Topic: Last known good config

[smnirosh]

Dear frank VB, thanks for the help. but i cannot see any word such like that. im still paining from this situation. on web page it says "Warning: a reconfigure and reboot is required before proceeding! Failure to do so now may leave your system in an unknown state!"
my last effort is to full backup to a workstation. can i restore that backup later if there is any problem occured.
"Backup to Desktop" on server-manager is the best way to do this, i think. what are yours ideas my friends?

to me it is so tired of being bothering you all. But you don't stop answering to my post. that's a great help for me. thanks.

[Frank VB]

smnirosh

The warning message you're seeing is maybe worrying you but rest asure your server is not about to explode. A good system administrator *never* panics (well almost).

Your primary task and first option is looking through the messages log files until you find what you should be looking for. You probably should be looking in earlier messages log files. There are different ones on my test server:

Code: [Select]

[root@joomla0 log]# ls -l mes*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      32 Aug 28 12:48 messages -> /var/log/messages.20150828124825
-rw------- 1 root root 8300175 May  8 01:12 messages.20150501011203
-rw------- 1 root root 8235696 May 15 01:12 messages.20150508011202
-rw------- 1 root root 8229415 May 22 01:12 messages.20150515011203
-rw------- 1 root root 8244698 May 29 01:12 messages.20150522011203
-rw------- 1 root root 3383927 Jun  1 01:12 messages.20150529011203
-rw------- 1 root root 5853939 Jun 13 12:39 messages.20150601011203
-rw------- 1 root root   89110 Jun 13 12:48 messages.20150613123844
-rw------- 1 root root 1979760 Jun 15 01:12 messages.20150613124736
-rw------- 1 root root  970764 Jul  8 16:47 messages.20150615011203
-rw------- 1 root root 5172853 Jul 12 19:05 messages.20150708164632
-rw------- 1 root root 3109367 Jul 15 01:12 messages.20150712190428
-rw------- 1 root root 5166067 Aug  8 01:12 messages.20150715011203
-rw------- 1 root root 8100308 Aug 28 12:49 messages.20150808011203
-rw------- 1 root root  111202 Aug 28 15:20 messages.20150828124825


For the changes I made earlier I now had to look in the file "messages.20150808011203".

[smnirosh]

Dear Frank FB, because of i don't remember what is the exact day of this tragedy happened to me, I am intending to do the thing i previously emphasized. what's you openion?

[Frank VB]

Dear Frank FB, because of i don't remember what is the exact day of this tragedy happened to me, I am intending to do the thing i previously emphasized. what's you openion?

The messages log files go back several weeks if not to say months. Surely, you do remember in which week the mishap you encountered happened? You are the one sitting behind the console and only you can investigate those log files. We can only give you the necessary pointers.

[smnirosh]

Ok. I will try my best. thanks

[janet]

smnirosh

Your attitude & approach is now bordering on the ridiculous. You are planning a big exercise of reinstalling the SME server operating system from DVD & then restoring from backup.
This is not necessary.

All you need to do is to just follow instructions & reboot your server as advised by the system message.
Most probably your server will reboot with the correct configuration.
If it does not & something does not work as expected, then run "Configure this server" & correct the setting. There are only about a dozen or so settings so it is not hard to establish all the correct settings.
Personally I could have fixed your server faster than the time it has taken to write all these posts to you.
This is a very minor issue & you are grossly exaggerating the severity or difficulty of fixing it.

If a worst case scenario develops where you are unable to reconfigure the correct settings, then you can look at reinstalling the OS & restoring from a known good backup.

[stephdl]

smnirosh

Your attitude & approach is now bordering on the ridiculous. You are planning a big exercise of reinstalling the SME server operating system from DVD & then restoring from backup.
This is not necessary.

keep quiet janet please :p

Indeed apart the fact that you have (huge) problems, I have not seen the description of your issues smnirosh, in generally we describe something which might (or not ) bring to the solution
Of course we are in fault also, because we were talking on other topics(I must admit my personal responsibility)

[smnirosh]

If i make a full backup to a usb drive using server manager on sme server, can i restore back that backup file if any problem happened to server? This would reduce my time. Because they asking me what is this problem. Help me.

