Zimbra Server Migration and Zimbra Account Transfer – The Perfect Method
Index
- Introduction
- Requirement
- Presetup
- Backup all data from Old server
- Find all domains
- Find all admin accounts
- Find all email accounts
- Get all distribution lists
- Get all members in distribution lists
- Find all email account’s passwords
- Backup all user names , Display names and Given Names
- Now backup all email account
- Now backup alias
- Now backup Email Signatures
- Backup all email account filters
- Rsync folder to new server
- Restore in new server
- Conclusion
- References
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1. Introduction
Zimbra project doesn’t have a cross migration or proper account transfer documentation. All they tell is to do copy the folder /opt/zimbra to your new servers. But if any of those files infected with a rootkit or other malicious scripts , then your new server also will be compromised. So never sync or copy the entire directory of your zimbra installation. Zimbra also tell you to upgrade your production server to the latest version before migration. But improper upgrade may result in entire data lose. With this procedure you can do:
- Migrate zimbra from one Operating System To another.
- Migrate zimbra account between any hardware and Operating systems configurations.
- No interruption on production server like software upgrade or service disable.
- Migrate zimbra from old version to a new version server
- Zimbra cross migrations without copying entire directories.
2. Requirement
You need an old server with zmibra account and a new fresh server with the Os you wish. Dont’ create or make any custom configuration or setting in you new server. Please make sure to set your new servers hostname same as the old one.
- Old server
- Need ssh root login
- Need zimbra admin logins
- Enough HDD space to store backups
- New server
- Must be installed with latest stable zimbra
- Need ssh root logins
- Need zimbra admin logins
- Enough HDD space to store backups
3. Presetup
You need to setup an ssh key from the new server’s root account to the old server’s root account.
Reduce the TTL of MX records of your domain to 500 seconds . So that you can easily switch the domain’s IP after migration. Please remember to schedule the migration task on non peek hours.
Create a directory in both new and old server into which we store all required files and data for doing the migration
[root@zimbra ~]# mkdir /backups/zmigrate [root@zimbra ~]# chown zimbra.zimbra /backups/zmigrate [root@zimbra ~]# su - zimbra
All operation in your Zimbra server must be performed as Zimbra user itself, otherwise you will get permission and ownership issues in your zimbra server
4. Backup all data from Old server
We are going to copy all data from old server without interrupting the services.
4.1 Find all domains
You need to find all the domains from your old server. We will store the domain list in a file called domains.txt. You need to back all the domains list as follows,
zimbra@zimbra:~$ cd /backups/zmigrate zimbra@zimbra:/backups/zmigrate$ zmprov gad > domains.txt zimbra@zimbra:/backups/zmigrate$ cat domains.txt fun.com myserver.com justfortest.com checkit.com dieanotherday.com gnutest.com foo.com zimbra.foo.com zimbra@zimbra:/backups/zmigrate$
Now remove all domains and subdomains related with the main hostname of your server foo.com , from this list (domains.txt) because it was already created in your new server. So there is no need to create a new domain with the same name.
4.2 Find all admin accounts
Most of these servers will have only one admin. But some servers have multiple admins. So it will be good to find all admin accounts. We will store the admins list in admins.txt
zimbra@zimbra:/backups/zmigrate$ zmprov gaaa > admins.txt zimbra@zimbra:/backups/zmigrate$ cat admins.txt admin@foo.com zimbra@zimbra:/backups/zmigrate
4.3 Find all email accounts
Next step is to find all the email accounts hosted in your old server. Get a list of your email accounts and save in the file emails.txt . So from this file we can see how many accounts that need to migrate.
zimbra@zimbra:/backups/zmigrate$ zmprov -l gaa >emails.txt zimbra@zimbra:/backups/zmigrate$ cat emails.txt gm@fun.com forest@fun.com galsync@fun.com fax@myserver.com paul@myserver.com angela@myserver.com brooke@myserver.com hnmobile1@myserver.com maria@justfortest.com samantha@justfortest.com backupmail@justfortest.com admin@checkit.com sandra@checkit.com zimbra@zimbra:/backups/zmigrate$
Please remove all the email accounts from the file /backups/zmigrate/emails.txt with a starting words like spam, virus, ham, galsync . There is no need to restore these accounts. Even if you still need to restore , you can do it. I don’t like spam and virus emails.
