Zimbra Migration question

Hi everyone, no one has responded?

Is Carbonio still active?

I just checked install requirements and it's either Ubuntu or RHEL 8 or 9

Will anything else like RockyLinux work?

At the moment I've just tried to install Zimbra 8.,8 OpenSource version on Rocky8 and it doesn't install at all.

I may need to see if I can go back to CentOS 8 and see if my install can be recovered like that but I have no idea which direction to take it afterwards?

@kayasaman 

Hi,

Sorry to hear about your trouble.

Carbonio Community Edition (CE) does not have 2FA. Regarding using Rocky Linux as your base OS, I would advise against it. At this moment Carbonio CE supports Ubuntu 24,04LTS, Ubuntu 22.04LTS, RHEL8 & RHEL9. 

I am mostly concerned about your data and without damaging your existing system what I would suggest you (tedious but feasible IMO):

• Zimbra doesn't keep everything in the database. Message bodies are files on disk under /opt/zimbra/store/..., and accounts, domains and passwords live in LDAP. MySQL holds mailbox metadata, folder placement, read/unread, flags, tags, threading.
• Even if the database can't be repaired you can still recover the mail, in some cases 🤞

1.a Get the mailbox number from mysql (if possible)
mysql -e "SELECT id, comment FROM zimbra.mailbox WHERE comment='user@example.com'"

1.b If mysql does not work, try the logs:
zgrep -ohE "name=user@example.com;mid=[0-9]+" /opt/zimbra/log/mailbox.log* | sort -u

1.c From the files themselves
grep -rl "user@example.com" /opt/zimbra/store --include='*.msg' | head -5


# Once you undferstand which folder to upload on which account follow rest of the process


2. Find the files for that mailbox
find /opt/zimbra/store/*/<ID>/msg -name '*.msg' | head; find ... | wc -l

3. Copy them to Carbonio
mkdir -p /var/tmp/recovered && find /opt/zimbra/store/*/<ID>/msg -name '*.msg' \
 -exec cp {} /var/tmp/recovered/ \; && rsync -av /var/tmp/recovered/ root@carbonio:/var/tmp/recovered/
chmod -R a+rX /var/tmp/recovered          # on the Carbonio server

4. Create the folder in Carbonio
for a in zimbraMailContentMaxSize zimbraFileUploadMaxSize zimbraMtaMaxMessageSize; \
     do carbonio prov mcf $a 209715200; done
     carbonio prov selectMailbox user@example.com createFolder -V message /Recovered

5. Import one message and check it
carbonio prov selectMailbox user@example.com addMessage /Recovered \
       /var/tmp/recovered/$(ls /var/tmp/recovered | head -1)

6. If it looks right, import the rest
carbonio prov selectMailbox user@example.com addMessage /Recovered /var/tmp/recovered/
carbonio prov selectMailbox user@example.com getAllFolders

Let us know how it goes!

@sharif Thank you so much!

Ok so for now, the main goal was to get Zimbra re-installed and a working system. I did go the Rocky 810 route and managed to "fudge" the system into installing Zimbra. It was a case of modifying "os-release" and "rhel" files to show RHEL 8.10. Then reinstall the originals of course after Zimbra install went through....

As for the data.... this is a big problem and at the moment quite stressful.

The mysql server won't start at all!

[code]

2026-09-08 13:51:25 140597963827008 [Note] mysqld (mysqld 10.1.25-MariaDB) starting as process 8464 ...
2026-09-08 13:51:25 140597963827008 [Note] InnoDB: Using mutexes to ref count buffer pool pages
2026-09-08 13:51:25 140597963827008 [Note] InnoDB: The InnoDB memory heap is disabled
2026-09-08 13:51:25 140597963827008 [Note] InnoDB: Mutexes and rw_locks use GCC atomic builtins
2026-09-08 13:51:25 140597963827008 [Note] InnoDB: GCC builtin __atomic_thread_fence() is used for memory barrier
2026-09-08 13:51:25 140597963827008 [Note] InnoDB: Compressed tables use zlib 1.2.3
2026-09-08 13:51:25 140597963827008 [Note] InnoDB: Using Linux native AIO
2026-09-08 13:51:25 140597963827008 [Note] InnoDB: Using SSE crc32 instructions
2026-09-08 13:51:25 140597963827008 [Note] InnoDB: Initializing buffer pool, size = 6.2G
2026-09-08 13:51:25 140597963827008 [Note] InnoDB: Completed initialization of buffer pool
2026-09-08 13:51:25 140597963827008 [ERROR] InnoDB: Cannot create log files because data files are corrupt or the database was not shut down cleanly after creating the data files.
2026-09-08 13:51:25 140597963827008 [ERROR] Plugin 'InnoDB' init function returned error.
2026-09-08 13:51:25 140597963827008 [ERROR] Plugin 'InnoDB' registration as a STORAGE ENGINE failed.
2026-09-08 13:51:25 140597963827008 [Note] Plugin 'FEEDBACK' is disabled.
2026-09-08 13:51:25 140597963827008 [ERROR] Unknown/unsupported storage engine: InnoDB
2026-09-08 13:51:25 140597963827008 [ERROR] Aborting

