Zimbra Collaboration 8.7.x and Ubuntu OS update corrupts/removes Zimbra installation

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gdr777
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Re: Zimbra Collaboration 8.7.x and Ubuntu OS update corrupts/removes Zimbra installation

Post by gdr777 »

We had success moving from zimbra 8.6 to 8.8 and 14.04 to 16.04 simultaneously by using this migration method:

https://wiki.zimbra.com/wiki/Zimbra_NG_ ... _NG_Backup

There was some minor cleanup afterwords, but overall it worked well.
halfgaar
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Re: Zimbra Collaboration 8.7.x and Ubuntu OS update corrupts/removes Zimbra installation

Post by halfgaar »

Joho and David, did you see/use the (semi) official Upgrade Ubuntu 14.x to Ubuntu 16.x and update ZCS 8.7 & above

As always, make some kind of backup. My Zimbra virtual machine is on a logical volume, so I always make a backup snapshot. I close all tcp ports when I do it so nothing gets mutated. I can revert safely any time.

If you don't have LVM, there is always a way to make a full image backup of your disk, for example using Linux Live CDs, like sysrescuecd.
davidkillingsworth
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Re: Zimbra Collaboration 8.7.x and Ubuntu OS update corrupts/removes Zimbra installation

Post by davidkillingsworth »

gdr777 wrote:We had success moving from zimbra 8.6 to 8.8 and 14.04 to 16.04 simultaneously by using this migration method:

https://wiki.zimbra.com/wiki/Zimbra_NG_ ... _NG_Backup

There was some minor cleanup afterwords, but overall it worked well.
That would be great, but I'm using the Community Edition.

Thanks,
David
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Re: Zimbra Collaboration 8.7.x and Ubuntu OS update corrupts/removes Zimbra installation

Post by phoenix »

davidkillingsworth wrote:Anyone else have any suggestions on how to progress?
You probably won't like my suggestion but it would be to repalce it with CentOS. If you notice around these forums most of the problems seem to be " ubuntu" based and a few of them are RHEL/CentOS. You can probably work out from my comment that I'm not a fan of Ubuntu in the server environment but it's great desktop (and documentation).
Regards

Bill

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DualBoot
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Re: Zimbra Collaboration 8.7.x and Ubuntu OS update corrupts/removes Zimbra installation

Post by DualBoot »

phoenix wrote:
davidkillingsworth wrote:Anyone else have any suggestions on how to progress?
You probably won't like my suggestion but it would be to repalce it with CentOS. If you notice around these forums most of the problems seem to be " ubuntu" based and a few of them are RHEL/CentOS. You can probably work out from my comment that I'm not a fan of Ubuntu in the server environment but it's great desktop (and documentation).
Well, 10 years experience with Ubuntu and I must say that I do not encountered any problem on my way to install Zimbra. The major problem I encounterd was due to Zimbra itself
when they introduced repositories and I upgraded Ubuntu from 14.04 to 16.04 with in place method.

Regards,
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axslingr
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Re: Zimbra Collaboration 8.7.x and Ubuntu OS update corrupts/removes Zimbra installation

Post by axslingr »

It's really not a big deal to "upgrade' the OS with Zimbra. If your live version of Zimbra isn't compatible with the new OS, upgrade Zimbra to a version that is first. After that, if you have partitioned your disk space properly(/opt on a separate partition), the process is simple.

1. Make a full backup of /opt/zimbra and whatever else you need.

2. Do a CLEAN install of the OS and DON'T format your /opt partition.

3. Server hostname and IP MUST be the same as old server. Get DNS working and make sure your /etc/hosts file is correct...VERY IMPORTANT!

4. Download the exact same version of Zimbra that you run live, except get the one for the new OS.

5. Move production zimbra directory out of the way
# mv /opt/zimbra /opt/zimbra.prod

6. Run the installer first with the -s option.
# ./install.sh -s

7. Delete the resulting /opt/zimbra directory and rename /opt/zimbra.prod.
# rm -rf /opt/zimbra
# mv /opt/zimbra.prod /opt/zimbra

8. Now run the installer in normal mode to finish the upgrade.
# ./install.sh


This only works when upgrading similar OS, ie, Ubuntu 14.04 > Ubuntu 16.04; or CentOS 6 > CentOS 7. It will NOT work moving from Ubuntu > CentOS or vise versa.