4.4 Get all distribution lists
You need to get all the distributions list and store it in a file called distributinlist.txt.
zimbra@zimbra:~$ zmprov gadl > /backups/zmigrate/distributinlist.txt zimbra@zimbra:~$ cat /backups/zmigrate/distributinlist.txt budgetrtodomainusers@fun.com healthnowdomainusers@myserver.com checkit.comdomainusers@checkit.com northpointessdomainusers@dieanotherday.com parkatnorthhillsdomainusers@gnutest.com zimbra@zimbra:~$
4.5 Get all members in distribution lists
In this step we are going to collect all members in each of these distributions. We will create a folder called distributinlist_members and create a file under this folder named distributinlist.txt , then store all the distributions members.
zimbra@zimbra:~$ mkdir /backups/zmigrate/distributinlist_members zimbra@zimbra:~$ for i in `cat /backups/zmigrate/distributinlist.txt`; do zmprov gdlm $i > /backups/zmigrate/distributinlist_members/$i.txt ;echo "$i"; done budgetrtodomainusers@fun.com healthnowdomainusers@myserver.com checkit.comdomainusers@checkit.com
4.6 Find all email account’s passwords
Now need to find the encrypted password of all of your old email accounts and store it under a folder named userpass/ as follows:
zimbra@zimbra:/backups/zmigrate$ mkdir userpass
zimbra@zimbra:/backups/zmigrate$ for i in `cat emails.txt`; do zmprov -l ga $i userPassword | grep userPassword: | awk '{ print $2}' > userpass/$i.shadow; done
4.7 Backup all user names , Display names and Given Names
Zimbra will accept a Names and Disaplay names in email accounts during account creation. So we need to restore those data too. We will create a directory called userdata/ which contains these details of each of those email accounts
zimbra@zimbra:/backups/zmigrate$ mkdir userdata zimbra@zimbra:/backups/zmigrate$ for i in `cat emails.txt`; do zmprov ga $i | grep -i Name: > userdata/$i.txt ; done
4.8 Now backup all email account
This will take some time to take backup of all email accounts. So you can run this command behind “screen”. A tgz file will be created with each emails name. We will use this files to transfer email accounts.
zimbra@zimbra:/backups/zmigrate$ for email in `cat /backups/zmigrate/emails.txt`; do zmmailbox -z -m $email getRestURL '/?fmt=tgz' > $email.tgz ; echo $email ; done gm@fun.com forest@fun.com galsync@fun.com fax@myserver.com fax2@myserver.com paul@myserver.com
This tgz files contains
- Contacts
- Calendars
- Briefcase
- Tasks
- Searches
- Tags
- Folders
All subfolders are included, except Junk and Trash. There is no way to include these in the big dump, but they can be exported separately:
4.9 Now backup alias
Some times your server may have email aliases for certain accounts. So you need to copy those aliases too. We will create a sub folder called alias/ for storing the backup of Alias.
zimbra@zimbra:/backups/zmigrate$ mkdir -p alias/
zimbra@zimbra:/backups/zmigrate$ for i in `cat emails.txt`; do zmprov ga $i | grep zimbraMailAlias |awk '{print $2}' > alias/$i.txt ;echo $i ;done
gm@fun.com
forest@fun.com
Some of your email accounts don’t have alias. So the above created files may be an empty file. Remove those empty files as follows,’\
zimbra@zimbra:/backups/zmigrate$ find alias/ -type f -empty | xargs -n1 rm -v
4.10 Now Backup all email signatures
Please use the following script to backup all signatures of email accounts. Special thanks for Antonio Díaz Meneses for giving the inputs.
