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Desperate help needed - user templates

Offline janet

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Re: Desperate help needed - user templates
« Reply #15 on: October 03, 2014, 08:24:33 PM »
Allan Pritchard

Quote
As for cause I am unsure ......

Well your whole backup & restore methodology was incorrect (I understand due to forced circumstances).

As I read it you were manually restoring to a system where you had manually recreated users & ibays & so on.
I see no mention of you restoring the mysql databases.
Refer my earlier comments in this thread:
 "Just moving the data is probably not sufficient, as you have not restored the mysql databases (from the dump file), so that would explain why webmail is not accessible (ie wrong password). It may also explain other issues. Probably you have moved the dump file back to the server (with other data) but not ran the suitable commands to restore the contents to the mysql database system".

You mention some db settings that you had to recreate, this indicates that the configuration database (& possibly other config db's)  eg accounts) were not correctly backed up & restored (or transferred), & within this config database & others are various interrelated user account settings.

Restores, (even manual data transfer) are recommended to be done to a clean server with no users & ibays etc.

The way you recreated your system is inconsistent with sme server backup & restore procedures & doing so usually results in a server that is in an inconsistent state. eg you may have users & ibays that you can see in the file system, but server manager has no knowledge of them etc.

For test & to improve your knowledge & understanding of sme server, try restoring a backup to a system where you already created some users & ibays, you will end up with orphaned users & ibays &/or wrong data in the ibays.

Thus your need to fiddle with settings & resave configurations etc (as I suggested), so the sme system knew correctly about everything that was on the server & reset correct permissions & ownership etc.
I learnt this myself by testing restores to systems in different ways etc.

Tarring data on the original & then copying that tar gz file across & then untarring is the best way to preserve ownership & permissions. Also maybe the source you rsync copied from was incorrect.

As for Affa backup server, you really need to test your whole backup & restore (or rise) procedures & prove they work, as clearly something was wrong & you were not able to really upon it at a crucial time.
Having only one backup location & effectively one backup that you are totally dependent upon in a worst case scenario, is not good policy.

Maybe having a second backup to local large USB with daily incrementals for a one year cycle (365 days) created using the built in backup system (backup to workstation to local USB) running at a different time than your affa backup, would be a good idea.

« Last Edit: October 03, 2014, 08:34:26 PM by janet »
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