I’ve used SME 7 as my home server for 3 years. I invested some time at the beginning but everything worked so well I pretty much forgot about it and definitely took SME for granted. I’ve recommended SME to several business friends over the years and decided to take a good look at what is going on.
My first attempt to download an iso was using the SME 8 B7 jigdo version while I read about my options. It kept attempting to add files but wouldn’t complete. I restarted it the next morning but got the same thing. I never used this method before but it appears to have downloaded all the files but they did not match the template. I have a 689,953 KB file named smeserver-8.0beta7-i386.iso.tmp. I downloaded the 8.6 iso and quickly had an install CD. Is this a bug I should report?
While I read, I moved most of my files off SME7 planning to do a desktop backup and restore. About the time I finished moving files, I learned desktop restore was no more. About all that was left on SME7 was my configuration and email. I tried to use a USB flash drive. Backup wouldn’t recognize it until I formatted and labeled it. By this time my SME8 install was complete and the console was asking for my USB files. I completed the backup from the SME7 console, plugged the flash into SME8, let install complete and painlessly had a configured SME8 fully functional same as my SME7 on my network. While SME8 was rebooting I renamed my old SME7 server to avoid conflict. Very impressed.
After checking everything out, I attempted installing the many updates from the panel. It failed because of dependencies. I played with configuring yum setting from the command line and got all the updates before I expected. The install Software panel now showed everything up to date. My server would hang on a reboot or reconfigure command. It would go down but hang until I did a hard reset. This was a problem with my SME7. I understood it to be a known problem with some hardware at the time, so I gave up and accepted it. I now figure it was a local configuration problem. I did a new clean re-install without backup. The new server now rebooted without hang up. It also applied all updates from the Software installer panel without problem. I reconfigured everything; left both servers running and let my users move their files and email.
I installed DDclient and logwatch. A few other contribs I attempted to install failed, but that now appears to be mostly human error. This new SME 8.6 is performing flawlessly with very little input from me. Spam filter and anti virus working well as installed.
The only problem I’ve noticed … backup to flash fails with … Unable to mount workstation shared folder mount: can't find /media/smebkup in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab. Inserting the USB device on install seems to add the necessary config to fstab & mtab. The USB device does show in /media. I’m sure it’s an easy fix but there is way too much data for this backup now anyway.
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