Lance
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Re: Zimbra Collaboration 8.7.x and Ubuntu OS update corrupts/removes Zimbra installation

Post by halfgaar »

I just performed an upgrade from Ubuntu 14.04 Zimbra 8.7.11, to Ubuntu 16.04, Zimbra 8.8.12. Let me document my findings:

The instructions on the wiki (as per today) didn't work. After having to fix Java VM debugging startup parameters from localconfig.xml, the mailboxdaemon complained about the store not matching the version of the software installed.

Then I did what axslingr suggested above, using the double step upgrade, where the first one is done with --softareonly (-s). I didn't do it on a clean install, but an upgraded Ubuntu. It almost worked. What I did was:
  • Block all traffic to the machine except what you need or from your IP (I use iptables), so that you can revert a backup and don't lose mail that was delivered in the mean time
  • Make some kind of easy to restore backup. For me, that's a LVM snapshot. May be a Clonezilla image, etc. I recommend something on block or file system level on the device, not to fiddle with rsync, etc.
  • Upgrade Zimbra to 8.8.12 for Ubuntu 14
  • Reboot, do what you ever else you want, etc
  • Disable Zimbra auto-start on boot: sysv-rc-conf zimbra off. (install sysv-rc-conf first)
  • Shut down (for me, the zimbra services hang on stop, so it involved a hard shutdown)
  • Another backup.
  • mv /opt/zimbra /opt/zimbra.pre-upgrade-backup
  • Ubuntu do-release-upgrade (this will remove the current zimbra packages as well)
  • Install zimbra with --softwareonly
  • mv /opt/zimbra /opt/zimbra.empty-from-fresh-install (I guess you can remove it too)
  • mv /opt/zimbra.pre-upgrade-backup /opt/zimbra
  • dpkg -l | grep zimbra | grep perl | awk '{print $2}' | xargs apt-get install --reinstall. This is to fix 'Unknown Error: It should be impossible to reach this statement.'
  • now just run the installer ./install.sh
This is a paraphrased list. You may need to tweak, and some actions are assumed.

I suspect that I could have done this without the --softwareonly, and that that would have prevented the Unknown Error: It should be impossible to reach this statement. I found on the forum that this is caused by unknown symbols in some perl package. I think by copying the /opt/zimbra back after having installed with --software-only, I placed back old binaries, that only worked on Ubuntu 14.

Now the question is, shall I update the wiki with this? I only have the one test scenario, and I would like to know if my suspicion about not needing --softwareonly is correct.
davidkillingsworth
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Re: Zimbra Collaboration 8.7.x and Ubuntu OS update corrupts/removes Zimbra installation

Post by davidkillingsworth »

DualBoot wrote:
phoenix wrote:
davidkillingsworth wrote:Anyone else have any suggestions on how to progress?
You probably won't like my suggestion but it would be to repalce it with CentOS. If you notice around these forums most of the problems seem to be " ubuntu" based and a few of them are RHEL/CentOS. You can probably work out from my comment that I'm not a fan of Ubuntu in the server environment but it's great desktop (and documentation).
Well, 10 years experience with Ubuntu and I must say that I do not encountered any problem on my way to install Zimbra. The major problem I encounterd was due to Zimbra itself
when they introduced repositories and I upgraded Ubuntu from 14.04 to 16.04 with in place method.

Regards,
Same here. We are an Ubuntu shop and outside of Zimbra server administration, we use Ubuntu Server for all our Linux based systems.
cgeerinckx
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Re: Zimbra Collaboration 8.7.x and Ubuntu OS update corrupts/removes Zimbra installation

Post by cgeerinckx »

The instructions provided by halfgaar worked in our test environment.

Maybe interesting to add to the end of the instructions:

sysv-rc-conf zimbra on

I chose all default answers in the Ubuntu upgrade process (of course you have to choose yes to start the upgrade)
In the ./install.sh for Zimbra I did not install Zimbra Talk, Drive, archiving, DNScache but that may be irrelevant.

The WIKI instructions are far more difficult need more tweaking and at the end do not work.

Thanks halfgaar you have been a great help.
JayPi
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Re: Zimbra Collaboration 8.7.x and Ubuntu OS update corrupts/removes Zimbra installation

Post by JayPi »

Hello,

@halfgaar thank you very much for your instructions. Upgraded Ubuntu from 14.04 to 16.04 to 18.04 and our zimbra installation from 8.7.0 to 8.8.15 without any problems.
Also tried the instructions from the wiki but without success. It would be great if you enter your instructions to the wiki.

Joerg
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