This article will cover the WHY and the HOW of restoring mail files without using the KMS recover tool
WHY would you not want to use the KMS recover tool.
1. The KMS recover tools requires that you stop the KMS in order to restore. This is an interruption in a live mail server which can bring a company to a halt. We do not always have the opportunity to wait until off-time to restore important data.
2. The KMS tool has the ability to restore specific folder, will overwrite said folder. For example if Julia asks me to restore all the message in her in box before September second, restoring that INBOX using KMS recover for September second would erase the entire contents of that inbox and replace it with the contents of september second. This is not always what is desired.
How to do this properly.
1. isolate and decompress the archive zip file for the client. This is often the most time consuming part of the restore. Especially if there are quite a number of zip files to look through. I suggest you install some sort of client to look at the zip contents. I suggest the zip quick look plug in found at:
http://d.hatena.ne.jp/t_trace/20071125/p2
Without such a utility you will need to de compress as many zip files as it takes to isolate the user folder in question. It is important to know that if the user account is over 1 GB the backup process will split it between multiple zip files.
2. Once we have isolated the files to be restored we copy these files to the Archive directory as indicated in the Administrative Console under the Archive and Backup tab. Once these files are copied to the Archive directory KMS will index it so it will become available to the Mail Admin web interface
3. log into the mail admin web interface. Expand the Archive folder and you should see a listing for the files you copied to the archive folder.
4. Now we need to get these files into the target folder. This can be accomplished several ways;
A. the easiest way to restore these files is when you have the password for the user in question. If this is the case you can access the web interface for that user. In the Admin account create a public folder of the time required. A mail folder for mail, a contact folder if you are transferring contacts, or a calendar folder for transferring calendar items. Right click on the new public folder and change the access rights so the admin account and the user account in question both have administrative rights. Once this public folder has been created copy the files from the archive folder to the public folder. Usually by right clicking on the archive folder and choosing “Move or Copy all” and choosing the public folder for the destination. Once that copy process is done you can log into the web interface for the account in question and proceed to copy the messages out of the public folder to the folder in their account.
This will give you the option to see what messages are there so you don’t over write them.
repeat this process as necessary to restore the message to the folders required.
B. If you don’t have the password to the user account. You can still accomplish a lot but it will require the use of the terminal on the mail server. I would suggest you try your best to get the mail password for the account or change the mail password for the account to grant you access. If you cannot get the password or it would really be bad to change the password you can proceed in the following manner.
It is important that the actual message copying take place in the web interface. This is so kerio can properly name the messages and that the index files are correct.
In the Admin web interface create a new folder named temp_restore. This folder will be empty with nothing important. At this point you will need ssh access to the mail server and grant yourself root access. Navigate to the mail store directory and to the account of the person you are going to restore message for. Use the ditto command to copy the contents of the target restore folder ( in this example the inbox of Renee ) to the temp_restore.
When you refresh your web interface for the mail Admin, temp_restore will gain all of the properties of the Renee’s inbox. You can proceed to copy the files form your archive folder to this temp_restore. This will preserve message numbers and index files. Once the copy is complete you can return to the terminal and reverse the direction of the copy. This will maker Julia’s inbox the same as your temp_restore.
This method is trickier with the inbox as it is possible that message have come in during the time you would making the copies. Other folders are not quite so sensitive to this process.
This process can be time consuming but it is sometimes best to work slowly without stopping the mail server for everyone