How to set up a restore area

  • 7002221
  • 18-Dec-2008
  • 03-Aug-2018

Environment

Novell GroupWise 2012
Novell GroupWise 8
Novell GroupWise 7
Novell GroupWise 6.5
Novell GroupWise 6

Situation

  • How to set up a restore area
  • Back Up and Restore Mail for GroupWise 6, 6.5, 7 and 8.
  • Restore Deleted Mail.
  • Restoring GroupWise Databases from backup
  • Recover deleted mail from backup
  • Using restore area management in GroupWise 6, 6.5, 7 and 8.
  • Recovering accidentally deleted mail
  • 8209 trying to restore delete mail (incorrect configuration)

Resolution

Steps to correct:

If the user was deleted there are a couple of options to bring the user with the correct FID back in to the GroupWise system.   If the user was not deleted and the need is to retrieve accidentally deleted mail, then move to "Setting Up a Restore Area".

To create a user in the GroupWise system with a specific FID follow one of the following solutions:

  1. Create a new user and modify the FID to be the needed FID see solution How to create a GroupWise user with a specific File ID (FID) for accessing an archive, or restoring a deleted user.
  2. How to import a user with their FID into GroupWise 10009522
  3. For GroupWise 6.5 and above you can restore the users account using the new feature for "Recover GW account" see Tid 10082831.  You will need to have a back up of the wpdomain.db from a time before the user was deleted.
Documentation for GroupWise 6.   Under the heading Installation:  Follow the links to / What's New in GroupWise 6 / GroupWise Administration / Smarter Backup and Restore / Restoring GroupWise Databases from Backup / Restoring Mailbox Items.

NOTE:  One way to find the FID number for the user is to check for the user name in past GWCheck logs.  GWCheck logs are stored in the Post Office WPSCOUT/ OFS directory.

Setting Up a Restore Area:

The first step in creating a restore area is to restore a post office directory from back up to a temporary location.  It is recommended to restore everything that was in the post office, including WPHOST.DB, NGWGUARD.DB, OFUSER directory, OFMSG directory and OFFILES directories.

A restore area is a location you designate to hold a backup copy of a post office so that you or GroupWise client users can access it to retrieve mailbox items that are unavailable in your live GroupWise system.  Once you have created the restore area you can keep back ups of the GroupWise system in this area by backing up regularly to the location or by backing up only when needed.

  1. To set up a restore area:
    In ConsoleOne, click Tools > GroupWise System Operations > Restore Area Management.
    The Restore Area Directory Management dialog box lists any restore areas that currently exist in your GroupWise system.
    Click Create to set up a new restore area. (The restore path cannot have a folder with more than 8 characters in it.)  You need to use a 8.3 standard for directory naming.
    On the Identification tab, specify a unique name for the new restore area. If desired, provide a lengthier description to further identify the restore area.
  2. In the UNC Path field, browse to and select an existing directory or specify the full path to a new directory that you want to create and use as a restore area., which will be created as the restore area is set up.

    ** It is often misunderstood what the path to the restore are should include.  The path should define all parent and child directories all the way down to the directory where the restored "wphost.db" is located but not including the file wphost.db.  Insure that you create the path correctly when defining the restore area.
  3. If the Restore Area is on Linux, fill in the Linux Path (conditional) filed with the Restore Area path even if it is the same as the UNC Path field.
  4. Click Membership > Add > select the post offices or users that need access to the new restore area > click OK to add them to the membership list.  When the membership list is complete, click OK to create the new restore area.  If you display the Post Office Settings page for a post office that has a restore area assigned to it, you see that the Restore Area field has been filled in.
  5.  If the restore area is located on a separate server then the PostOffice, or user, that is being restored, the ofviews folder may be needed in the restore area PostOffice to avoid the 8209 error.  This folder is typically not backed up by most programs as it is usually not needed.
  6. The 8209 error can also be caused by incorrect DNS configuration when the restore area is on a different server from the live Post Office.  Make sure the two servers can ping each other by name to avoid this problem.
Restoring a User's Mailbox Items

After you have set up a restore area and placed a backup copy of a post office into it, you can restore a user's mailbox items for the user or allow them to restore on their own.  To allow the user to do this task see below.
  1. In ConsoleOne, browse to and select a User object for which you need to restore mailbox items.
  2. Click Tools > GroupWise Utilities > Backup/Restore Mailbox.  The Restore tab is automatically selected for you, with the restore area and directory location displayed for verification.
  3. Click Yes to restore the selected user's mailbox items into his or her mailbox.Notify the user and explain that he or she may want to delete unwanted restored items manually.
Restored items that are not accessed in any way will remain in the mailbox for seven days even if there is a clean up policy to remove items newer than the restored items. After seven days they will be deleted because they exceed the age limit for active mailbox items.

