Topic: Fixing AFFA

[jameswilson]

I cant help on the code stuff but id love to see affa working fully.
id like to offer some cash towards it too.

id also like to pay my monthly fee to support sme but whenever I try to do this via paypal I get a paypal error. I want to do the year of gold support

[nicolatiana]

@Cash
Have you verified in a large (2-3 days) range of time (= not a temporary problem of PP) ?
Open a new post here, in General Disccussion, concerning the payment with more details about the error so that the Board member that deals with cash can contact PayPal support or verify eventual Sme site problems with site mantainer.

Thanks in advance

Nicola

[stephdl]

I cant help on the code stuff but id love to see affa working fully.
id like to offer some cash towards it too.

id also like to pay my monthly fee to support sme but whenever I try to do this via paypal I get a paypal error. I want to do the year of gold support

it works for me but of course i do not go after the paypal login. I have used the donation menu in the forum.

do you use the paypal account in the forum or the paypal logo on the main wiki page

thanks to help the project with your donation

[nicolatiana]

The actual situation of Affa 2.x is that a medium number of open Bugs (maybe "minor") is in waiting list.
Shouldn't we try to resolve them having so a 2.x Affa version full functional in Sme 8/9 (maybe two different release are needed) env and then consider to take advantage of Affa 3 for Sme 9 only, using the experience acquired bug-tracking 2.x  ?

We must think that it will take a resonable range of time, not to have Sme 9 released (I think the developement has reached an high level) but for 8 to 9 migration of existing users.
In my situation, for example, the 8 to 9 upgrade will be planned when customers will change their servers so I do not plan to have a "production" 9 up&running before 2015; having a Affa 3 Contrib working only on Sme9 wouldn't be a good choice.

my 2c 

Nicola

[idp_qbn]

So true, nicolatiana!
We have just release 8.1 a few weeks ago. That will be the production server for some time to come for me - and for many others, I suspect, unless an easy migration to 9 is available (ie by upgrade rather than re-install). And even then, it will be sometime before I can get an opportunity to do the upgrade.

For that reason, fixing AFFA v2.x is my main concern. The "rise" function is SO important when supporting users in remote locations. Remember, AFFA as we know it was written for SME Server and the functionality it offers suits me fine.

Cheers 
Ian

[nicolatiana]

In place migration 8 ---> 9 99% will never be available due to mainstream (Centos 6) limitations.
On the other hand I tested (and some other people did) on console a backup to usb of 8 - new install 9 with restore from usb and worked fine.
(http://forums.contribs.org/index.php/topic,50573.0.html)

Cheers

Nicola

[idp_qbn]

Thank you again, nicolatiana - that's good to know. 

I was a little worried about the time involved since one of the servers I look after has over 620 Gb of SME + data.

In their case I will be recommending they get new equipment at the same time which will simplify the process a little.

Now, when we get AFFA (with the "rise" funtion) fixed for SME8 and SME 9, then the downtime will be quite short .....

Cheers
Ian

[janet]

idp_qbn

This Howto is probably still a viable alternative to use, & ideally suited to restoring to new hardware.
It will avoid needing to perform the backup first, which can take a long time when there is a lot of data.
I have not tested it myself from sme 8 to sme 9, but I assume it would work, or could be made to work, relatively simply.

http://wiki.contribs.org/UpgradeDisk

[idp_qbn]

Janet, thank you for that. Looks good.
I will try it out on a VM setup to get familiar with the steps.

Still, AFFA remains the simplest way - I have recently done a swap from one server to another, both SME8 but the older one was way underpowered, and AFFA worked.

The only hitch was that on reboot (after rise) the newer machine stopped at the point of assigning network cards in the "applying configuration changes" phase. Manual intervention was required to tell the server to use the new NIC.

After that, everything went smoothly. A lengthy check of data showed all data was copied and present and seemed to have the correct permissions.

I must add that this was my home-based system (server-only) and no-one here uses horde, nor do we host web-sites. The server is just a plain file-server for sharing and storage.

However, I do support two sets of remote user, one local and one 300 Km away, so the "rise" function of AFFA has in the past provided a good way of getting them back on-line quickly. With this 'stickiness' about the NIC that I recently experienced, that may no longer be the case.

Still, over the phone, I could probably talk someone through re-setting the NIC ....

Once again, thank you for showing me another way. All knowledge is good!

Cheers
Ian

[stephdl]

some frenchies are working on affaV3 on sme, you should take a look http://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7633#c22 and provide some tests.

[nicolatiana]

Going to test in this week.

Nicola

[stephdl]

thanks nicola

[nicolatiana]

Test started; I'll put my notes both here and in bug-tracker (look only in bug-tracker  )

Nicola