[Users] March 9, 2021 Zeta Alliance Conference Call Summary

[Randy Leiker]

Hello Zeta Alliance Community, 

Here is a summary of this week’s conference call. A few brief reminders: 


    * Conference calls are every Tuesday and open to all using either the FreeConferenceCall.com VoIP app or via a dial-in number: [ https://www.freeconferencecall.com/wall/zetalliance | https://www.freeconferencecall.com/wall/zetalliance ] 
    * Each week’s call agenda can be found at: [ https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xDyBJFjnfZYxuXJHiDzsXjjMuGGtIl7J | https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xDyBJFjnfZYxuXJHiDzsXjjMuGGtIl7J ] 
    * A copy of each week’s summary is also posted to the Zimbra Forums: 
        * All Prior Months: [ https://forums.zimbra.org/viewforum.php?f=9 | https://forums.zimbra.org/viewforum.php?f=9 ] 
        * February 2021 : [ https://forums.zimbra.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=69470 | https://forums.zimbra.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=69470 ] 
        * March 2021 : [ https://forums.zimbra.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=69488 | https://forums.zimbra.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=69488 ] 
    * Constructive feedback on these call summaries is always welcome. 

March 9, 2021 

Zimbra 8.8.15 Patch 19 Experiences 
Mark S. said he installed 8.8.15 Patch 19, and has had no problems so far. He did however encounter one possible issue in Zimbra’s mailbox.log: Code:mail.TOO_MUCH_METADATA Arg:(limit, NUM, "32768"). He has opened a Zimbra Support case for further investigation. 

Jorge C. said he updated to 8.8.15 P19. A week after installing the patch, he began having an issue opening Zimbra Docs Server documents in both the Chrome and Edge web browsers, but this does not affect Firefox or Safari. The error he sees when opening a document is: “Document load failed, it is possible the document is damaged or more resources are needed. Please contact support.” He does not think the issue is occurring with the Zimbra Docs Server, since if it were, it should affect all web browsers, rather than just Chrome and Edge. Cine suggested activating developer mode in the Zimbra Web Client like: https://mail.example.com/?dev=1 . This will clear all of the caches and make it easier for Zimbra Support to diagnose. He also suggested that Edge and Chrome may share some of their browser cache too since they are both using Chromium. Jorge said he tried developer mode, but it did not appear to provide any insights. Cine said in developer mode, Jorge can check the browser’s JavaScript console for errors, which will be more readable than the minified version. Jorge said he also opened support cases with both Zimbra and Zextras to troubleshoot further. 

Experiences With the Zimbra Connector Partial Synchronization Feature and Feedback 
Noah P. said he began testing the new partial synchronization feature for Zimbra Connector for Outlook ( [ https://zimbra.github.io/zm-windows-comp/latest/ZCS_Connector_For_Outlook_User_Guide.html#_partialcustomized_sync | https://zimbra.github.io/zm-windows-comp/latest/ZCS_Connector_For_Outlook_User_Guide.html#_partialcustomized_sync ] ) and wanted to know what the experience would be like for mailbox users. He asked how the purge process worked. John H. said that if you set the partial sync feature in the Zimbra Connector for 60 days, anything older gets moved to the “Zimbra Trash” folder, that is a sub-folder of the regular Trash folder. Noah P. said that he was concerned having two folders called Trash would be confusing for users. John H. said he agrees and thinks that having older messages purge immediately would be best, rather than moving them to the trash sub-folder on the client-side in Outlook. Noah P. suggested perhaps renaming the folder to something similar to “Sync Purges” that might be less confusing. John H. said he wrote a new Wiki page ( [ https://wiki.zimbra.com/wiki/Zco_partial_sync | https://wiki.zimbra.com/wiki/Zco_partial_sync ] ) that provides additional details on this feature. He has plans to expand this Wiki page with a better explanation of how the message purge process works. Noah asked, if you set the Zimbra Connector Partial Sync feature for 60 days, and items older than this date are moved to the trash folder, does that means that the retention for deleted items is set to 60 days, or does it mean that the deleted items hang around for 120 days? John H. confirmed that items are deleted after 60 days. John H. added that if you set the Partial Sync feature for 60 days, then later change it to 90 days, it will not bring back messages older than 60 days. The only way to get those older items back in Outlook is to delete and re-create the Outlook profile, thereby causing Outlook to perform a full re-synchronization of the complete mailbox from the Zimbra server. 

Zimbra Docs Server 
Chad said that he recently rolled out Zimbra Docs Server and has seen some issues where manual document saves fail, especially when working on collaborative document editing with team members. Cine suggested running the latest version of everything (Zimbra, Docs Server, etc.) as compared to a mix of old and new versions of the components, since this will often remedy these types of issues. Chad said he did not have the latest Zimbra patch installed, so he will try installing it to see if that resolves the issue. 

Mark S. asked, when upgrading an existing Zimbra Docs server, is it still unsupported to copy the configuration file from the existing Docs server, deploy a new Docs server, then paste in the configuration file to the new Docs server for an upgrade? Cine said he did not know if this is officially supported. Mark S. also asked how does he know if he is running the latest version of the a Zimbra Docs Server? He wanted to know if Zextras sends a new Docs Server binary to Zimbra monthly or only when it is updated. John H. said that normally a new Docs Server version will be announced in the release notes of new Zimbra patches. 

Follow-Up: Purging Expired Mailbox Data From S3 Backups 
Following up on the March 2nd Zeta Alliance Call discussion related to an issue purging expired mailbox data backed up to S3 storage, and mailbox corruption that seems to affect empty mailboxes that are backed up, Mark S. said that in his testing of Zimbra’s Centralized Storage feature, he has only encountered the bug related to the purging of expired data from his S3 storage, but has not seen mailbox corruption due to empty mailboxes. Matthew F. said he currently suspects the mailbox corruption issue might be due to a busy mailbox where items are frequently added/removed that he is currently investigating. 

Improving S3 Throughput for Zimbra Backups and HSM 
Mark S. asked when using S3 for Zimbra backups, or as an HSM secondary volume, what are the recommended ways for improving the throughput to S3 in terms of items per second. Cine said he did not think there was any means to control this, but suggested to try using multiple S3 buckets, rather than a single bucket for everything. Cine also suggested considering using an SSD drive for the cache directory. Mark S. suggested an additional option of using a Ram disk, for the caching directory’s individual S3 buckets. Matthew F. said he will also give the Ram disk suggestion a shot to see if that helps provide a performance boost on a test server. 


Randy Leiker ( randy at skywaynetworks.com ) 
Skyway Networks, LLC 

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