Upgrade Cyn.in 3.x Community Appliance

Dhiraj Gupta — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 01:14:44 +0000

This how-to describes how to upgrade your appliance from an old Cyn.in 3.x version to a new one. Cyn.in has an automatic forward migration of content that will take your content and upgrade it so that everything in the new version works properly with it.

All of this guide will focus on working with the Cyn.in webmin appliance management interface. This is a web based management interface to be used for managing the Computer where Cyn.in server is installed.

Go to Cyn.in Webmin interface

Navigate to https://<your sitehost OR IP address>:10000

You will have to accept the https warning that your browser will show because the administration interface is protected with HTTPS but the certificate is self-signed. This is normal. Once the login screen appears, login with the root user whose password you set up during the CD install.

Once you login, you will see the appliance status dashboard screen.

Do NOT upgrade the Webmin interface even if the link to do so is visible and present for you on the dashboard. This link will be removed in the future. Only install upgrades exactly as shown below. Clicking the link will product unpredictable results.

Navigate to System -> Software Packages

This is the web based software package manager that is provided with the Cyn.in Web based appliance management interface. This is where you will find and install new upgrades on to the system.

Check if an upgrade is available

Change Upgrade Mode to Normal and choose Yes for Only show which packages would be updated.

This will show you a simulation of what would happen if you actually performed the upgrade, you'll get to see what all packages will be installed. If "cynin" is one of them, there's a Cyn.in version update available for you! If you look closer you will see what version and interation of the package will be installed.

Wait! Let's take a manual backup of the data file first

Navigate to Others -> File Manager. This is a Java applet which will let you see and manage the full directory structure and files on your server.

Navigate to /home/cynin/buildout/var/filestorage as shown, and select the Data.fs file and press the Save button. This will let you download the Data.fs file from your server. This is the main Data file for your Cyn.in installation. It's the most important file on the system and if you need to manually restore your Cyn.in site on a new computer this is the only file you will need.

This is important! You must backup your Data.fs file prior to installing the upgrade. The Cyn.in upgrade installation will attempt an automatic backup as well, but if this fails for any reason, or something goes drastically wrong, you can use the thus downloaded Data.fs file for fully resurrecting your Cyn.in site.

Back to the Software Packages screen. Let's install for real, this time

Go back to System -> Software Packages and choose Normal upgrade mode and this time, choose No for "Only show" radio button and press the Upgrade now button.

The update will start to download and you can sit back and watch the progress.

There will be a lot of scroll and there will be a lot of syntax errors, warnings and other oddities shown.
This is normal. Yes, I know, this is weird. :)
But really it's not that bad. Plus the extra verbose log lets us help you if / when there's a problem.
In case you're worrying, or you need to troubleshoot problems by comparing with what the "normal" case is, consult this output dump for reference installation.

If you're more comfortable with the linux command line console you can do this upgrade by typing out the usual at the # prompt:
apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

After an agonizingly long wait, you should see the above screen telling you the package was installed successfully. This is good. Now you get to test if your upgrade was received and all is fine. Do this by navigating to your normal site URL, which will remain the same http://<your sitehost or IP address/ and verifying that the upgrade did indeed "take". :)

Urs Schwalm — Fri, 07 May 2010 14:18:56 +0000

Hi,
I know that I should not klick on the "Upgrade Webmin Now", but what about the next "Install Update Now" to upgrade the "LDAP Users and Groups" fix?
Since I,m useing LDAP it could be usefull?
thanx
Urs

Michael Soo — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 13:10:03 +0000

Hmmmm..... I tried to look into the /etc/apache2/sites-available/cynin.conf file. I edited these 2 lines.
---------------------------------------------------
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(.+)
    RewriteRule ^(.*)/(.+)\.ics(.*)$ http://<Server IP Address>:8080/csi/VirtualHostBase/http/%1:80/cynin/VirtualHostRoot/$1/@@icalendar.ics [L,P]

    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(.+)
    RewriteRule ^(.*) http://<Server IP Address>:8080/csi/VirtualHostBase/http/%1:80/cynin/VirtualHostRoot/$1 [L,P]
--------------------------------------------------

And it works! I can just key in the URL http://<Server IP Address> and it will direct me to the page but the URL will change automatically to http://<Server IP Address>:8080/csi.

That is ok with me as long as my users don't have to key in the port and also that /csi thingy.

Anyway, right now when we go to main page, it says that I do not have priviledges to see the page unless I login. Is that public access page? How do I share it to user without login?

Dhiraj Gupta — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:46:36 +0000

Taking a Data.fs file from a Cyn.in 3.0.5 to a Cyn.in 3.0.4 will definitely cause unpredictable results, but this not the main cause of your problem.

It looks like you setup the 3.0.4 target with a different sitename than cynin, as per your description it looks like target had a site named "csi".

For the site name change, you will have to change your existing rewrite URLs in your apache or whatever you were using as reverse proxy. You can easily determine this by CDing to /etc/apache2/sites-available and seeing what files are there using the ls and the cat commands.

You should make a new buildout at any path, using svn tag for 3.0.5 and use that as target instead of the current 3.0.4 buildout that you have. If you made your current target using svn checkout, then you can use the "svn sw" command to update the source, try svn help sw if you don't know how to do this.

