Submitted by hescominsoon on Sun, 10/11/2009 - 07:39 Pro Licensee
once the upgrade was completed all of my domains were erased form virtualmin. I was able to import them all except for the e-mail boxes which it did not import. I can't recreate them because it says they already exist(which they do in postfix) How do i get my mailboxes back into virtualmin?
Status:
Closed (fixed)
Comments
What upgrade are you talking about?
There is no upgrade path that results in Virtualmin meta-data being lost. The only way I can imagine such a thing happening would be if you uninstalled Virtualmin (or Webmin), and then reinstalled. This would remove Virtualmin meta-data.
As for mailboxes...I'm not sure. I'll assign this to Jamie, as he probably knows the simplest way to bring them back under control of Virtualmin.
But, we should really figure out how to make sure this never happens again, as I'm pretty sure you've reported this same problem in the past. What exactly did you do when you "upgraded"? Using the recommended method of upgrading Virtualmin (using either the Virtualmin security updates module, or yum) will not cause this kind of data loss under any circumstances.
Submitted by hescominsoon on Sun, 10/11/2009 - 08:29 Pro Licensee Comment #3
I ran the upgrade to the latest version and logged out. Then virtualmin came up with some kind of perl error and would not load. Yes I did have to reinstall(sorry i omitted that). Just need to know how to get the mailboxes back into their respective domains..:)
Submitted by JamieCameron on Sun, 10/11/2009 - 11:35 Comment #4
Re-running the install script is a mistake, as it basically resets everything on your system.
When you did the import, it should have prompted you to enter a name for the mailbox users group for each domain, which is then used to detect mail users. Did you enter that correctly?
Submitted by hescominsoon on Sun, 10/11/2009 - 16:06 Pro Licensee Comment #5
apparently not. I left it on automatic Prefix for mail usernames and Group for mailbox user.
What should i have done if not used the automatic?
Submitted by hescominsoon on Sun, 10/11/2009 - 16:10 Pro Licensee Comment #6
well now i can't import anything it says a free admin group cannot be found as both emmanuelcomputerconsulting and emmanuelcomputerconsulting.com are both taken. What now?
Submitted by hescominsoon on Sun, 10/11/2009 - 16:36 Pro Licensee Comment #7
ahd to try several times but it decided to get the subservers finally..:)
Submitted by JamieCameron on Sun, 10/11/2009 - 19:45 Comment #8
Wait, so it is working now?
By the way, do you perhaps have backups of your virtual servers? If so, doing a restore may be easier.. you can restore just the Virtualmin settings with the "Just re-import server details?" feature on the restore form.
Then virtualmin came up with some kind of perl error and would not load. Yes I did have to reinstall(sorry i omitted that).
These two sentences don't go together. ;-)
The answer to an error is to file a ticket, and definitely not to install Virtualmin again. The only time you "have to reinstall" is when you have started over from a fresh OS installation or starting over on a new server. It never makes sense to reinstall on an existing system, because it will break things...that's why there's a big giant warning in the install script that says the following when you first start it, and you have to answer "y" for it to proceed past this warning:
This script is not intended to update your system! It should only be used to install Virtualmin, on a supported OS. If you have previously installed Virtualmin via this script, upgrades and updates should be handled within Virtualmin itself. Once Virtualmin is installed, you never need to run this script again.
So, to repeat, never reinstall Virtualmin in response to an error, as it is never the right solution to whatever problem you happen to have. install.sh is for installing Virtualmin. It is not for fixing errors or updating the system.
I'm not sure how else I could word this warning to make it more clear that running install.sh is for installing Virtualmin and nothing else. And, I'm certain we've had this conversation before...yep:
https://www.virtualmin.com/node/10727
What can we do to convince you to stop uninstalling/reinstalling Virtualmin and expecting anything other than bad things? It's always a bad idea and will always delete the Virtualmin meta-data that is needed for Virtualmin to work the way it is supposed to. Also, make sure you're keeping good backups. With instincts that always tell you to uninstall and reinstall anytime anything ever looks funny, you're going to need them a lot.
Submitted by hescominsoon on Sat, 10/24/2009 - 12:27 Pro Licensee Comment #10
i did not use install.sh to upgrade. I used virt itself to update virt and it bombed. I never said i used install.sh to upgrade i said i used install.sh to reinstall AFTER i uninstalled.
never mind..i fixed it myself..i had to uninstall virt...again..then reboot and reinstall...again...then had to run the import multiple times to get it to figure out things were there. luckily my webiste continued working fine without virt at this point.
OK, I'll mark this ticket closed. Thanks for the update.
I would recommend coming to us with problem reports in the future before you decide to take drastic steps like uninstalling/reinstalling, since fixing a system with data loss (as happens when you uninstall Virtualmin without good backups) is a lot harder than fixing a system with minor configuration issues.
Submitted by Issues on Sun, 11/08/2009 - 01:28 Comment #12
Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.