Letting Users Restore Their Own Mailbox Items

After you have set up a restore area and given users access to it, users can selectively restore individual items into their mailboxes. This saves you the work of restoring mailbox items for users and it also saves users the work of deleting unwanted restored items.  This is also a feature that you can provide on a ongoing bases by always keeping a current copy of the post office in the restore area.

After a restore area has been set up:
  1. In the GroupWise client > click File > Open Backup. Browse to and select the restore area directory > click OK.
  2. In the Password field, type your GroupWise password > click OK to access the backup copy of your mailbox.
  3. Retrieve individual items as needed.
  4. The backup copy of your mailbox offers basic features such as Read, Search, and Undelete so that you can locate and retrieve the items you need.
  5. When you are finished restoring items to your live mailbox, click File > Open Backup again to remove the check mark from the Open Backup option and return to your live mailbox.

Additional Information

Formerly known as TID# 10076955
 
Accidentally deleted users from post office.
When the restore area is on a server or volume other then the server or volume where the live post office resided you will need to have at least GroupWise 6.5. support pack 2.  You will also need to add the /user /pass to the post office configuration file in sys:\system to allow the POA to log in to that location and access the restore area.  After adding the /user /pass you also need to restart POA.

Also, be sure the live PO server can ping the restore area server by name.  If unable to ping by name add an entry to sys:\etc\host in the live PO server with the info for the restore area server.  After making changes to the 'hosts' file, the server has to be restarted.
Addition information and troubleshooting tips follow.
Address books are not restored during this process.
It may be required to give both the Post Office and the User objects read and write access to the restore area directory for the restore option to work.
In some cases your restore software will add a read only attribute to the restored post office directory.  This will make the mail available and seen when accessing the restore are but not allow the user to move the item back in to the live post office in box.  Insure your restore area does not have a read only attribute.
If the back up appears to not contain message expected.

It is important that you understand the restore option compares current user database pointers to the back up location user database pointers, therefor if the mail item is in the current user database it will not be shown in the back location while looking at the users mail through the GroupWise client back up option.  In many cases when a user cannot see a mail item in the back up location the item was found to exist in the live mailbox.  Most often this item is in the trash and must be removed in order for the user to see the item in the back up location.
The restore area must be within a directory and not at the root of a volume.  IE: //servername/volrestore:/dir

Error: "D069"   The restore area is at the root of the volume or not other wise defined correctly.

Example of what to expect on the POA in VERBOSE logging.

//-------------------------------

18:16:06 2DE MTP:  Received file: FS1/SYS:\gw65\po1\wpcsout\ofs\2\a124ee66.001, Size: 486
18:16:06 270 Processing a124ee66.001
18:16:06 270 Processing admin task: Full User Restore
18:16:06 270 Remote Request From: user1
18:16:06 270 Advancing todos:  
18:16:06 270 Added item to download:
18:16:07 270 Added item to download:
18:16:07 270 Added item to download:
18:16:07 270 Added item to download:
18:16:07 270 Added item to download:
18:16:07 270 Admin task completed: OK
18:16:07 270  Processed OK

-------------------------------//

Explanation:
  "a124ee66.001"  is the admin message from the MTA in the #2 folder (admin messages)
  "user1" is the name of the user being restored.

If you do not see this happening, make sure the MTA is up and running and communicating with the POA.  Also change the Post office access mode to CLIENT SERVER & DIRECT (CS&D) to see if this makes any difference.  (you may have to rebuild the Post office and also use the newly rebuilt copy of the wphost.db in the restore area so the restore area will contain a copy of wphost.db that is set to be CS&D.

Note Idea for allowing client access to MULTIPLE restore areas:  If you have more than one restore area and want the client to be able to choose which restore area to connect to do the following:  In ConsoleOne, go to "restore area management".  Remove all definitions for the restore areas for that post office except one of them.  Edit the remaining definition and modify the path so that it points to an empty folder like po4x.  Example: If the post office folder were called //restore/po4,  create an empty folder called   //restore/po4x. Now when you try to access the restore area from the client you get a "D069" error and an opportunity to correct the path to one of the valid restore areas.  If you rename your restore areas like po4a, po4b, po4c, etc., the client will only have to change the x to an a, b, or c.  Also, in order to change to another restore area you must exit the GroupWise client in order to be prompted again for the "d069".

Note: Address Book Restore is not supported by Restore Area Management. Address Book can be restored by connecting the Backup Post Office directly via /ph switch. If there is any access issue. Follow TID# 3646461  to access the Backup Post Office.