Installatron Problem

[nobaloney]

On one of our systems Installatron appears to have completely disappeared. When we clicked on Installatron from the main admin page all we could get was a blank page (DA headers only).

So I decided to reinstall Installatron.

I deleted it first, and then started the installation. That was well over an hour ago.

Any ideas as to what I should do now?

I won't be back to look at this browser window until mid-day Saturday, but I'm wondering what I should do at that point.

I've also written Installatron support but I'm very interested in finding out if we're the only ones experiencing problems like this, and if so, how you've managed them.

Thanks.

Jeff

 

[resolveit]

Hi Jeff,

You are not the only one with this problem. This problem occurred when we tried to upgrade packages in Installatron and I've complained about this (at installatron) several times.

The only fix I could find was to remove Installatron and reinstall it. Using this fix has major disadvantage as it does not only take a long time but you loose all configuration and reinstalling is not always a guarantee that it will work the first time. Once we had to reinstall 3 times before it worked.

I asked Installatron months ago if I could run a mirrorsite for thier packages (to try and solve this problem for some european customers) and they would discuss it amongst themselves but I've heard nothing since.

Regards,
Onno

 

[Sumaleth]

Resolveit:

Have you been getting that actual black-page problem that Jeff mentioned?

Looking through my support archives, I see that you had download problems in March. The Installatron 3.0 betas of we have released since then have been specifically aimed at resolving that problem (by adding more checks and balances, and making better use of SourceForge mirrors).

But looking at the symptoms, I suspect you had a different issue than the one Jeff is talking about.

--

If you ever need to reinstall, you can save the contents of these directories:

/usr/local/directadmin/plugins/iTron/data
/usr/local/directadmin/plugins/iTron/cache

And put them back in place before you do the first Update after the plugin install. That will save your config data and all the installers. It's basically just a refresh of the core files.

Although if it's a problem with the installers, that might not work. If it is an installer problem, just delete the most recent file in each of those two directories and run Update again.

Having said that, if you're running into a persistant problem we'd actually prefer to get a look at the server and figure out what is causing the problem. Reinstalling iTron is something you should never need to do.

--

Jeff suspected that he might have done something while it was mid-Update to cause the problem, but I've been doing tests all evening and I haven't been able to break it. (although I am using a newer version of the Update system than what you guys have, so that might still be a factor)

Jeff's Update seemed to get stuck on the 'calogic' installer (it downloaded the installer fine, but not the archive). Installatron will abort an archive download if it doesn't receive any bytes after a minute or so, or if the download speed is too slow, so that it was still able to get stuck on that file is perhaps telling.

(edit: actually, if it has run out of harddrive space or some system resource, that might cause problems?)

It might just be an unusual type of download problem still getting around iTron's checks causing the blank screen. We'll need access to a server that is having the problem in order to really nail it.

--

We did talk over your offer to run an archive mirror, but we thought that putting in more downloading checks (the ones that went into the 3.0betas) would mean that it wasn't necessary. I'm sorry if we never got back to you with an answer on that.

My feeling is that we're probably dealing with a particular type of unusual download problem here. We're keeping an eye out for anything that might explain it. And we do appreciate the feedback.

Rowan.

 

[resolveit]

Hi Rowan,

Jeff's problem is exactly the problem I had, I also had other problems but what happens is during an update of the installers/packages installatron times out and leaves you with a blank screen. The only way I could get arround the problem was to remove the pluging alltogether and then reinstall from scratch.

If I had known about those 2 directories it would have saved me a whole heap of trouble but seeing as I never asked the trouble was caused by myself. Note to self and anyone reading: Next time ask questions!!

I would still like to mirror the installers and packages as I believe that that would save me from having the same problem in the future.

Regards,
Onno Vrijburg

 

[hostpc.com]

I stopped complaining a while ago about these errors - they've become too numerous.

I've decided to let my licenses expire without renewal due to the number of support issues, inconsistencies in installations, frequency of updates, errors as described above, and customer complaints.

iTron was a great product in it's earlier days, but as more "features" were added and when cPanel came into their mix, the bugginess seemed to increase as well. For now, we'll do without this plugin.

