Migrating and Upgrade Issues (wheezy to jessie or wheezy to centos7, 3.4 to 3.4 or 16)

[Matthias Busch]

Good day,

I am really struggeling with the migration of Kolab onto a new machine.

The current installation is on debian 7 x64 (wheezy). I really would 
like to move away from debian 7.

I would prefer debian 8 but to me it looks like centos7 is the better 
choice with longer support cycles and god knows if and when debian 8 is 
getting kolab 16

In the span of the last few days, I have tried a number of different 
scenarios, unfortunately, all with problems I can not fix.
In general, I exported LDAP via the bash script at 
https://docs.kolab.org/administrator-guide/backup-and-restore.html
The IMAP data is being copied with rsync -ah source target --exclude 
(files that can be excluded according to doc)
The OS is installed in minimal mode, certain settings are changed (like 
swapping firewalld with iptables, installation of nano, ...), kolab is 
installed according to the how to install documentation, passwords are 
selected identical to the existing installation...

- centos7, kolab 16 (installation seems fine)
I import the LDAP data, copy over the imap data, reboot. kolab-webadmin 
looks good, users are there, shared folders are there.
Login to webmail works, emails are there. BUT NO SHARED FOLDERS. And I 
have no idea what could be wrong or where to search for the problem. 
Additionally, log pykolab.auth is throwing A LOT errors "pykolab.auth 
ERROR An error occured  using_persistent_search: TIMEOUT()

- centos7, kolab 3.4 (installation seems fine)
Also import LDAP data, copy over imap...
webadmin okay, webmail shows, shared e-mail folders ok, but shared 
folders of other users (calendar, inbox) is not there.
at least no errors in pykolab log

- since centos7 is giving me trouble, I thought I'll try to upgrade 
debian from 7 to 8 and attempt the move to centos later or not if 
kolab16 is coming to debian
first, I installed debian7 on a new machine, then copy over all data

rsync -avh --delete /  -e "ssh -p xx" root at TARGETIP:/ --exclude 
'/etc/fstab' --exclude '/proc' --exclude '/dev' --exclude '/sys' 
--exclude '/boot' --exclude '/etc/udev/rules.d' --exclude '/var/run' 
--exclude '/var/lock' --exclude '/mnt' --exclude '/lost+found'

this seems to work just fine. which solves the problem of moving 
machines. but I did not expect anything less

next, I changed the debian sources from wheezy to jessie and the kolab 
source from ...3.4/Debian_7.0/ to 8.0
next apt-get update
stopping all services like kolab, postmap, cyrus, dirsrv, apache, ...
next apt-get upgrade
it will run a while and be done.
next apt-get dist-upgrade
which will tell me a large number of upgraded packets, some new packets 
and will remove a good number of packets. including parts of kolab
I actually tried and it does indeed remove essential parts of kolab. 
Trying to reinstall kolab will partly work, but dirsrv seems 
unrecoverable (at least with my limited knowledge)

I came upon a year old post here where someone attempted something 
similar (debian 7 to 8) while even upgrading kolab 3.3 to 3.4 and had no 
problems. https://lists.kolab.org/pipermail/users/2015-July/019561.html

So I am stuck there too.


Okay, so I hope someone can help

- is the kolab 16 persistent-search timeout error fixable? could be it 
happened because I used data from 3.4 to populate 16?

- how the hell do I migrate data and preserve shared folders? where are 
they even saved? LDAP? some file? IMAP?

- or at the very least, why is kolab being removed when dist-upgrading? 
its installed and the apt sources are still there. and how did it work a 
year ago? any fixes?


Please advise.

I can run further test and supply logs.
It would also be possible to talk on teamspeak and allow someone to 
observe/help via teamviewer