[stephdl]

once again, why do you want to restore your server, what is your problem. please describe it

[stephdl]

nowadays server can contain terabytes of data.. a restore from a backup can take hours, too many hours.. and if you had a crash and need to be online asap, the only way is to restore configuration, let the server start working (think about email) and then you can restore your data..

in other distros there's such a feature..

we could also do a list of all rpms installed and install them after the restoration of the db.

[janet]

smnirosh

If i make a full backup to a usb drive using server manager on sme server, can i restore back that backup file if any problem happened to server?

If you make a backup now, all you are doing is backing up the configuration settings "as they are", which means if you have changed them inadvertantly, then you will backup & then restore the undesired settings.
Note you will have to do a post upgrade & reboot after the restore, therefore it is simply unavoidable to reboot the server, you are really not thinking this through correctly.

You need to have a backup from BEFORE the time you (possibly) made configuration changes, but you said you cannot remember the date when you made the "reconfiguration error".

If the "new" backup you restore from has the undesired configuration, then you will still have to run "Configure this server".

You might as well just run "Configure this server" now, & see what happens, & probably save yourself a lot of time & unnecessary effort.
Either it will be OK (ie boot up with correct configuration), or you will have to correct a setting or two. This is not a hard or serious problem to fix, it's easy to fix.

[janet]

stephdl

Indeed apart the fact that you have (huge) problems, I have not seen the description of your issues....

It is described in this post
http://forums.contribs.org/index.php/topic,51899.msg264774.html#msg264774
smnirosh simply fears that the network will have problems after rebooting.
smnirosh does not have any stated problems at the moment except the fear of the unknown (what may or may not happen).

Saying there are "huge" problems is also a gross overstatement on your part (actually I hope you were joking but smnirosh probably does not understand that).
It is a very simple & easy problem to resolve, just do a reboot & see what happens. If something does not work, then run Configure this server & enter the correct parameters, obviously smnirosh will have to gather these from past log files or from someone with technical knowledge of the network & ISP at the location.
How do we convince or persuade smnirosh to do the reboot ?
Previous configuration settings will still be available from the log file if necessary, although the longer it takes to do this, the more chance there is that log files will get replaced & overwritten, so that old information could be lost. Time is of the essence.

[stephdl]

I would agree janet and yes it is hard to do humour with a language which is not my mother tongue.

I do prefer a reconfiguration and see what is broken instead of a backup restoration which can let your server broken.

[smnirosh]

No, if nothing changed there will be no OLD & NEW records.

I thought about charlie's comment. Bcos i have tried to configure the server going few steps forward on server config. But i came back, thus no changes. Then there is no old and new records.

I thought something other than the thing I focus about. Now my fear is doubled. I checked lines in logs and that was so many logs and lines. Hiw can i go through all this lines with my limited time. What I remembered is, i tried to extend my ip range which is given by dhcp. I tried few things that time. Including server configuration. Some changes saved. Some were not. I am now wordless

[janet]

smnirosh

You have been told already by FrankVB how to check the log files, he gave you extensive instructions in this post
http://forums.contribs.org/index.php/topic,51899.msg264842.html#msg264842
If you do not know what to do, then either get help from a technician locally, or tell us the exact & detailed specific problem you have in carrying out his instructions. Saying "It does not work" or "I have limited time", is simply of no use around here.

Now my fear is doubled.

I really think you have to stop letting fear prevent you from moving forward here.

Changing some dhcp IP range is a minor issue. If it is wrong, it is easy to correct it just by running Configure this server again. The other settings that are shown on each page will remain unchanged (if you do not change them) & you just step through those pages, & you only change or correct the dhcp IP range (on that particular page), or whatever else you may need to correct.

You can see what the current dhcp IP range is by looking in server manager Review configuration panel, and write it down.
If it is not the same as that after doing a reboot, then run Configure this server, & correct it. SME is meant to be easy to use & simple to set up. This is really a no brainer here, so stop worrying.
It really should not take this much convincing & effort from us here to get you to do a simple thing such as a reboot. Come on please !

I am now wordless

Well we (at least I am) are now wordless. It's up to you. I suggest you reboot your server immediately.
If you have any problems afterwards, then start a new post telling us the specific problem, one problem per post please.