Joe

 

[resolveit]

Hi Joe,

I hope you don't think that the fact that there are minor problems makes Installatron a bad product because there is nothing to touch this plugin, I wish I knew how to do some of the things they have done in this plug-in. I get many new customers because I have Installatron and that is why we have these products at the end of the day (to keep our customers comming back for more).

I have beer running stable with Installatron for some time now, I just have to pick the times I update the packages and 9 times out of 10 it works fine.

Regards,
Onno

 

[l0rdphi1]

Hey,

We have had a LOT of issues with our downloading routines in the past. The majority of these issues are fixed in the latest release of Installatron. However, it has been quite the nightmare since we added the ability for Installatron to drop and pickup archive mirrors dynamically. In the last release of Installatron, we basically rewrote our Installer/Archive Updating code from the ground up.

At this moment, I am finishing up version 3.0rc1, which is aimed to be released late this coming week. In this version we have completely changed the formatting of our script list and reworked the Installer/Archive Updating code once again. The new paginated design for Installer/Archive Updating grants each installer update a new instance of the DA/PHP timeout value, effectively eliminating the possibility for many of the these "hanging" errors reported above.

I appreciate everyone's continued patience while we work to complete 3.0rc1. Once rc1 is released, tested, and has all bugs worked out, we will release a bug-free 3.0 final.

Phil.

 

[Sumaleth]

Jeff's problem is exactly the problem I had, I also had other problems but what happens is during an update of the installers/packages installatron times out and leaves you with a blank screen.

I think you might have hit the nail on the head there: timing out.

Can I ask what you have DirectAdmin's "Timeout" value set to? In our install steps we suggest to set it back to 120 (2 minutes) after the initial install is complete, and our expectation is that two minutes should be enough time for even fairly large Updates.

But I'm wondering now whether it's not enough time. Perhaps some servers haven't been updated in a while (meaning there might be a large number of new archives to download), or perhaps the server has a slow download on one file which pushes the whole Update past 2 minutes.

If DirectAdmin kills the Update process, that's a bad thing. It will leave behind a temporary file which will do one of two things:

1/ it will give you a "cannot redefine" error.
2/ it will give you that "blank page" syndrome.

I've only just now realized these two problems have the same cause. We get the nice neat "cannot redefine" error when it happens on our server, but it seems that some servers just give you a blank page.

The quick-fix is to look in:

/usr/local/directadmin/plugins/iTron/cache/installers

And delete any installer that has a number at the end of its name. For example, there might be a 'coranto' and a 'coranto5', so you would delete coranto*.

That will fix the blank screen, and you can then do another Update to continue from where it was aborted.

--

The next version of iTron will deal with this automatically. And as Phil mentioned above, the next version of iTron will also have a new paginated version of Update which means that each installer update will run on a separate process. It will also update you on progress after every installer, so you'll know that it's doing something.

--

The Update process aborting could potentially be also caused by some sort of process-shaping util running on the server -- are any of you running something like this?

Note to self and anyone reading: Next time ask questions!!

Yes, please let us know if you have problems, especially persistant problems. The only problem we've heard about in the last month and a half have been mentioned by Jeff, and until this latest 'blank page' we thought we had addressed the causes in 3.0beta3 and 3.0beta4. We hadn't heard from anyone else who was having Update problems so we thought we had solved it.

I would still like to mirror the installers and packages as I believe that that would save me from having the same problem in the future.

I'm still not entirely convinced that will solve the problems you think it will solve (you are effectively already mirroring the archive/installer files for yourself), but if you are still having problems after 3.0final then we will work something out with you.

--

I've decided to let my licenses expire without renewal due to the number of support issues, inconsistencies in installations, frequency of updates, errors as described above, and customer complaints.

Can I ask what you mean by "inconsistencies in installations", and by "frequency of updates" do you mean that you aren't happy with our 'two week grace period' policy?

Rowan.

 

[Sumaleth]

Oh, and just in case timeout is the cause, I'd recommend everyone set their DirectAdmin timeout value to something like 1000 (or even 3000 to make it 50 minutes). That should cover any Update.