#!/bin/bash mkdir signature for i in `cat emails.txt`; do zmprov ga $i zimbraPrefMailSignatureHTML > /tmp/signature; sed -i -e "1d" /tmp/signature ; sed 's/zimbraPrefMailSignatureHTML: //g' /tmp/signature > signatures/$i.signature ; rm -rf /tmp/signature; `zmprov ga $i zimbraSignatureName > /tmp/name` ; sed -i -e "1d" /tmp/name ; sed 's/zimbraSignatureName: //g' /tmp/name > signatures/$i.name ; rm -rf /tmp/name ; done
4.11 Backup all email account filters
The email backup doesn’t have the email filters. So it need to be backed up manually. To download all email accounts filters. Please use the following scripts
#!/bin/bash
# Backup filters of all email accounts
mkdir filter/
for i in `cat emails.txt`; do
zmprov ga $i zimbraMailSieveScript > /tmp/filter
sed -i -e "1d" /tmp/filter
sed 's/zimbraMailSieveScript: //g' /tmp/filter > filter/$i.filter
rm -f /tmp/filter
echo "Filter downloaded for .... $i"
done
4.12 Rsync folder to new server
Now we have all the required data to do the migration process. As a summery :
- /backups/zmigrate – Have all the backups stored
- /backups/zmigrate/domains.txt – Contains the domains names
- /backups/zmigrate/emails.txt – Contains the list of email accounts
- /backups/zmigrate/distributinlist.txt – Contains the distribution lists
- /backups/zmigrate/distributinlist_members – Contains the members in each of your distributions
- /backups/zmigrate/userpass – Contains the encrypted password of your email accounts
- /backups/zmigrate/userdata – containts the email accounts user informations
- /backups/zmigrate/alias – Contains all the aliases of your email accounts
Also the parent folder /backups/zmigrate contains a lot of zip file which are the data inside emails.
Now rsync the files as follows,
root@newserver # rsync -avp -e 'ssh -p 22' root@old-server-ip:/backups/zmigrate /backups/
5. Restore in new server
So after finishing the rsync process , we need to restore this in your new server as follows:
All this operations must be carried out as zimbra sudo user itself. Don’t use root account to store the backups
[root@zimbra ~]# su - zimbra [zimbra@zimbra]$
5.1 Restore all domains
Now create all the domains that we have from the file /backups/zmigrate/domains.txt
[zimbra@zimbra zmigrate]$ for i in `cat /backups/zmigrate/domains.txt `; do zmprov cd $i zimbraAuthMech zimbra ;echo $i ;done 2c86f244-de9d-4b7c-8e22-2246a8256219 myserver.com dbf75058-d85e-4d60-8b69-1f148a456eb6 justfortest.com ee90ffa2-505d-449f-82fd-129acb21cb5e checkit.com 8b6bf287-f61e-4930-ada0-96b817292556 dieanotherday.com 17d3c73c-14f7-43aa-9fd2-c9be9e29c9e5
You can also verify the domains created from the zimbra admin panel too
5.2 Create email accounts and set the old password
We need to create the email accounts for storing the mails. We also need to set the old passwords too. We already collected the account info and passwords.
To Create email accounts and restore passwords . Please use the following script to create it
#!/bin/bash #Scrit for creating the email accounts createacct.sh USERPASS="/backups/zmigrate/userpass" USERDDATA="/backups/zmigrate/userdata" USERS="/backups/zmigrate/emails.txt" for i in `cat $USERS` do givenName=$(grep givenName: $USERDDATA/$i.txt | cut -d ":" -f2) displayName=$(grep displayName: $USERDDATA/$i.txt | cut -d ":" -f2) shadowpass=$(cat $USERPASS/$i.shadow) tmpPass="CHANGEme" zmprov ca $i CHANGEme cn "$givenName" displayName "$displayName" givenName "$givenName" zmprov ma $i userPassword "$shadowpass" done
5.3 Restore email accounts
Now we are going to restore the emails from the Zip file. This process may take some hours. So it will be good to run behind “screen” command.
[zimbra@zimbra zmigrate]$ for i in `cat /backups/zmigrate/emails.txt`; do zmmailbox -z -m $i postRestURL "/?fmt=tgz&resolve=skip" /backups/zmigrate/$i.tgz ; echo "$i -- finished "; done gm@fun.com -- finished forest@fun.com -- finished
5.4 Now recreate the distribution lists
It is time to recreate all the distribution lists as follows.
[zimbra@zimbra zmigrate]$ for i in `cat distributinlist.txt`; do zmprov cdl $i ; echo "$i -- done " ; done 2a852fd8-6e66-426e-a76d-15192536042a budgetrtodomainusers@fun.com -- done a0f6ddb3-8525-4194-9397-6cf0a920dda6
5.5 Restore the distribution lists
After creating the distribution lists we need to add all the members inside the distribution lists. We have the distribution lists in the folder distributinlist_members/ and the list is in distributionlist.txt file. Please use the following small script to restore the distribution lists.
