Topic: Upgrade 7.6 to 8.1 - can't find the correct instructions

[judgej]

judgej

The admin console backup to USB creates a single smserver..tgz file...

Ah, I see now. With the number of images on the server, this may well blow the available space limit on the internal HD before it moves the archive to the external drive. I'll give it another half hour to see exactly how fast it is filling up, and then may just have to abort and try the other method you recommend.

[TerryF]

Good advice Janet, hope you and Brad have a great Xmas

[janet]

judgej

I'll give it another half hour to see exactly how fast it is filling up, and then may just have to abort and try the other method you recommend.

That will probably be a waste of time as you will have to start again & wait another 10 hours or more.
If this is an emergency backup you are trying to create, then it is probably best to be PATIENT & just wait for it to finish.

Note a admin console backup to USB is the simplest one to restore, as you are asked to connect the USB drive containing the smeserver.tgz backup file during the first boot of the newly installed sme9.0 OS.

If it's not yet clear to you from other comments & my comments, that backup is likely to take a VERY LONG TIME, maybe 12, 15 or even 20 hours at your current rate of progress.

Re the server manager Backup to Workstation, option to backup to local USB drive, the backup will take just as long to complete.
Note it will create a dar format file, or if you specifiy it, the backup can be broken into a number of parts, so a number of files.
Refer to Backup in the Manual.
This type of backup (xxxx.dar) can only be restored from the server manager panel & is not supported by the first boot restore option which is looking for a smeserver.tgz file

[judgej]

Well, it finished. It got down to the last few Gbyte of internal disk space and I quickly deleted a few extra Gbyte of files and it just squeezed on. If I hadn't removed those few files, it would have failed right at the last point due to lack of disk space. However, it did not write to the external USB drive, though the backup did go through the motions of telling it was done and to remove the external drive before continuing.

I've done a search and found the file in /mnt/bootstrap-console-backup/smeserver.tgz (361,045,093,935 bytes) I'm manually copying that file to the external drive now. Hopefully that is all a restore will need. There aren't any other files in there.

It took about 30 hours to create the tgz. I'm going to leave it overnight to copy to the external drive. It's a step forward

[TerryF]

I would be a little "leery" with it not moving the backup file to the USB..any messages in the logs etc

If the file is OK, you can open it as it is just a standard archive, once copied see if it will open.

[janet]

TerryF

...hope you and Brad have a great Xmas

Yes I hope Brad has a good Xmas too, whoever he is !

[TerryF]

So Janet not a fan of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show"..

"The tale of the newly engaged couple Brad Majors and Janet Weiss who find themselves lost and with a flat tire on a cold and rainy late November evening" and much more

http://rockyhorror.com.au/    

[judgej]

Phew! All done, and working

So the story was:

1. Upgrade 7.6 to 8.1 using yum failed half way through. This left the server in a messy state, only half working.
2. Console backup to external hard drive took 36 hours for ~400Gbyte of data. Most of the file data was in the form of images, so it did not compress well. Backup to console writes the complete backup to the internal drive first, so make sure you have 50% free disk space. If you don't, take some files off the ibays, and remove Recyle Bin files.
3. The backup file did not transfer to the external drive once it was complete, probably because of the indeterminate state the server was in. smeserver.tgz was copied manually. Don't forget to format your external drive using ext3 to keep things simple.
4. Reinstalling SME8.1 (64 bit) from DVD just works, and that asks you if you want to restore a backup at the end. Just say "yes" and plug in the drive. This tool ~12 hours for the 300Gbyte tgz file, expanding to ~400Gbyte of files and emails.
5. The restored server had everything there, ready to go. Also 130+ yum updates to run.
6. Finally I removed the partitions from one of the old RAID disks (keeping one RAID disk aside with the old server on) and plugged it in. The "manage RAID" option in the console asks if you want to use it as a mirror - just say yes and it will sync up.
7. There will be a few contribs to install, but I aim to keep this server as lean as possible. Many years ago, when MySQL 3 and PHP 4 were cutting edge, it was a development server too. Web development tools have shot ahead these days, so development is done elsewhere, and the SME Server just handles emails and files, and nothing else.

That's it (apart from the backup strategy to put into place). Hopefully this will be useful to others stuck in this situation, with a broken server that still boots enough to do a backup. I'll try and get a few of the warnings and gotchas into the docs.

One last note - we used a free Zoho account to handle email while the server was offline. Now our server is back, I've kept the Zoho account as a backup MX. It is not a proper backup mail server, that would normally forward on the messages when your SME Server comes back online, but it's good as a free server to at least catch emails that may otherwise be lost when your broadband is down.

[TerryF]

Now for a quite beer or two, sit back and admire your handywork

That 36hrs would hve been a fun little interlude..

[judgej]

Yes, that 36 hours was fun, especially at the end where it was down to the last few Gbyte of disk space and still writing the tgz file. If I wasn't there to check at that moment, and remove half an ibay to make some room, it would have failed at 99.9% and I'd have had to start again. I think I would have been on the beers a lot earlier then

The handiwork really belongs to to the thousands of man-hours that has gone into every aspect of SME Server. I was just leading it along, but the server and its components were doing all the hard work. This server will be ten years old next year, so I might throw it a party. It's not got a trace of the original hardware though, but it's still the same server, a bit like Trigger from Only Fools and Horses who got an award for sweeping the streets with the same brush for twenty years:

"And that's what I've done. Maintained it for 20 years. This old broom's had 17 new heads and 14 new handles in its time."
--RIP Roger Lloyd-Pack