Rowan.

 

[Bloory]

I'd just like to chip in and say that I recieved first class assistance with the couple of minor issues I had. Even here in the UK I have been able to install and update without issue generally.

I'd only ask that we can auto-update (via cron?) in the future

 

[Sumaleth]

I'd only ask that we can auto-update (via cron?) in the future

Yes, cronable updating will be in 3.0.

 

[resolveit]

Oh, and just in case timeout is the cause, I'd recommend everyone set their DirectAdmin timeout value to something like 1000 (or even 3000 to make it 50 minutes). That should cover any Update.

Rowan.

Could this problem also be caused by Apache Session-timeouts?

No, just remembered it does not run under Apache but under DA. I've tried DA timeouts at 60, 300 and 600 while I got the problems but as the problem did not occur everytime it was difficult to say if this was the solution. The problem did return even if I set the timeout to 600.

What else uses the DA timeout? If you set the timeout too long it might adversly affect other parts of the system.

Onno

 

[Sumaleth]

Could this problem also be caused by Apache Session-timeouts? No, just remembered it does not run under Apache but under DA.

Perhaps DA has it's own session timeout value, separate to the process timeout? I've noticed that DA's sessions do time out if you sit there for a while, and Phil says that it might potentially kill the user's processes too.

The new Update system should void all these DA timeout issues anyway.

Row.

 

[resolveit]

If you need a betatest site for your new version let me know. I will be more than willing to test it for you.

Regards,
Onno Vrijburg

 

[nobaloney]

Well, at least I got the talk going...

My 3000 seconds have by now timed out on my most recent try, and here are the contents of my directories:

[jlasman@da1 cache]$ ls -al archives
total 41672
drwxr-xr-x    2 admin    admin        4096 Jun 12 16:17 .
drwxr-xr-x    5 admin    admin        4096 Jun 10 19:06 ..
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin      202172 Jun 10 19:13 aardvarkts9
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin      300309 Jun 12 16:14 advancedguestbook5
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin      414602 Jun 12 16:14 advancedpoll3
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       515931 Mar 30 12:55 calogic7
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        5566 Jun 12 16:01 contactform4
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin     2924274 Jun 10 19:19 coppermine12
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin     2924274 Jun 10 19:22 coppermine13
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin     1270347 Jun 12 15:54 cslivehelp10
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin     1392062 Jun 12 15:55 cslivehelp11
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin     1473417 Jun 12 15:57 cslivehelp13
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin     1036463 Jun 12 15:58 cslivehelp16
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin      977315 Jun 12 16:00 cslivehelp17
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin      972453 Jun 12 15:52 cslivehelp7
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin      358902 Jun 12 16:17 cubecart5
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin       32284 Jun 10 23:08 directory4
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin       32284 Jun 10 23:08 directory8
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin      471370 Jun 12 15:47 drupal10
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin      462780 Jun 10 23:20 drupal11
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin      464269 Jun 12 15:48 drupal12
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin      470554 Jun 12 15:46 drupal8
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin       45573 Jun 12 16:11 feedonfeeds7
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin       34765 Jun 10 23:09 flatcalendar8
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin     2341592 Jun 12 16:07 gallery13
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin      153030 Jun 12 16:11 ipfilemanager1
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin      153030 Jun 12 16:11 ipfilemanager4
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin     1561319 Jun 10 23:17 mambo16
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin     2525942 Jun 10 19:16 phpadsnew10
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin     1418522 Jun 12 16:14 phpcoin13
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin      908887 Jun 12 16:17 phpesp3
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin      665428 Jun 10 23:18 phplist10
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin      217548 Jun 12 16:01 phpmychat6
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin      246500 Jun 12 16:11 phpmycounter6
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin      737145 Jun 10 19:24 phpmyfaq13
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin     4696062 Jun 10 19:13 phpnuke12
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin     1272742 Jun 10 23:08 phprojekt9
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin      338004 Jun 12 15:49 phpshop6
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin      196341 Jun 12 15:49 phpwiki10
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin      755760 Jun 10 19:17 pivot12
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin     2432847 Jun 12 16:10 postnuke6
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin      769067 Jun 12 16:11 sitebar10
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin       18708 Jun 12 16:14 siterecommender4
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin      900604 Jun 12 16:15 smf4
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin      902129 Jun 12 16:15 smf5
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin      915417 Jun 12 16:15 smf5.1
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin      153506 Jun 12 16:13 webcards3
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin      253466 Jun 12 16:13 wordpress10
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin     1087924 Jun 10 23:10 xoops8
[jlasman@da1 cache]$