"svn info" at your target's buildout root will tell you if you have made it using checkout or give you a message like "not a working copy" or something similar.

The new checkout url for 3.0.5 is http://odn.cynapse.com/svn/cynin/tags/cynin_3_0_5 so use this to svn switch to the new source code base - this is *very* important for the migration to complete properly.

Michael Soo — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:23:28 +0000

Hi Dhiraj,

Actually, I have a server (source) build from the snapshot which is 3.0.4 and right now I have another server which I installed using the ISO CD (target) which is 3.0.5.

On my source server, I used to key in URL http://<IP Address of source>/csi in order for me to access the cynin webpage.

On the target server, before I copy the Data.fs, I could use my Firefox to browse to the cynin page by just keying in http://<IP Address of target> to make sure everything is all right.

Right now, I want to transfer the Data.fs from source to target. I stop the instance. I did delete all the files in /home/cynin/buildout/var/filestorage and I copy in the Data.fs from source server to target server. Changed the owner of the Data.fs to cynin. Start back the instance.

Now when I use my Firefox again, when I key in the URL http://<IP Address or target> I will get a Site Error Message like below.
------------------------------------------------
Site Error

An error was encountered while publishing this resource.

Resource not found
Sorry, the requested resource does not exist.

Check the URL and try again.

Resource: cynin GET

Troubleshooting Suggestions

    * The URL may be incorrect.
    * The parameters passed to this resource may be incorrect.
    * A resource that this resource relies on may be encountering an error.

For more detailed information about the error, please refer to the error log.

If the error persists please contact the site maintainer. Thank you for your patience.
-----------------------------------------------

But on the other hand, when I key in the URL of http://<IP Address of target>:8080/csi I could see the page already. What I need right now is that I don't want to key in the port number and also the /csi thingy just like when I newly installed from ISO CD.

Dhiraj Gupta — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:05:39 +0000

Let's call the server you built using the ISO cd as "source" and the new server you're building using buildout as "target".

You have to delete or move out *all* the files in /home/cynin/buildout/var/filestorage first on target, and *then* copy over the Data.fs file from source.

Copy the cynin file from .... /etc/apache2/conf.d/cynin on the source server to the the same place on the target and restart your apache2 server (/etc/init.d/apache2 restart). If you don't have apache2 on the target, install it using apt-get or whatever you prefer.

Michael Soo — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 09:47:00 +0000

When I replace the Data.fs file, does that file being replaced also? I don't quite understand here. What I am doing here right now is that I have build a server using ISO CD and when I copy over the Data.fs file, the URL changes to the one that need to key in the ports.

Dhiraj Gupta — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 09:35:05 +0000

Yes, in fact if you take the file from /etc/apache2/conf.d from the machine created from ISO CD and add it in the same place in your target machine it should work straight off.

Michael Soo — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 08:28:57 +0000

How do I go about it? How can I create one just like yours?

Dhiraj Gupta — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 08:14:27 +0000

Cyn.in buildout will typically run at port 8080. What you need to do is run a reverse proxy in front of it, like if you see in the ISO CD we're having an Apache HTTPD VirtualHost site that proxies to the buildout at 8080.

Michael Soo — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 06:59:36 +0000

Ok. I think I got the ownership of the files wrong. I got it working now. Anyway, why before I copy the Data.fs file to the target server, the cynin is running at this URL http://<IP Address of Server> but after I copy over the Data.fs, the URL changes to http://<IP Address of Server>:8080/cynin

How could I change it back to just the IP address without the ports and the folder name behind?

Dhiraj Gupta — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:10:28 +0000

When you say "old logins" you mean the logins that you had prior to replacing the Data.fs file, in the old system? If so, then your Data.fs file has simply not gotten transferred, or something else is wrong.

As I was saying earlier, *all* state is maintained within the Data.fs file, if you replace it, you will no longer be able to login with "old" logins (unless they're existing in the new Data.fs file as well).

If you're comfortable with the command line, then you should probably use the command line methods to move the Data.fs around. I need to see the situation or you to give us more details for me to be able to add more ideas on what could be wrong.

From what you're saying, it's looking like the new Data.fs file has simply not gotten loaded at all!

Michael Soo — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 03:45:41 +0000

Well, I did stop the daemon, and I deleted the Data.fs file in the target server. When I tried using the Webmin to upload the backup Data.fs from the old server, the Webmin File Manager does not show the file that I uploaded even after I refreshed it a few times.

Anyway, I managed to transfer the file using the command prompt. Now my Spaces doesn't show up even after I tried doing the clearing and rebuilding the portal_catalog. Is there any other way to do it? We managed to login using the old ID's so I guess the Data.fs file is ok.

Dhiraj Gupta — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:30:57 +0000

Hmm.... did you shutdown the Cyn.in daemon instance first? Secondly, you should move or delete all the existing files in var/filestorage folder on the target server and then put the new file in.

When you say "couldn't replace the file" -> What happens, exactly? If there's an error, what's the error?

Michael Soo — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:56:38 +0000

I tried using the webmin to copy the Data.fs file to the target server but it just couldn't replace the file in there.