Topic: Restore Trouble with 7.1

[Hummdis]

Hi,
I'm migrating my SME 5.6 machine to a new box with 7.1 installed.  I have done the fresh install of 7.1.  When I go to the "Backup or Restore" panel, without making any other modifications, I choose "Restore from Desktop" (because that's where my backup file is located), then click "Perform".  Next, I choose the "smeserver.tgz" (2.20GB) file that's on my desktop and click the "Restore" button, nothing happens.  It just sits there.

I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.1 (Windows, Linux and Mac), but I've tried it in IE 7, Konqueror, Opera (Windows), and Safari.  I click the "Restore" button and nothing happens.  No network traffic, no hard drive spinning (on the new machine that is), and no other indication that it's working.

Am I doing something wrong?

[pfloor]

Your backup file is too big.  There is a 2 Gig limit.

[Hummdis]

Well that sucks!  Just out of curiosity, why does the restore panel state that I need to make sure that since I have 32GB of available space, my backup file cannot be larger than 16GB if the limit is 2GB?

Can you suggest any sort of work around at all or do I need to go through my existing server and get rid of about 300 megs of stuff?

Thanks for the help!

-Jeff

[raem]

Hummdis

This is a long standing known issue, search on backup.
The wording in the backup panel in sme7 has been improved to be more meaningful.

> Can you suggest any sort of work around...

Search is your friend
http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=35672.0
Just temporarily move your data to /tmp, do the backup which will be without the data, and then manually copy the data after the restore.

You should be aware of potential problems doing restores from earlier sme versions, see
http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=30745.0

and you may even prefer to use the method outlined towards the end of that thread using the restore from disk function.

[Hummdis]

Well, I can understand that this is a known issue, but I'm taking over from the previous admin (as most admins say right?). So I don't know a ton about SME, but I like it thus far.  This has really been the only issue that I've encountered.

I have searched (I don't like posting unless I feel I have to) and I did actually read those topics, but I couldn't find anywhere about having trouble restoring that specified that there was a size limit on the archive that you can restore.  If it's been an issue for so long, why has it not been addressed?  System backups are much larger now, I've only got 8 users, 15 or so different email accounts,three websites (not very big at all) and the actual email.  I could only imagine the problems this causes on larger installations.

I'll work on that tomorrow and get the system taken care of.  I think if I omit the websites I'll be fine, I mean, I'm only about 300 megs from the limit.  If that doesn't work, it's the work around that I go.

Thank you again for the help, it's been most beneficial!  

[raem]

Hummdis

>...but I couldn't find anywhere about having trouble restoring that
> specified that there was a size limit on the archive that you can restore.  

Search again on backup & go back a year or two & read more slowly, there are dozens of posts about  this, some fairly recently too.

> If it's been an issue for so long, why has it not been addressed?

It's being addressed, but no one can find the exact cause of the limit, again if you search you will see numerus threads discussing this, also look at the devinfo mail list archives & bugzilla posts.
The very popular backup2ws & backup2 used rar which was not GPL so the developers never included that in the base. Recent work with dar (which is GPL) is promising, so in time there may be a better backup solution as part of the sme base code.

>  System backups are much larger now...
> I could only imagine the problems this causes on larger installations.

There are add on contribs that have been available for a few years now eg backup2ws, backup2, dar2 that cover this requirement as well as e-smith-backup-dar implementation & some others too, search and you will find them. The first three create a backup file split into contiguous 2Gb parts to workaround the problem.

You could always install one of the above & do a Disaster recovery type backup, see dmay contrib area.
http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/contribs/dmay/