Online Secrets

I decided to upgrade my server from CentOS 4 to CentOs 5 last night. So I did a backup of everything under LxAdmin and went ahead with a fresh install of CentOS 5.

If you are wondering why I didn’t just upgrade via the installer, it is because I’ve read so many problems on so many forums that others have faced during their attempt. Anyway, since LxAdmin has the ability to restore all the sites and clients under admin, why don’t I just do a clean installation?

Well at least that’s what I thought…

So what were the steps I took?

Part 1.1

1. Log into LxAdmin Panel using admin.
2. Backup everything. Click on ‘Backup Home’ under Resources section.
3. Type anything you want to distinguish the backup file for the initial string. Eg. “New”.
   
4. Then click on ‘File Manager’ tab and download backup file.

Part1.2

1. Log into HyperVM. Clicked on Home tab.
2. Clicked on ‘Rebuild’ under Console section.
3. Select CentOs5-HIB image from the drop down menu.
4. Checked ‘Confirm Rebuild’ and clicked Update.

So then I waited for about 1 hour for my server to rebuild. Everything went smooth. Well at least it was until before I tried to restore all the domains and clients under admin…

Part 2

After the rebuild is complete.

1. Log into LxAdmin with admin. (At this time, password is also admin. So PLEASE change your password to avoid getting compromised.)
2. Click on ‘Backup Home’.
3. Then click on ‘Upload’ tab and upload the backup. Be patient. If you have 3 GB of files, it will definitely take more than 5 mins!
4. Next, click on ‘Backup Home’ tab.
5. Under ‘Backup from file’ section, click on directory icon on the right in the restore form, and it will allow you to select the particular file.
6. Then click on Start Restore Process button.
   

At this point of time, you would be thinking, wow that’s easy. WRONG! This is where the complications began. I got this error “ could_not_unzip_file []“. What should I do? Panic!

Well I decided to upload the backup content individually since it had problem with the big file. I opened the file WinRAR. It can be opened. So I tried to extract it. It went on smooth until the 98th% and BANG! I got 2 errors!

1. Unexpected end of archive.
2. CRC failed in {Content’s file name}. The file is corrupt.

What the hell am I gonna do? That’s the only backup file I made and it is corrupted! Searched all over for an archive repairer. None of them could fix it. Felt like I will be thrown in hell…But somehow I know I am not that screwed since it ran all the way to 98% before finding a corrupted point.

If you are wondering whether I fixed my problem or not. YES I DID! I’ll share with you what I did. It might come in handy for you. At least save as much as possible.

I remembered running tar in linux before and it extracted the items one by one till it hits an error. Unlike many GUI archiver or uncompressor, that extract the contents to the the memory (RAM) or temporary folder before moving it to the destination/path you had set.

Since I’ve already uploaded the backup to the server, I decided to give tar a go.

Tar Extracting tool

• tar -xvvf myLxAdminBackupFile.tar

I managed to save almost all the backup contents.

But now, the backup restore won’t be able to work. It will only work if you have “*lxadmin.file” together with your backup file.

So I had no choice but to manually create my backup file again.

Move old Backup / LxAdmin BackUp Creation (Make a new TAR file)

1. Using mv command. I moved myLxAdminBackupFile.tar.
   E.g; mv myLxAdminBackupFile.tar ../myLxAdminBackupFile.tar
2. Create a new LxAdmin backup file using tar.
   tar -cvf myNewLxAdminBackupFile.tar ./
   (NOTE: If during extraction, “*lxadmin.file”, weren’t extracted. You would need to create one yourself. )

Backup re-creation complete.

Now do Part 2 again. This time round, you will be able to select which parts you want to restore. Clients, Databases and Domains.

All these took about 5 hours for me. But it included brainstorming, waiting for transfer of files and panic attacks! Hope, with this information, those that are upgrading your servers will be able to do so smoothly.

But if you did encounter any problem, you can always leave a comment and I’ll try to help wherever I can.

Signing out,

Deen Yusoff