Restoring to new server failing

johntucker

Greetings,

I am in a very bad way.

Background: I have been running an older version of mailcow from ₂₀₂₄ on a Hostinger VPS of about 3 years with no trouble. I use the VPS and mailcow only to run the mail server for my family (myself, wife, two sons and one wife)
Recently Hostinger informed me that I would have to migrate the VPS from OpenVZ to KVM before the end of the year. I began the journey over the weekend. I first ran the mailcow backup and copied the files to my local computer. Unfortunately once I started the migration to the KVM VPS the OpenVZ VPS was lost to me and no longer accessible. I did not note the version of mailcow I was using. I then created the new ubuntu 24.04 VPS, installed the prerequisite items and docker. I cloned the current mailcow git and ran the restore. After that the wheels came off. mysql will not start and mailcow is not accessible. I logged into mysql and the user list if FUBAR there are two root users and three users with the ID of something I don’t remember. I tried again but now I can’t get to mysql. I get the error: Error response from daemon: Container {container id} is restarting, wait until the container is running.

Any suggestions on how to get out of the mess would be greatly appreciated.

adios,
jt

esackbauer

No wonder. You skipped several versions that also changed the mysql schemas.
This happens all the time with neglected mailcow installations, and not reading changelogs inbetween. You should really think of renting a managed mailcow from servercow.de
The only thing I could think of is to install an older version of mailcow which is closest to your old one. Then restore, try to get it running, and then update release by release until you are on latest.
See here:
https://community.mailcow.email/d/5693-cannot-start-after-upgrading-to-2025-12a

johntucker

Thanks for the suggestion.

I tried that and it didn’t work, I got the same results exactly. I installed the first 2024 version and restored to that. I should have mentioned this originally.

I saw no instructions to neglect. In fact just determining how to revert to an older version was not clear. If moving to a managed mailcow would get the left behind email data I would at least consider it.

I don’t have an interest in the latest version just something that works.

I was hoping for a hint as to fixing the database because that would involve correcting the 5 user entries rather than attempting to recover may tens of thousand email entries.

Ganzjahresgriller

I don’t mean to be rude, but are you sure you can and want to administer a server, especially a mail server? A server like that needs to be up-to-date and have all the necessary security patches. It’s a job that requires constant attention.

johntucker

You are not being rude.

I have heard this over and over for years.
I truth is I have been administrating a personal email server for maybe 20 years. First when Apple released their MacOS based server software and after that finally died I switched to mailcow. I have been running mailcow for at least three years without issue. Some think it is a big task but my experience is otherwise.

mailcow documentation is very lacking relative to my needs. I have spent countless hours attempting to get mailcow to just install correctly. Given the previous suggestion that the database schema had changed from the old version to the current version, I thought that was the source of the issue - restoring the backup from the 2024 version to the current mailcow version. I have found that is not the issue. I built a clean new VPS server downloaded all of the stable 2024 mailcow distributions & installed starting with the 2024.02 release. Guest what… mysql would not start which is exactly the issue I had with the current release. All of the other containers start but mysql (or whatever name it goes by now) just constantly fails and restarts. I searched here and found very little to help with mysql issues.

As it stands, if I could recover all of the mail and move to something else I would gladly do that. If there is someone that wants to make a little money I would gladly pay for the help.

Colin

Hi,

That MySQL container restart loop combined with the user table issues points to some specific problems that can be worked through methodically.

I would be happy to help you get this sorted and your mail recovered if you want some assistance.

You can reach out to me on my email here

Colin