Can't login to SAC after 11.4.4 upgrade

[thecowster]

We have a multi-instance environment, and found (like some others on this forum) SAC we cannot login to the SAC after upgrade to 11.4.4. The error we get is that the username and password are incorrect.

Having searched around on the forums I found the following article in which the matter was resolved by re-installing the Management Agent component. (Sounds familiar - I think we may have had to do this before.) http://www.scalix.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=12361&p=56648&hilit=sac+can+t+login#p56648

Unfortunately the guy who normally handles our installs is out for a few weeks on sick leave, so am doing this without much knowledge of the installer. But I am stuck at the point where the installer says:

-> Choose the directory where the Scalix packages you intend to install reside [/scalixlive/scalix-11.4.4-GA/software/scalix_server]:

After pressing enter, I get some blurb about my Scalix system running the latest software. (which is correct. I'm trying to re-install part of it, not upgrade):

Could not find any new Scalix packages suitable for this platform.
Perhaps you already have all Scalix components installed or are looking
in the wrong directory? Please check or try another directory.

The installer docs don't seem to mention how to reinstall a single component at the same version, so I am guessing here. But I 'guessed' that uninstalling the Management Agent first would then enable me to re-install it. But sadly after uninstalling the component, the installer (option [1]) stills stops at the above message, saying my Scalix system is running the latest software.

Only, of course now my Scalix system is incomplete, and apparently unrepairable (thankfully mail services are still running though)

Any tips on using the installer would be appreciated! (Maybe I just need to reboot the system - but on the other hand, maybe then my working mail services might refuse to come up again when they realize the system is incomplete

Cheers
TheCowster

[smpoole7]

I'm not sure of your level of expertise with Linux, but you said you uninstalled the management component. Right?

Immediately after the upgrade, but before going back "live" with the mail server, did you run "ompatchom" and follow the other tips here in the forum about upgrading Scalix?

Post more info/details about your setup (to start with, which flavor of Linux that you're running). Who did the upgrade? Did the problem appear as soon as you upgraded, or did SAC appear to work for a while and then stop for no apparent reason after the upgrade? A look at the logs will also provide some clues about the error.

[thecowster]

That's right - I uninstalled the component that the installer refers to as "Management Agent" (installer option [3], then [8])

Thanks for your tips - and ompatchom is a good call. Didn't think to try that first (and can't say if the guy who did the upgrade did this)

At this stage though I'm only asking for help in using the installer. Having now ostensibly removed this important component (which was done whilst Scalix was running), how can I now re-install it? As mentioned before, the installer tells me all my packages are "up to date". In order to clear this cached state should I restart Scalix? Or at least, stop Scalix?

Has anyone else on the forum faced this "you're up to date" message when trying to re-install a component? How did you reset it so the installer could see that part of the system was missing?

As said above, this "up to date" state is preventing me from using the installer to install components.

Cheers
Andy

[deyjvu]

Uninstalling part of Scalix whilst Scalix is running - I wouldn't think this to be a good idea with any application.

The correct process should have been to shutdown Scalix, don't forget scalix-tomcat, ldapmapper and scalix-postgres, make sure there are no scalix processes hanging around, then do the uninstall and the reinstall of the Management Services.

Did you stop scalix-tomcat and scalix-postgres before doing the uninstall? Particularly scalix-tomcat, I'm guessing that you probably didn't.

Try shutting down Scalix, then run the installer again and see if it recognises that the Management Services have been uninstalled and is offering to let you install it again? If not, the next step I'd take is log a case with Scalix or get the person who supports your Scalix system to help.

All the things you do in the SAC can be done on the command line so you can still administer Scalix without the SAC.

[smpoole7]

First, do note that ompatchom and omcheck can help solve issues, but they should be run when the server is down. Also, as the post above me has noted, you shouldn't try to install or remove anything while the server is running (that's really important). I think you'd better go ahead and plan on an evening when the load on your server is very light to address all of this. Use "omshut" to kill the server before you do any major tinkering.

(You can enter "man [name of command]" at the terminal prompt for more info on all of these, in case you're not aware of that.)

I realize that you just want to get SAC working, but I asked what I did for a reason: (1) which Linux distro/version are you running, and (2) (this is important!!!), did SAC stop working immediately after the upgrade, or some time after the upgrade? (Again, that's very important!) Finally, have you looked at the logs? What do they say?

It's probably either a permissions issue -- simply put, an important file has the wrong owner and/or read-write access (and omcheck will help find that) -- or something in the config files that didn't get updated when you upgraded Scalix. The logs will give you some hints there. But I hate to tell you this, if you've been adding and deleting components while the mail server is running, you may have corrupted your mailstore. (It can probably be repaired, but be aware of that.)

Basically, you have three options at this point. If it was me, I'd do #1.

1. Start over. Back up the mail store, wipe the server and reinstall everything, then transfer the mailstore. (There are posts here that detail this.)
2. Contact a local reseller about getting a license, followed by on-site support.
3. Just live with it until your employee gets back from sick leave. You can "manually" add, delete and configure users with the command line tools.

-- Stephen

[johnmicy]

thanks for sharing

[thecowster]

Thanks to everyone for their replies. I was deliberately restricting how much information I wrote about our system because at this early stage I was only concerned with how to use the installer. For those who are interested we have a dual-instance system on CentOS 5 using heartbeat/drbd for failover of services from one machine to the other. Webmail runs on the secondary instance - all other services on the primary.

SAC is now working again. In the end we had to use the rpm command to remove the installed packages before the installer then enabled us to reinstall them.

We will post here what we did to get the SAC working again, in case the info is useful for others.