[zimbra@zimbra zmigrate]$ cat restoredist.sh #!/bin/bash # add all memebers to each of these distribution lists for i in `cat distributinlist.txt` do for j in `grep -v '#' distributinlist_members/$i.txt |grep '@'` do zmprov adlm $i $j echo " $j member has been added to list $i" done done
5.6 Restore Alias accounts
Please use the following script to restore alias. This will add all the aliases in your email accounts.
#!/bin/bash for i in `cat /backups/zmigrate/emails.txt` do if [ -f "alias/$i.txt" ]; then for j in `grep '@' /backups/zmigrate/alias/$i.txt` do zmprov aaa $i $j echo "$i HAS ALIAS $j --- Restored" done fi done
5.7 Restore Email Signatures
No please use the following script to restore email signatures
#!/bin/bash for i in `cat emails.txt`; do zmprov ma $i zimbraSignatureName "`cat signatures/$i.name`"; zmprov ma $i zimbraPrefMailSignatureHTML "`cat signatures/$i.signature`"; zmprov ga $i zimbraSignatureId > /tmp/firmaid; sed -i -e "1d" /tmp/firmaid; firmaid=`sed 's/zimbraSignatureId: //g' /tmp/firmaid`; zmprov ma $i zimbraPrefDefaultSignatureId "$firmaid"; zmprov ma $i zimbraPrefForwardReplySignatureId "$firmaid"; rm -rf /tmp/firmaid; echo $i "done!"; done
5.8 Restore Email Filters
You may use the following scripts to restore all your email accounts filters
#!/bin/bash
for i in `cat emails.txt`; do
zmprov ma $i zimbraMailSieveScript "`cat filter/$i.filter`";
echo "Filter Restore for account ... $i";
done
6. Conclusion
So now we migrated all our email accounts. It is time for DNS change. You need to shut down the old zimbra services and change the DNS. After that send some test emails and make sure everything is working fine. Next step is to secure your zimbra server. You need to install ssl certificates and firewall in your new zimbra server. Now you have a new server with new packages and files with the same old email accounts and its data.
7. References
https://wiki.zimbra.com/wiki/Zmprov_Examples https://wiki.zimbra.com/wiki/Zmprov https://wiki.zimbra.com/wiki/Backing_up_and_restoring_Zimbra_%28Open_Source_Version%29 'https://xmission.com/blog/2015/04/30/zimbra-server-admin-tip-mailbox-password-migration-and-server-settings-comparison' http://stdout.no/zimbra-open-source-backup-strategy-and-scripts/
Hello I have an error when running the command:
for email in `cat /backups/zmigrate/emails.txt`; do for i in `cat ../emails.txt `; do zmmailbox -z -m $i getRestURL ‘/?fmt=tgz’ > $i.tgz ; echo $email ; done
copy and paste the same as have your but is dead.
Greetings from Uruguay
Hi,
I have edited it and fixed. Check it now
Hi,
I have an error when running the command:
for email in `cat /backups/zmigrate/emails.txt`; do zmmailbox -z -m $i getRestURL ‘/?fmt=tgz’ > $i.tgz ; echo $email ; done
Getting below errors
ERROR: account.NO_SUCH_ACCOUNT (no such account: getRestURL)
admin@domainname.in
^Ca.sharma@mahagenco.in
ERROR: account.NO_SUCH_ACCOUNT (no such account: getRestURL)
abt@domainname.in
ERROR: account.NO_SUCH_ACCOUNT (no such account: getRestURL)
acctsparastps@domainname.in
The Backup All Email Account step can not work, help to check, thanks a lot !
Thanks for the how to you save my life:
In my zimbra the script to list user to distributing list no echo any result, i research about this and modify your script and voila!