and

[jlasman@da1 cache]$ ls -al installers/
total 240
drwxr-xr-x    2 admin    admin        4096 Jun 12 16:17 .
drwxr-xr-x    5 admin    admin        4096 Jun 10 19:06 ..
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        4010 Jun 10 19:13 aardvarkts
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        4067 Jun 12 16:13 advancedguestbook
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        3289 Jun 12 16:14 advancedpoll
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        3190 Jun 10 19:24 calogic
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        3177 Jun 12 16:01 contactform
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        3916 Jun 10 19:17 coppermine
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin       23910 Jun 12 15:49 cslivehelp
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        5372 Jun 12 16:17 cubecart
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        3419 Jun 10 23:08 directory
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        7475 Jun 12 15:44 drupal
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        4013 Jun 12 16:11 feedonfeeds
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        4124 Jun 10 23:09 flatcalendar
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        6017 Jun 12 16:01 gallery
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        3549 Jun 12 16:11 ipfilemanager
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        4512 Jun 10 23:10 mambo
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        3298 Jun 10 19:13 phpadsnew
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        2770 Jun 12 16:14 phpcoin
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        5521 Jun 12 16:15 phpesp
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        4456 Jun 10 23:17 phplist
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        5340 Jun 12 16:00 phpmychat
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        4236 Jun 12 16:11 phpmycounter
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        5666 Jun 10 19:22 phpmyfaq
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        5078 Jun 10 19:07 phpnuke
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        4196 Jun 10 23:05 phprojekt
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        4491 Jun 12 15:48 phpshop
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        6239 Jun 12 15:49 phpwiki
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        3876 Jun 10 19:16 pivot
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        3406 Jun 12 16:07 postnuke
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        3291 Jun 12 16:10 sitebar
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        4913 Jun 12 16:14 siterecommender
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        5579 Jun 12 16:14 smf
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        3607 Jun 12 16:13 webcards
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        4944 Jun 12 16:11 wordpress
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        3488 Jun 12 16:17 xmb
-rw-r--r--    1 admin    admin        5091 Jun 10 23:09 xoops
[jlasman@da1 cache]$

That's a total of 35 installers.

But the website shows 44 available programs.

So I know it hasn't finished yet.

And a grep shows:

[jlasman@da1 cache]$ ps waux | grep iTron
admin    22270  0.1  1.5 13384 7920 ?        S    15:44   0:04 /usr/local/bin/php /usr/local/directadmin/plugins/iTron/admin/index.h
jlasman  26180  0.0  0.1  1760  592 pts/0    R    16:53   0:00 grep iTron

So I know it's still running.

But is it doing anything? I have no way of telling .

I've read with interests of Onno's requests to be able to have a local archive.

And I've read the responses today.

Before I read that I'd already decided that in order to renew this one copy of Installatron I've got, and to begin installing it on all our new DA Dedicated and Virtual server installs (which I've wanted to do since January), I'll have to have two things:

1) the ability to run from a cronjob, and to be able to read an Installatron log file so I can see if it's completed, and to have an email sent to me upon completion

and

2) the ability to run from one local mirror. This actually only makes sense; why should we waste bandwidth at our end and both bandwidth and resources at the ends where we're picking up the actual download files.

It appears to me that you don't mirror the programs yourself, but rather have us pick them up from each server where the maintainers keep them.

And that's a real problem because there's no control over any connectivity at all.

So we really need the ability to keep the files ourselves on a central server, and move them to every server running Installatron as required.

Easy enough for us (and for others who want to run Installatron on multiple servers) as long as you create for us the ability specify a download location, and give us the info we need to know from where to download the files.

