers,
Luca

Hi Luca,

Good question. I'm not the back-end expert here; in fact I got those instructions from others; what I did that was different was write them coherently. . .

However, I believe there are some things that get set in other places than /opt/zimbra; specifically some cron jobs, some symlinks, and other things that reside in other places within the Linux system, such that a true restore without a clean install would leave an only partially-configured server.

If you're patient and have the time (which I don't right now), read through the install.sh script and see what it does. . .you'll see for yourself if I'm right or not.

[danioj]

Originally Posted by dwmtractor

However, I believe there are some things that get set in other places than /opt/zimbra; specifically some cron jobs, some symlinks, and other things that reside in other places within the Linux system, such that a true restore without a clean install would leave an only partially-configured server.

That was my impression. Also folder permissions as well? It just seemed safer for me to me to do the ./install.sh. All for the sake of a few minutes. Might be redundant though I admit!

[adeelarifbhatti]

liuk was right.
Step 9 was needless,
1- > ./install -s
2- > rename the software directory /opt/zimbra to zimbra_dummy
3- > restore the zimbra from the old server
4- > start the service.

./install -s actually updates some system's rpm databases.

Regards
Adeel

[danioj]

Alas, you are correct!

Thought I would give it a go before my upgrade to zcs 6.0 RC1 and you are right, it worked without step 9.

Just to add to this success story, upgrade from 5.018 GA to 6.0 RC1 went as smoothly as a baby's bottom too!

=:-)