for i in `cat /backups/zmigrate/distributinlist.txt`; do zmprov gdl $i | grep zimbraMailForwardingAddress: | awk {‘print $2’} > /backups/zmigrate/distributinlist_members/$i.txt ;echo “$i”; done
thanks
Hi you can add script for filter migration. Here is my example for filter export:
cat /backups/zmigrate/filters-export.sh
#!/bin/bash
set -x
clear
echo “Retrieve zimbra user name…”
USERS=`cat /backups/zmigrate/emails.txt`;
for ACCOUNT in $USERS; do
NAME=`echo $ACCOUNT`;
filter=`su – zimbra -c “zmprov ga $NAME zimbraMailSieveScript” > /tmp/$NAME`
sed -i -e “1d” /tmp/$NAME
sed ‘s/zimbraMailSieveScript: //g’ /tmp/$NAME > /backups/zmigrate/filters/$NAME;
rm /tmp/$NAME
echo “Export filter for $NAME…”
done
echo “All filter has been export successfully”
And script for import filters:
#!/bin/bash
set -x
for file in /backups/zmigrate/filters/*
do
StrFilter=`cat “$file”`
Acc=$file
su – zimbra -c “zmprov ma $(echo $file | grep -E -o “\b[A-Za-z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Za-z0-9.-]+\.[A-Za-z]{2,6}\b”) zimbraMailSieveScript ‘$StrFilter'”
echo “Process filter $Acc”
done
echo “All filter has been import successfully”
Thanks Anton For you input. Let me add this too.
my developer says me that this is the solution..
for email in `cat /backups/zmigrate/emails.txt`; do zmmailbox -z -m $email getRestURL ‘/?fmt=tgz’ > $email.tgz ; echo $email ; done
Hi Sherin,
Add these scripts to manual. It will be great.
You can fix 4.8
from:
for email in `cat /backups/zmigrate/emails.txt`; do zmmailbox -z -m $i getRestURL ‘/?fmt=tgz’ > $i.tgz ; echo $email ; done
to:
for email in `cat /backups/zmigrate/emails.txt`; do zmmailbox -z -m $email getRestURL ‘/?fmt=tgz’ > $email.tgz ; echo $email ; done
variable $i is not defined and must be replaced with $email
Thank you Anton. This has been fixed.
Thank you Sherin 🙂
Thank you for sharing your knowledge.
when running :-
4.8 Now backup all email account :-
for email in `cat /backups/zmigrate/emails.txt`; do zmmailbox -z -m $i getRestURL ‘/?fmt=tgz’ > $i.tgz ; echo $email ; done
I was getting the following error :-
ERROR: account.NO_SUCH_ACCOUNT (no such account: getRestURL)
I modified as follows and it seems to be working :-
for email in `cat /backups/zmigrate/emails.txt`; do zmmailbox -z -m $email getRestURL ‘/?fmt=tgz’ > $email.tgz ; echo $email ; done
Hi, you’ve made a great tutorial.
I have some observations:
– Step 4.8: the variable $i must be $email inside the loop.
– Step 5.2: All e-mail accounts are active after restoring, even the closed accounts in the old server.
– Step 5.3: There are two consecutive semicolons that broke the script execution here.
– I would like to know whether there is a way to migrate COS before restoring e-mails and if you had some kind of tip to deal with special characters, because I have some problem with it after migration (I’m Brazilian and some account display names in Portuguese has special characters).
Thank you for this tutorial.
In Step 4.8, you’re mixing the variables $email and $i.
Change:
for email in `cat /backups/zmigrate/emails.txt`; do zmmailbox -z -m $i getRestURL ‘/?fmt=tgz’ > $i.tgz ; echo $email ; done
To:
for i in `cat /backups/zmigrate/emails.txt`; do zmmailbox -z -m $i getRestURL ‘/?fmt=tgz’ > $i.tgz ; echo $i ; done
Hi !
Nice Work.
But i think there i a bug in 4.6
for email in `cat /backups/zmigrate/emails.txt`; do zmmailbox -z -m $i getRestURL ‘/?fmt=tgz’ > $i.tgz ; echo $email ; done
I think it should be
for email in `cat /backups/zmigrate/emails.txt`; do zmmailbox -z -m $email getRestURL ‘/?fmt=tgz’ > $email.tgz ; echo $email ; done
Hi, excellent guide. I have already tried in a dev server to see everything works. I’m planning to migrate to a multiserver, from 8.6 to 8.7. I’m going to proceed and backup the mails, and then restore them on the mailstore server of the multi. At the moment, I have already migrated domains, emails, lists and aliases without any problems. Have you tried this process on a multiserver enviroment?
Hello friend. I have 2 corrections for your tutorial:
for i in `cat /backups/zmigrate/emails.txt`; do zmmailbox -z -m $i getRestURL ‘/?fmt=tgz’ > $i.tgz ; echo $i ; done
for i in `cat /backups/zmigrate/emails.txt`; do zmmailbox -z -m $i postRestURL “/?fmt=tgz&resolve=skip” /backups/zmigrate/$i.tgz ; echo “$i — finished “; done
****** PLEASE, send me your paypal ID, you’ve saved my week. I spent 38 hours doing on-the-fly migration, because your tutorial saved me… send to ti@tempofilmes.com.br Kind Regards.
