Upgrading major pieces of core business support servers is fun! Note the heavy irony in “fun!”.

There are my running notes for upgrading a Zimbra 4.5.10 server to the latest Zimbra 5.0.11. When doing critical work like this, I keep running notes in case something doesn’t go right. Wish me luck.

Update: The upgrade went smoothly. Kudos to the Zimbra development team for what appeared to be a well thought-out and executed upgrade process.

1. Downloaded Zimbra 5.0.11 and extracted it to /tmp
2. Copied documentation to my workstation.
3. Shut down Zimbra.
   

   
   # su - zimbra
   $ zmcontrol stop
   

4. Take VMware snapshot
5. Install libtool-ltdl
   

   
   # yum install libtool-ltdl
   

6. Update all CentOS 5 packages. 久しぶり…。 (Been a while….)
   

   
   # yum update
   

7. Reboot the server since the kernel was updated.
8. Shut down Zimbra (again).
   

   
   # su - zimbra
   $ zmcontrol stop
   

9. Take VMware snapshot
10. cd to extracted Zimbra 5.0.11
11. Run the installer
    

    
    # ./install.sh
    

12. Accept default answer “yes” to verify the message store database
    

    
    Do you want to verify message store database integrity? [Y]
    Verifying integrity of message store databases. This may take a while.
    mysqld is alive
    Generating report
    No errors found
    

    Looks good.

13. Accept default answer “yes” to upgrade.
    

    
    Checking for installable packages

    Found zimbra-core
    Found zimbra-ldap
    Found zimbra-logger
    Found zimbra-mta
    Found zimbra-snmp
    Found zimbra-store
    Found zimbra-apache
    Found zimbra-spell
    Found zimbra-proxy

    The Zimbra Collaboration Suite appears already to be installed.
    It can be upgraded with no effect on existing accounts,
    or the current installation can be completely removed prior
    to installation for a clean install.

    Do you wish to upgrade? [Y]
    

14. I’m asked whether to install zimbra-proxy.
    

    
    Install zimbra-proxy [N]
    

    Googling to understand what this is.

15. The Zimbra Proxy Guide states that this is a proxy, implying a multi-server configuration. In the Zimbra forums an employee states, “No, under no circumstances should you enable that feature if you have a single server.” Case closed. Stick with the default “no”.
16. Now the installer is complaining about not running on an official RHEL5 machine.
    

    
    You appear to be installing packages on a platform different
    than the platform for which they were built.

    This platform is CentOS5
    Packages found: RHEL5
    This may or may not work.

    Installation can not continue without manual override.
    You can override this safety check with ./install.sh --platform-override
    

17. Fine. Override.
    

    
    # ./install.sh --platform-override
    

18. Accept default answer “yes” to verify the message store database
    

    
    Do you want to verify message store database integrity? [Y]
    

    Same result as before. Looks good.

19. Accept default answer “yes” to upgrade. Again.
    

    
    Do you wish to upgrade? [Y]
    

20. Accept default for "no" to zimbra-proxy.
    

    
    Install zimbra-proxy [N]
    

21. Type "Y" to ignore the non-RHEL5 complain.
    

    
    Install anyway? [N] Y
    

22. Type "Y" to keep going.
    

    
    The system will be modified. Continue? [N] Y
    

23. It's shutting down Zimbra.
24. It's removing existing packages.
25. It's removing "deployed webapp directories.
26. It's installing the new packages.
27. It's copying defaults
    

    
    Setting defaults from saved config in /opt/zimbra/.saveconfig/config.save
    HOSTNAME=XXXX.XXXXXXXX.com
    LDAPHOST=XXXX.XXXXXXXX.com
    LDAPPORT=389
    SNMPTRAPHOST=XXXX.XXXXXXXX.com
    SMTPSOURCE=XXXX@XXXXXXXX.com
    SMTPDEST=XXXX@XXXXXXXX.com
    SNMPNOTIFY=yes
    SMTPNOTIFY=yes
    LDAPROOTPW=XXXXXXXXX
    LDAPZIMBRAPW=XXXXXXXXX
    LDAPPOSTPW=
    LDAPREPPW=
    LDAPAMAVISPW=
    LDAPNGINXPW=
    

28. It's performing the upgrade.
    

    
    Upgrading from 4.5.10_GA_1575 to 5.0.11_GA_2695
    

29. Zzzzz… progressing nicely but taking a while…
30. Done. Answer with default.
    

    
    Notify Zimbra of your installation? [Yes]
    

31. OK. It's not done. It's still going.
32. Done for certain.
    

    
    Configuration complete - press return to exit
    

33. Check status of server.
    

    
    # su - zimbra
    $ zmcontrol status
    

    Everything is running.

34. Try accessing the server via the web interface.
35. Examined administrative account. All of the settings look right.
36. Examined web user interface. All of the settings look right. I think we're good to go.
37. Take VMware snapshot. Just in case.

1. Upgrading Zimbra 4.5.10 to 5.0.11 | James Reuben Knowles | usproxylist.com Says:
   January 4th, 2009 at 12:00 am

   [...] Upgrading Zimbra 4.5.10 to 5.0.11 | James Reuben Knowles [...]