[SOLVED] upgrade NE to OSS

captainmish · Post by **captainmish** » Thu Aug 05, 2010 5:05 am

Hi all

Sorry for the duplication, but I cant seem to find any posts that match (though I did a while ago).
We are getting lots of budget cuts, and wont be renewing our NE license but would like to use OSS instead. I seem to remember seeing some posts about just installing the OSS version on top of NE and it will work - can anyone confirm this?
Any other tips welcome!
Thanks,

phoenix · Post by **phoenix** » Thu Aug 05, 2010 5:16 am

[quote user="captainmish"]We are getting lots of budget cuts, and wont be renewing our NE license but would like to use OSS instead. I seem to remember seeing some posts about just installing the OSS version on top of NE and it will work - can anyone confirm this?[/QUOTE]That will work, make sure you take a full NE backup first (stop any incoming mail by blocking port 25) then take a copy of the /opt/zimbra directory structure and you should just be able to run the installer to do an OSS 'upgrade' - it also needs to be the same release of the OSS Zimbra as you have for your NE install.
BTW, have you spoken to your Sales representative about the situation?

captainmish · Post by **captainmish** » Thu Aug 05, 2010 9:17 am

Thanks phoenix, appreciate the confirmation - Ill be testing first on a snapshot of the /opt/zimbra volume in a vm, so backout should be painless if it all goes wrong. Not spoken to the rep, but we have 0 to spend and I doubt they will be able to be that flexible!

Thanks again,

phoenix · Post by **phoenix** » Thu Aug 05, 2010 9:52 am

[quote user="captainmish"]Not spoken to the rep, but we have 0 to spend and I doubt they will be able to be that flexible![/QUOTE]That's always a difficult budget to work with.

Thank heavens for Open Source.

captainmish · Post by **captainmish** » Fri Aug 06, 2010 5:33 am

First test has been run on a snapshot, and after some messing around with file permissions (the "source" box had different uid for zimbra, so files were owned by postfix not zimbra on the test vm - zmfixperms didnt work so had to manually chown zimbra.zimbra for /opt/zimbra/log) the server is running, but I still get a popup saying that the license has expired! zmcontrol -v shows im running NE as well... Ive installed from zcs-6.0.5_GA_2213.UBUNTU8.20100202225756.tgz, dpkg -l output seems the same as the NE server apart from zimbra-core, which shows:

ii zimbra-core 6.0.5_GA_2213.UBUNTU8 ZCS Network Edition

and on the OSS downgrade test vm:

ii zimbra-core 6.0.5_GA_2213.UBUNTU8 Best email money can buy

Have I installed the wrong packages? I thought the NE ones were zcs-NETWORK-xxx

Possibly its because I still have the NE admin zimlets installed, do these need to be removed manually? The installer claimed that "This will remove all Network features, including

Attachment Searching, Zimbra Mobile, Backup/Restore, and support for the

Zimbra Connector for Outlook." but maybe it didnt manage to do that?

Any tips welcome!

phoenix · Post by **phoenix** » Fri Aug 06, 2010 5:38 am

It isn't normally necessary to remove the NE zimlets manually (at least I haven't found it to be), however as they still seem to be in-place you can remove them and then reboot the server.

captainmish · Post by **captainmish** » Fri Aug 06, 2010 9:52 am

So far what I have tried:
* Snapshotted /opt/zimbra from the main (NE) server, synced this to another machine.

* Snapshotted the synced snapshot, and mounted this snapshot rw to /opt/zimbra on a newly made vm (same os etc as main server)

* Ran the OSS installer of the same version (from zcs-6.0.5_GA_2213.UBUNTU8.20100202225756.tgz), got the warning that it will remove the NE features, proceeded with successful installation.

* Logged in as client, got the license warning

* Upgraded to OSS version 6.0.7 (zcs-6.0.7_GA_2473.UBUNTU8.20100616234246.tgz), upgrade went smoothly.

* zmcontrol -v shows

Release 6.0.7_GA_2473.UBUNTU8 UBUNTU8 NETWORK edition.
Getting desperate now, I really dont want to have to transfer 150 users across "the hard way", any ideas anyone?
{edit} - is there any way this is because NE was not installed on the test vm? Possibly part of the uninstall of the NE that is missing?

captainmish · Post by **captainmish** » Fri Aug 06, 2010 4:21 pm

Finally after much weeping and gnashing of teeth I got it to work. For anyone trying the same as me:
The NE->OSS downgrade/crossgrade/upgrade will only work if NE is installed on the machine. I had a sync of the entire /opt/zimbra volume and tried it on a clean server, this upgraded the installation but kept it at NE, even when installing >{current version} of the OSS packages as an upgrade.
I made a sync of the root volume and tested again with this, and the install went differently (part of it was removing network components from ldap), this time success - zmcontrol -v now shows its the OSS version. profit.