In case of annoying customers:
here how to backup / recover the user’s signatures:
Backup:
for i in `cat emails.txt`; do
zmprov ga $i zimbraPrefMailSignatureHTML > /tmp/signature;
sed -i -e “1d” /tmp/signature ;
sed ‘s/zimbraPrefMailSignatureHTML: //g’ /tmp/signature > signatures/$i.signature ;
rm -rf /tmp/signature;
`zmprov ga $i zimbraSignatureName > /tmp/name` ;
sed -i -e “1d” /tmp/name ;
sed ‘s/zimbraSignatureName: //g’ /tmp/name > signatures/$i.name ;
rm -rf /tmp/name ;
done
Recover:
for i in `cat emails.txt`; do
zmprov ma $i zimbraSignatureName “`cat signatures/$i.name`”;
zmprov ma $i zimbraPrefMailSignatureHTML “`cat signatures/$i.signature`”;
zmprov ga $i zimbraSignatureId > /tmp/firmaid; sed -i -e “1d” /tmp/firmaid;
firmaid=`sed ‘s/zimbraSignatureId: //g’ /tmp/firmaid`;
zmprov ma $i zimbraPrefDefaultSignatureId “$firmaid”;
zmprov ma $i zimbraPrefForwardReplySignatureId “$firmaid”;
rm -rf /tmp/firmaid;
echo $i ‘done!’;
done
Thank you for the input . I added it to the tutorial
Hello,
I have tried to migrate server with this manual. Works great until step 4.8.
On latest zimbra server it work but on old zimbra 8.6 command in step 4.8 simply does not work.
This is the error:
ERROR: zclient.IO_ERROR (invoke Connection refused, server: localhost) (cause: java.net.ConnectException Connection refused)
Any advice.
Tnx
Update the steps with option -t 0
or email in `cat /backups/zmigrate/emails.txt`; do zmmailbox -z -m $email getRestURL ‘/?fmt=tgz’ > $email.tgz ; echo $email ; done
This Script is working, but some accounts old mail only is there. updated mail is not coming
if we add -t 0 options still this error is coming ,
ERROR : zclient.IO ERROR (unable to get ?fmt=tgz) (cause : java.io.IOException chunked stream ended unexpectedly
After that account maildata is not backed up fully, half the data is there.
Hi, excellent guide. I have already tried in a dev server to see everything works. I’m planning to migrate to a multiserver, from 8.6 to 8.7. I’m going to proceed and backup the mails, and then restore them on the mailstore server of the multi. Ok.
Everything was OK till point 5.3 but it is not working further
Hi Sherin
step . 4.8
for email in `cat /backups/zmigrate/emails.txt`; do zmmailbox -z -m $email getRestURL ‘/?fmt=tgz’ > $email.tgz ; echo $email ; done
please give me advice & instructions for modify script for backup to only spesific user account
example ;
for email in `cat /backups/zmigrate/emails.txt`; do zmmailbox -z -m $user@somedomain.com getRestURL ‘/?fmt=tgz’ > $email.tgz ; echo $email ; done
thanks
-dede
zmmailbox -z -m $user@somedomain.com getRestURL ‘/?fmt=tgz’ > $email.tgzHi Sherin,
After following all steps configuration. I cannot login to zimbra admin panel with new password or old password admin.
How to solve this?
Try to reset zimbra admin password from the shell. Some thing may be went wrong
Hello,
for save the status from all users add these lines (Active, locked, lockout, etc) :
mkdir statuses
for i in `cat emails.txt`; do zmprov ga $i zimbraAccountStatus|grep zimbraAccountStatus |awk ‘{print $2}’ > statuses/$i.txt ; echo $i; done
Thanks
Thank you Sherin for this documentation, it worked smoothly for me except for a little itch along the line (probably due to space or unknown character) which was easily resolved without much hassle. The next thing I’m searching is automated backup to a remote server from the primary server.
Hi! Great guide! Thanks. Another fix @ 4.10. mkdir signatures (plural form, not signature).