I'm estimating I've spent four hours so far attempting an update on one server. That's obviously untenable.

Thanks, everyone, and especially thanks to Rown (Sumaleth) for your help.

But we need what we need.

Jeff

 

[nobaloney]

Ran the update again.

Nothing was added.



I'm giving up until I hear from Rowan again.

Jeff

 

[Sumaleth]

Jeff,

Yeah, it's taking your server to download only ~half the archives in 50 minutes. That's not right.

If you delete the most recent file in installer/ you should be able to run Update again. But we'd prefer to login ourselves if that's okay.

1) the ability to run from a cronjob, and to be able to read an Installatron log file so I can see if it's completed, and to have an email sent to me upon completion

All that is in the works for 3.0.

2) the ability to run from one local mirror.

Yes, I understand the benefit of that now. I didn't understand it earlier, but I was only thinking from the point of view of a single server. If you're running multiple servers then there will be a definite benefit to maintaining a local mirror.

Phil and I have been discussing mirroring ideas. There are a few ways that it could be done.

All will involve a new setting in Administration called something like "Use Local Mirror", where you would input the location of a mirror (as a domain or url perhaps) and the server would always check that mirror for archives before downloading them elsewhere (and it would ideally update the mirror if it did download the file from elsewhere, which would maybe require an ftp login to the mirror or something).

Still considering options.

It appears to me that you don't mirror the programs yourself, but rather have us pick them up from each server where the maintainers keep them.

We did consider mirroring all the archives on our server at the start, but it didn't seem to be the optimum option (plus we're actually not allowed to mirror some of them).

As it stands now, we do actually mirror seven of the scripts on our server (any that have had regular download problems, plus those that couldn't be downloaded directly from the script's site).

Perhaps we could have a full'ish mirror on our site as a final fall-back option if the archives can't be downloaded from the official locations.

Easy enough for us (and for others who want to run Installatron on multiple servers) as long as you create for us the ability specify a download location, and give us the info we need to know from where to download the files.

Well, another thing is that we're not allowed to make some of the direct download links known, which is why they're encoded into the installers. Though there might be only five or six that would really hold us to that.

We'll have a think about this and see what we can come up with. It sounds like it's going to have to be some sort of multi-pronged attack.

Rowan.

 

[Sumaleth]

Jeff gave us access to his server and we were able to quickly get a good idea of what was causing the Update problems.

Most of the installers went fine, but then Update would hit a problem installer and just get stuck there for the next 40 minutes until the process timed out.

For some installers it just seemed to be a temporary problem with the download which was fixed when Update was rerun a day later. For another it was just really, really slow downloading a 660k file for some reason (it estimated 2:30 hours to download one of them, and it had to download two files from there). For another the download was reasonable fast, but the server kept disconnecting and the download went into an infinite loop.

It really is no wonder Update had problems.

A huge thanks to Jeff there. That testing has given us what we need to deal with those downloading issues in the next version. I've also recommended to Jeff that he not try another Update until we release the next version.

--

Resolveit:

We would be very interested in using your server network to test the mirroring system. I'll email you about it.

Rowan.

 

[nobaloney]

Well, another thing is that we're not allowed to make some of the direct download links known, which is why they're encoded into the installers. Though there might be only five or six that would really hold us to that.

It seems as if you're writing that some of these cannot be gotten anywhere except through you.

As long as these are available anywhere all you need to do is tell us from what website they're available, and we'll be able to manage the mirroring.

I can even verify I have the latest one, but that may not be a good idea because you may not actually use the latest one.

We'll have a think about this and see what we can come up with. It sounds like it's going to have to be some sort of multi-pronged attack.

I see your problems, but we really need to resolve ours.

Thanks!

Jeff

 

[nobaloney]

Jeff gave us access to his server and we were able to quickly get a good idea of what was causing the Update problems.

Thanks for your efforts to get this fixed, Rowan. I really appreciate them.

A huge thanks to Jeff there. That testing has given us what we need to deal with those downloading issues in the next version. I've also recommended to Jeff that he not try another Update until we release the next version.

You're very welcome.

And I won't do any more updates until I hear from you .

Jeff