Safely updating directadmin?

[palantir]

Safely updating directadmin components?

Hello,

has anyone come up with a way to safely update directadmin using custombuild?

I find the process of the updates via custombuild extremely fragile, and I can't afford such downtime. In fact, every single time I tried to update something, it broke, or it overwrote my settings. Then I needed to fix it. Since I am running in a virtual machine, I thought about cloning it, trying to perform all the updates, and then performing the updates and the fixes again in the production system. Unfortunately, it's not possible due to the IP restrictions on the license.

Do I need to get a new license just for this purpose? Any other possibilities?

Or am I not supposed to update it at all? I mean, is updating DA something which is supposed to be smooth, or should it be considered like something major, to do with great care, planning, etc? I usually go ahead with debian updates without thinking something may go wrong, but it seems to me like it is not the case with DirectAdmin. Or was it just by chance, that all my latest updates went miserably wrong?

Thanks,
Palantir

 

[AxlF]

Hello,

has anyone come up with a way to safely update directadmin using custombuild?

I find the process of the updates via custombuild extremely fragile, and I can't afford such downtime. In fact, every single time I tried to update something, it broke, or it overwrote my settings. Then I needed to fix it. Since I am running in a virtual machine, I thought about cloning it, trying to perform all the updates, and then performing the updates and the fixes again in the production system. Unfortunately, it's not possible due to the IP restrictions on the license.

Do I need to get a new license just for this purpose? Any other possibilities?

Or am I not supposed to update it at all? I mean, is updating DA something which is supposed to be smooth, or should it be considered like something major, to do with great care, planning, etc? I usually go ahead with debian updates without thinking something may go wrong, but it seems to me like it is not the case with DirectAdmin. Or was it just by chance, that all my latest updates went miserably wrong?

Thanks,
Palantir

I never got any major problems using custombuild. I know, if i would update apache or php it could break the suphp mechanism. But the articles in the knowledgebase let me repair this within 5 minutes...

So perhaps you need to get more specific, which of the last updates went miserably wrong...

 

[palantir]

I didn't want to go into details, as I don't have all the logs etc... to show the exact problems, will do it next time. I also don't want to start a flame, I was perhaps a bit frustrated when I wrote that, after fighting with DA the whole afternoon...

But just to give you an idea, in the last updates, I proceeded like this:

I ran build update to update the packages, then I saw that there was an update of suphp available, so I thought to go step by step and I ran build suphp and then build php. At this stage I found out that PHP configure (/usr/local/directadmin/custombuild/config/suphp/configure.php5) was replaced -- is this supposed to happen? The rest of the system worked. Then I tried to update mysql. It failed, and the daemon was not starting anymore, without any error message. Compilation broke just after the initial database dump, and was not willing to go any further.

So what I did at that time was to stop the virtual machine, revert to a backup I did just before starting, and try again. This time I tried a build all d, and it went correctly, except for the PHP config file.

The update before this, I had problems with suphp and apache, in particular, suphp stopped working, then after some changes and some recompiling, suddently started working again, but I didn't understand exactly why, so I can't give details.

What I am worried about is, that this server is an "experiment" with a control panel, as all my other servers are plain Debian machines which I configure by myself. For the moment, I just have a handful of not critical websites there, but if I move all the rest to DA, I'd be in real trouble. if they went all down for an afternoon!

But, on the other hand, I really appreciate the time I save and the pleasure of working with DA instead of my hand-made configuration scripts and all...

Cheers,
Palantir

 

[smtalk]

I ran build update to update the packages, then I saw that there was an update of suphp available, so I thought to go step by step and I ran build suphp and then build php. At this stage I found out that PHP configure (/usr/local/directadmin/custombuild/config/suphp/configure.php5) was replaced -- is this supposed to happen?

Because this file is replaced with every update, you should read CustomBuild FAQ Use /usr/local/directadmin/custombuild/custom/suphp/configure.php5 and CustomBuild won't touch that file.

The rest of the system worked. Then I tried to update mysql. It failed, and the daemon was not starting anymore, without any error message. Compilation broke just after the initial database dump, and was not willing to go any further.

Need to get an exact error.

So what I did at that time was to stop the virtual machine, revert to a backup I did just before starting, and try again. This time I tried a build all d, and it went correctly, except for the PHP config file.

The update before this, I had problems with suphp and apache, in particular, suphp stopped working, then after some changes and some recompiling, suddently started working again, but I didn't understand exactly why, so I can't give details.

Maybe http://directadmin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=30168 ?

What I am worried about is, that this server is an "experiment" with a control panel, as all my other servers are plain Debian machines which I configure by myself. For the moment, I just have a handful of not critical websites there, but if I move all the rest to DA, I'd be in real trouble. if they went all down for an afternoon!

I think you just need more experience with DA and CustomBuild

But, on the other hand, I really appreciate the time I save and the pleasure of working with DA instead of my hand-made configuration scripts and all...

I am happy to hear that. Good luck!

 

[palantir]

Yup. Seems like I got a bit lost in the directory structure. The FAQ is printed out on my desk, but still, it was my mistake.
Thanks for the tips, i'm surely just missing a bit of experience and confidence.