I think there is one last step missing when migrating mailboxes to a new server
You need to change zimbraPrefPop3DownloadSince for all account, otherwise pop3 users are going to downloads ALL theirs emails again.
https://wiki.zimbra.com/wiki/Download_the_POP3_email_from_a_specific_date
It is working perfectly. But runing server /opt/zimbra folder size increase double than backup server /opt/zimra that cannot identify. Please give instruction how to check duplicate data and delete.
Thanks,
Alamgir
For signatures, the command would be:
mkdir signatures
Given the size of our mail server, is there a way to sync the emails after the initial migration? To give an indication, it’s taking approx a week to compress and export all our mailboxes – during this time, the mail server is still running and people are receiving additional messages – the ideal solution would include a way to sync any ‘new’ emails since the original export.
There’s a Typo in the Signatures Export Part:
mkdir signatures
not
mkdir signature
Hi,
Thanks for your help. I’m having this error:
ERROR: service.FAILURE (system failure: POST failed, status=500 Server Error)
when restoring all the email accounts with this script:
for i in `cat /backups/zmigrate/emails.txt`; do zmmailbox -z -m $i postRestURL “/?fmt=tgz&resolve=skip” /backups/zmigrate/$i.tgz ; echo “$i — finished “; done
How can we solve this problem? Thanks a lot.
Dear,
its helpful but i want help that…..when migrating emails …after server change old email again downloaded on outlook or any other mailing software.
Hello,
Thank you for this great tutorial.
it’s very useful and helps me alot
Hi thanks for this tuto
A minor correction
in the 4.10 script change “mkdir signature” by “mkdir signatures” 🙂
Just one comment :
after launching the 5.3 command line I get the folowing error
“ERROR: zclient.IO_ERROR (Read timed out) (cause: java.net.SocketTimeoutException Read timed out)”
but the script continue and migrate the account normaly.
I do not see any trouble in the migration…
OMG! THANK YOU! Had a zimbra server totally crap out on us and your how to saved all our bacon!
Nice tutorial, works as a charm from 8.6 to 8.8.12.
Great tutorial, saved me a lot of time! Send me your paypal account to buy you a beer 🙂
Another contribution for even more annoying customers/users
Backup/restore out of office configuration
Backup:
#!/bin/bash
mkdir ooo/
for i in `cat emails.txt`; do
zmprov ga $i | grep OutOfOffice > ooo/$i.txt
echo “OOO for $i done”
done
Restore:
#!/bin/bash
for i in `cat emails.txt`; do
ativo=`grep zimbraPrefOutOfOfficeReplyEnabled ooo/$i.txt | awk {‘print $2’}`
text=`grep zimbraPrefOutOfOfficeReply ooo/$i.txt | sed ‘s/zimbraPrefOutOfOfficeReply: //g’ | grep -v zimbraPrefOutOfOfficeReplyEnabled`
if [[ “$ativo” == “TRUE” ]] && [[ ! -z “$text”]]; then
fromdate=`grep zimbraPrefOutOfOfficeFromDate ooo/$i.txt | sed ‘s/zimbraPrefOutOfOfficeFromDate: //g’`
untildate=`grep zimbraPrefOutOfOfficeUntilDate ooo/$i.txt | sed ‘s/zimbraPrefOutOfOfficeUntilDate: //g’`
zmprov ma $i zimbraPrefOutOfOfficeReplyEnabled TRUE
zmprov ma $i zimbraPrefOutOfOfficeReply “$text”
zmprov ma $i zimbraPrefOutOfOfficeFromDate $fromdate
zmprov ma $i zimbraPrefOutOfOfficeUntilDate $untildate
echo “OOO setup for $i done”
else
echo “OOO not active for $i”
fi
done
Hello,
Just to let you know that Ive followed the steps previously detailed and it worked perfectly by my side.
Thank you very much for publishing the post.
Best regards,
Manuel Lazo
Hi, first thanks for your work, second i have all my domains whit an external DC how can i backup and restore that, thanks again
Hello,
Excellent guide, thanks.
I just have a question, is it possible to dont lose mails received between the data backup (point 4.8), data restore and final dns change?
Thanks
Thanks a lot Sherin Abdulkhareem. Great work and its working smoothly. Really appriciatable. could you please share one things with me……Mail monitoring queue shows 1 error:
Message: system failure: exception during auth {RemoteManager: mail.domain.com->zimbra@mail.domain.com:22} Error code: service.FAILURE Method: [unknown] Details:soap:Receiver
Hello dear, Issue resolved (forgotten to entry zimbra user in sshd_config file). Thanks again
For Step 4.8 ie generating backup, I am getting below error.