[/code]

I have just written on the Zimbra forums to see if anyone can help with this?

I did find this: https://wiki.zimbra.com/wiki/King0770-Notes-When_innodb_force_recovery_Fails

but I don't really understand it as the instructions seem incomplete? Also I have no redo logs either in my system.

I am not sure exactly what Zimbra stores in the DB but if it's stuff like calendar data and email folders then it really is imperative that somehow the data is recovered otherwise this will be a nightmare to recreate.

My personal "inbox" had thousands of folders in a set hierarchy which is what I'm really concerned with 

@kayasaman I'm an expert on doing migrations... I even wrote a migrator script called Z2C, and you can easily find it with a Google search. If you need professional assistance, reach out to me... 👍

@kayasaman Hey, I've moved Zimbra around for several years.  Curious, what version of Zimbra did you have on that initial Centos box?  And is that box and it's zimbra install tucked away off line in a safe place?

@aurfalien Hey, it's version 8.8.15 Open Source edition. Just a home server...

Currently on Zimbra forums right now trying to recover the DB.... 

I came over to Carbonio as I've known about it for years and since Zimbra went "closed source" in terms of no more web UI etc... so I thought it might be a great option to move across to as an active project??

Though my health has been dwindling for the last 3 years I even considered just using Gmail and pointing my domains to that but I'm not sure if I want the extra expense of constant payments.

@anahuac I think I've seen this script? I will definitely check it out!!

The server is basically a home system running in what should be my bedroom lol.... I got the coach as a result haha.... but yeah it started many years ago as I am neuro divergent with both autism and adhd and found it difficult to be in employ and work with other people, so I decided to build my own stuff as that was where my interests lay....

Sadly after so much time my health is really struggling now due to severe "autistic burnout"... I scored 100% on an online test and can barely perform higher level tasks. 

That's why I am eager to find out if there is a supportive and vibrant community that could help me doing stuff if I get stuck which maybe more often now then previously when I was still completely capable.

As long the documentation is good I should be able to follow it but if there are any hiccups along the way at least I can turn somewhere and not loose everything.

Is the current server up in some form?

If so, build another server with the latest Carbonio-CE.  Use Ubuntu as then you can always integrate CBPlus's 2FA at a later date and it's fairly cheap.

I'm starting to do this myself.  The CBPlus package does include a free tier which has cool features but 2FA is not one of them and is only included in the fee tier.

Recreate all accounts, distro lists, aliases etc... on your new server.

Then attempt an imapsync to transfer emails from your crippled Zimbra-OSE install to the new shiny Carbonio-CE install.

I'm uncertain if the DB being down will prevent imapsync from working but try it. 

Posted by: @aurfalien

↑

Is the current server up in some form?

If so, build another server with the latest Carbonio-CE.  Use Ubuntu as then you can always integrate CBPlus's 2FA at a later date and it's fairly cheap.

I'm starting to do this myself.  The CBPlus package does include a free tier which has cool features but 2FA is not one of them and is only included in the fee tier.

Recreate all accounts, distro lists, aliases etc... on your new server.

Then attempt an imapsync to transfer emails from your crippled Zimbra-OSE install to the new shiny Carbonio-CE install.

I'm uncertain if the DB being down will prevent imapsync from working but try it. 

Hi,

sorry for the late reply! 

I just managed to get the Zimbra system up and running. Now it seems that the damn things been compromised as I'm seeing some weird process taking up 500-600% CPU talking to some remote server - UH!

Well.... I got a post on the ZM Forum for that 

but anyway... DB is all up and running too now so just reading through the script here:

https://community.zextras.com/how-to-use-script-to-migrate-zimbra-to-carbonio-carbonio-ce/

I hope Carbonio is being actively developed as I'd hate to have what just happened on my Zimbra system happen again....