Recovering destroyed environment

[tonyg]

I have a ZCS OSE 8.8.12 over Ubuntu 18. There are very few accounts, a few domains, all for personal use at the moment.

A recent upgrade of that server to Ubuntu 20 failed, and my primary snapshot before the upgrade also failed (of course discovered afterward). After the upgrade, the /opt/zimbra folder was missing files and folders. It was effectively destroyed.
I do have a recent third data backup of the /opt/zimbra tree on a different system, and need to recover with this.

Recent documentation about 8.8.15 only mentions Ubuntu 18. I really hope there are no known issues with v20.

My plan for a first attempt at recovery is to uninstall the broken ZCS8, and build and install ZCS v9 FOSS from Github. Then I would like to migrate the data into the new environment.
The common recommendation here seems to be to ignore the wiki page on the topic of Z/Z migration, and use zmztozmig.

My initial question is : Do we have any confidence that zmztozmig will work with ZCS 9? And, do I need to do something else with the /opt/zimbra data to prepare for that migration?

I have not used zmztozmig before. I read in an old thread here that it does not create accounts (using existing data), it only imports data related to accounts. Is that still valid? Or rather, what is not done by that utility that needs to be done by other means, given this scenario?

My second plan is with consideration that if /opt/zimbra was butchered, there is a high probability that other parts of the file system have been corrupted as well. So I really don't even want to trust that environment. I'm thinking that if this migration effort fails, I'll re-do the above but in a completely new system. The reason that I am not doing this first is that I have a cloud of servers, each has an assigned IP address, and a new server will get a new IP address. This will require DNS changes that I'd like to avoid. I will enhance the environment later to avoid this concern.

Given this situation, does anyone have another recommendation? Different tools? Warnings about v9 or Ubuntu 20 with ZCS?

Thanks!

[tonyg]

In any forum, when there is no response on a topic it usually means the questions weren't posed properly. I'll try to improve the quality of this thread... Thanks for your patience.

1) https://wiki.zimbra.com/wiki/UnInstalli ... a_on_Linux is 5 years old. Is it still accurate? Can someone link to additional current info?

2) In an environment where we have all of the Zimbra data, can someone link to information about how to refresh a new environment with the older data? Specifically : Is there any program or documented procedure yet to collect all data from a v8 installation and import it into v9? Or v8 to v8?

Thanks.

[phoenix]

Have you had a look at this wiki article:https://wiki.zimbra.com/wiki/Steps_To_R ... ZCS_Server - see if that fulfils your needs.

Have you considered using another distribution other than Ubuntu? I see a lot of problems on these forums and they are almost all on Ubuntu. I've used CentOS for the past fifteen years and never had a problem, but then I don't do in-place upgrades (they're not available anyway) and it's never IMO a good idea to do them and I always advise against them.

Have you ever considered using Zextras for your backup needs? Although the minimum license is for ten users and again, IMO it's well worth the money and you get great support with it.

[tonyg]

@phoenix - your consultation is always appreciated.

I had not seen that wiki, thanks. Wow, there are a lot of manual steps there for each option. But we do what we gotta do.

I understand from that page that we need to import into the same ZCS version as the export. This makes sense.
But to benefit from v9 updates (from GitHub) I might try to export from v8 and import to v9, just to see if it works. Otherwise I will need to rebuild 8 and then upgrade to 9. Any thoughts on that?

About OS, I originally installed ZCS to CentOS. I started on RedHat over 20 years ago and the environment is familiar, but all of my other servers are Ubuntu, so in the interest of commonality I ported over. Yes, I could re-install over CentOS but the daily pain of dealing with the different OS has outweighed the minimal pain I've felt with ZCS over Ubuntu.

I have a custom rsync backup process, exporting data to another server in case an event just like this recent one occurred. I was in the process of upgrading my systems so that I could implement Bacula across systems as a better solution. As a one-man business with a handful of private sites, Zextras is out of my scope.

My goal for now is ultimately to go from a collection of files to a live ZCS v9 over Ubuntu. I'll accept whatever comes with that. I am just looking for guidance on what steps I should take.

Thanks!

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."