ERROR: service.FAILURE (system failure: GET from http://domain.com/home/user1@domain.com/?fmt=tgz failed, status=404. Not Found)
user1@domain.com
However for 2, 3 accounts, it generated backups. I have to generate backup for almost 85 accounts. Please let me know why its showing suddent error.
when i use this command :
for i in `cat /backups/zmigrate/distributinlist.txt`; do zmprov gdlm $i > /backups/zmigrate/distributinlist_members/$i.txt ;echo “$i”; done
and
for i in `cat emails.txt`; do zmprov ga $i | grep zimbraMailAlias |awk ‘{print $2}’ > alias/$i.txt ;echo $i ;done
I got a error : error ambiguous….
u must change and use this syntax :
for i in $(cat /backups/zmigrate/distributinlist.txt); do zmprov gdlm $i > /backups/zmigrate/distributinlist_members/$i.txt ;echo “$i”; done
and
for i in $(cat emails.txt); do zmprov ga $i | grep zimbraMailAlias |awk ‘{print $2}’ > alias/$i.txt ;echo $i ;done
that’s works for me 🙂
Hi,
I have an error when running the command:
for email in `cat /backups/zmigrate/emails.txt`; do zmmailbox -z -m $i getRestURL ‘/?fmt=tgz’ > $i.tgz ; echo $email ; done
Getting below errors
ERROR: account.NO_SUCH_ACCOUNT (no such account: getRestURL)
admin@domainname.in
^Ca.sharma@mahagenco.in
ERROR: account.NO_SUCH_ACCOUNT (no such account: getRestURL)
abt@domainname.in
ERROR: account.NO_SUCH_ACCOUNT (no such account: getRestURL)
acctsparastps@domainname.in
correction
$i.name replaced with $i
$i.signarure replaced with $i and the script works.
for i in `cat emails.txt`; do zmprov ma $i zimbraSignatureName “`cat signatures/$i`”; zmprov ma $i zimbraPrefMailSignatureHTML “`cat signatures/$i`”; zmprov ga $i zimbraSignatureId > /tmp/firmaid; sed -i -e “1d” /tmp/firmaid; firmaid=`sed ‘s/zimbraSignatureId: //g’ /tmp/firmaid`; zmprov ma $i zimbraPrefDefaultSignatureId “$firmaid”; zmprov ma $i zimbraPrefForwardReplySignatureId “$firmaid”; rm -rf /tmp/firmaid; echo $i “done!”; done
Hi Admin,
Thanks for your tutorial, the tutorial was working fine. But I have some condition:
1. Distribution list members cannot backup properly (and i found article that give info gdlm not working until ZCS 8.0.3 https://forums.zimbra.org/viewtopic.php?t=13559), so i used this command for i in `cat /mnt/archive/distributionlists.txt`; do zmprov gdl $i zimbraMailAlias zimbraMailForwardingAddress > /mnt/archive/distributionlist_members/$i.txt ; echo “$i”; done (this code can backup distribution list members, but we must make modification on txt file).
2. When we do step 5.1 (restore all domains), there is a strange that process looks like not responding (we only restore 1 domain), so we cancel the process (ctrl + c) but when we check on web gui admin (https://x.x.x.x:7071) domain appears.
3. when we do step 5.2 (create accounts and set the old password), the accounts and password has been restore success fully. but when we test login with the old accounts and password we got message username and password not match.
so can you or somebody help me with this poin 5.2 (we backup zcs 7.1.4 and restore to zcs 8.1.5)? Thanks in advanced.
Hello,
Thanks for great instruction about migration,
I have a question about forwardings, my emai accounts have many user specify forwarding to different addresses,
Can someone suggest how can I do this forwardings migration?
Hello,
howto export identities / personas?
zmprov gid
and then how to import by script?
Regards
Frank
Thank you very much indeed for this excellent blog post.
Have migrated from Zimbra OSE 8.8.15 on a Centos 7 to another machine with Oracle 8 and Zimbra 10 NE.
All seems to be alright as far as I can see.
Great intructions. Is this compatible with Zimbra 9 to Zimbra 10. OSE/NE ?
Not sure, zimbra stopped opensource versions.