[LON-CAPA-admin] System upgrade: moving users over?

Sat May 16 02:26:55 EDT 2009

Hi Stuart,

This just came to my mind: My test server is 32 bit, while my
production server is x86_64. Could this be why I see no roles? Is thre
ay way of convrting back to 32 bit while testing?

Lars.

On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 10:54 PM, Lars Jensen <ljensen at mail.tmcc.edu> wrote:
> Hi Stuart and Stefan,
>
> After trying a fresh-install on my CentOS test server i have come to
> the same dead end: I can login, but after login, there are no roles or
> courses available. User information is not available either, and
> password cannot be changed. The lonUsers directory tree has the
> correct ownership, which is www:www, so I'm not sure what's going on.
> The users I'm login as are all internally authenticated.
>
> The lonUsers/ and res/ directories were copied over from a server
> running suse 10.2, and I changed ownership of both these trees to
> www:www on the new server.
>
> Any ideas how to fix this?
>
> Lars.
>
> On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 4:19 PM, Lars Jensen <ljensen at mail.tmcc.edu> wrote:
>> Hi Stuart,
>>
>> Before I upgrade the to CentOS, I'm testing the upgrade on another
>> (standalone) system. The new test-system has a different IP and dns
>> than the production server. Is it a problem to test on a server with a
>> different name?
>>
>> When trying to access the login page, I always get the following screen first:
>>
>>
>>
>> The LearningOnline Network with CAPA
>> This LON-CAPA server is temporarily not available for login.
>>
>> Please attempt to login to one of the following servers:
>>
>> Then when I click "Refresh" in the browser, I get the normal login
>> page. It looks first like everything works normal when I login as dc1,
>> but when I try to modify a user I know should exist, the user fields
>> come up blank. I'm wondering whether it has to do with the database?
>> It is as if the new server is not "seeing" the users...
>>
>> On the new server, I started he install of CentOS using the directions
>> at install.lon-capa.org. Is this the correct procedure? Should I do
>> step 6? Do I need to set a mysql password, or is this taken care of by
>> copying over the httpd directory from the old server?
>>
>> At what point should I copy over the old httpd directory?
>>
>> Should I set up the dc as a file system user before or after copying over httpd?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Lars.
>>
>> On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 3:37 PM, Stuart Raeburn <raeburn at msu.edu> wrote:
>>> Lars,
>>>
>>> When switching between SuSE and Fedora/CentOS distros, because of the
>>> different encryption algorithms you would need to create the user and group
>>> accounts (with the same uids and gids as they had on the original system)
>>> from the command line.  That said this only applies to filesystem
>>> authenticated users, of which there should only be a few.  Although
>>> filesystem authentication (or "UNIX" auth) is still supported in LON-CAPA,
>>> in more recent releases it is not available via the web GUI as an option to
>>> assign to new users or an authentication type to which existing users can be
>>> changed.  As Stefan pointed out, the one filesystem authenticated user you
>>> would typically have in a recently created LON-CAPA domain is a Domain
>>> Coordinator (if created using the make_domain_coordinator.pl script.
>>>
>>> The fact that the user can login indicates that authentication is not the
>>> issue in this particular case.  It seems it is more likely to be a
>>> permissions issue (i.e., the www user can not read the contents of the
>>> user's roles.db file, e.g.,  in /home/httpd/lonUsers/tmcc/l/j/e/ljensen) or
>>> an architecture change (e.g., 32 bit to 64 bit) if you have changed
>>> hardware, between the old installation and the new.  If this is a 32 bit ->
>>> 64 bit issue, as described at: http://loncapa.org/hardwareupgrade.html,
>>> there is a LON-CAPA script which can be used to copy the db files.
>>>
>>> The fact that login was possible indicates that the www user was able to
>>> view the contents of, for example,
>>> /home/httpd/lonUsers/tmcc/l/j/e/ljensen/passwd which contains information
>>> about the the authentication type.  Is other information (e.g., from the
>>> user's environment.db file - full name, etc., displayed on the roles page
>>> which reports  "Currently no active roles or courses"?
>>>
>>> Stuart Raeburn
>>> MSU LON-CAPA group
>>>
>>> Quoting Lars Jensen <ljensen at tmcc.edu>:
>>>
>>>> Hi Stefan,
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for the reply. The problem is that I'm going from suse to
>>>> Centos, and apparently it is not possible to just copy over the
>>>> password fils - see comment on the page you referred me to:
>>>>
>>>> "Transfer /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, /etc/group, /etc/gshadow from the
>>>> old machine to the new one
>>>>
>>>> Warning: this does not work if you go from Fedora to SUSE or vice
>>>> versa, since these distributions use different encryption algorithms.
>>>> If you switch distributions, you need to make the file-system-based
>>>> LON-CAPA users from the command line."
>>>>
>>>> Two years ago, we went from Fedora to Suse, and we managed to transfer
>>>> the users fine. Unfortunately, I don't remember how we transferred the
>>>> users, but I recall a similar problem to the one I'm seeing here.
>>>>
>>>> Lars.
>>>>
>>>> Stefan Bisitz wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Hi Lars,
>>>>>
>>>>> I guess that the host entries somewhere in the system are not all
>>>>> correctly configured. But before starting to search please have a look
>>>>> at:
>>>>> http://loncapa.org/hardwareupgrade.html
>>>>>
>>>>> Your questions should be answered there. If not, please tell so the site
>>>>> can be updated.
>>>>>
>>>>> By the way, creation of a new domain coordinator is not necessary.
>>>>> Follow the steps carfully and you'll get your whole old system on the
>>>>> new one.
>>>>>
>>>>> Stefan Bisitz
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 13.05.2009, 21:14 -0700, Lars Jensen wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi everyone,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> We're preparing for a system upgrade of our lon-capa system. We're
>>>>>>  moving from suse to CentOS 5.3. I moved the /home/httpd directory  over and
>>>>>> I created the domain coordinator. How do I move the users  over? When I
>>>>>> login as a user, I get a "Currently no active roles  or courses" message.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Lars.
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>
>