Topic: How do I restore user accounts from a 6.x server?

[rbowers]

I've been running SME server for *many* years, back when it was e-smith. My old i486/233MHz/64MB server is way out of date and needs to be updated.

I bought a new server and loaded SME 7.2 onto it. Now I need to get all my user accounts from my old 6.0.1_01 server to the new server.

I tried doing a "backup to desktop" from my old server. I get a smeserver.tgz file that is about 16GB. Then I tried to "Restore from desktop" from my new 7.2 server. Nothing happens. Nothing. The web page never moves.

I tried using FTP from my Windows server where the smeserver.tgz file lives. If I login to root and do a "put smeserver.tgz" I get a message saying

"550 smeserver.tgz: No such file or directory"

????

I also tried the affa procedure described in the forums here. When I got to the "affa --run prodserv" stage, it took only seconds to run and there was no "/var/affa/prodserv/rpms-missing.txt" file created.

Also, when I try to run "yum update" (or "yum <anything>") on my old 6.0.1 server I get:

[root@ponyexpress functions]# yum update
Gathering package information from servers
Getting headers from: SME Server 6.0.1 os
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "/usr/bin/yum", line 44, in ?
    yummain.main(sys.argv[1:])
  File "yummain.py", line 144, in main
  File "clientStuff.py", line 688, in get_package_info_from_servers
  File "clientStuff.py", line 128, in HeaderInfoNevralLoad
ValueError: unpack list of wrong size

So, how can I get all my account information from my old server to my new server?

~Rick

[CharlieBrady]

So, how can I get all my account information from my old server to my new server?

Copy your backup file to a USB hard drive. Install SME 7.3 on your new hardware. Choose the restore from backup option during first bootup.

[rbowers]

Thank you, Charlie. I will give that a shot. It may be a week or so before I get a chance.

I've already installed 7.2 and ran "yum update" and a few other things. Do I need to reinstall and start from scratch or can I boot and still get the "restore from backup" option?

Can I just copy the smeserver.tgz file to any USB drive or must it be the only file? Can the USB drive have NTFS or must it be a linux partition?

~Rick

[warren]

rbowers,

If your old sme 6.0.1_01 was in a raid setup ( ie 2 disks using software raid ) you could follow
the instructions here :
http://wiki.contribs.org/UpgradeDisk

Ihave used this in the past and have found that it works expetionally !
Remember that you will have to re-install the old custom contribs ( if any where installed on the old
6.0.1_01 ) onto your new SME 7.3 system.

[rbowers]

Thank you Warren,

I don't have a RAID configuration on my old server. But I suppose I could shut it down and move the disk over to the new server and follow the same process, right?

It's amazing my old server is still running. It's well over 6 years old and just sits in the corner running and running and running. When I moved about 4 years ago its uptime was 362 days. It would have been more but I had to re-boot to make software changes so the clock reset.

I've got to get the data onto a new server before Murphy finds it. 

~Rick

[janet]

warren

If your old sme 6.0.1_01 was in a raid setup ( ie 2 disks using software raid ) you could follow
the instructions here :
http://wiki.contribs.org/UpgradeDisk

You do not need to be using software RAID (or any particular hardware for that matter), to follow that UpgradeDisk procedure.
It is performoing a normal restore, where the source files just happen to be on the old hard disk rather than in a seperate tar.gz file.

[janet]

rbowers

I don't have a RAID configuration on my old server. But I suppose I could shut it down and move the disk over to the new server and follow the same process, right?

Yes.
Make sure you follow all steps particularly the pre-backup on the old server, and the steps re re custom templates etc.

[CharlieBrady]

Can I just copy the smeserver.tgz file to any USB drive or must it be the only file? Can the USB drive have NTFS or must it be a linux partition?

It can't be NTFS.