[BlueOnyx:14363] BlueOnyx 5107R on Aventurin{e} 6105R (IMPORTANT!)

[Michael Stauber]

Hi all,

Greg and I just had an outage of our BlueOnyx 5107R VPS's on CentOS5
based Aventurin{e} 6105R's.

VPS's on the SL-6 based Aventurin{e} 6106R are *not* affected.

This particular problem will affect other users with 5107R VPS's on the
older Aventurin{e} 6105R as well.

So here is the explanation and the fix:

Problem:
========

Aventurin{e} 6105R runs CentOS-5 with an 2.6.18 kernel. BlueOnyx 5107R
uses a 2.6.32 kernel and the entire architecture is a bit more modern.

Still: It was possible to run BlueOnyx 5107R VPS's on Aventurin{e}
6105R. Until RHEL-6.5, CentOS-6.5 and SL-6.5 got released a few days ago.

When you now reboot a 5107R VPS, it will come up without network
interfaces and without network connectivity. The commands "ifconfig" or
"ifconfig -a" will not show what one would expect and a restart of the
VPS or a restart of the network services inside the VPS's won't solve
the issue.

The problem is the new "iproute" RPM that was released with CentOS-6.5
and/or SL-6.5. It doesn't play well with OpenVZ on the older CentOS-5
based kernel of the master node.


Fix:
====

Inside the VPS roll back to the last good "iproute" RPM and restart the VPS.


How-to:
=======

This assumes the VPS has already lost its network connection. If you can
still connect to it directly, scroll down for the "fast work around":

1.) Login by SSH to the Aventurin{e} master node as "admin" and become
"root" by using "su -"

2.) Use "vzlist -a" to see the list of VPS's.

3.) Go to the Container's private directory:

Example:	cd /vz/private/<CTID>/tmp/

Replace <CTID> with the container ID (VPSID).

4.) Download the older "iproute" RPM with this command:

wget
http://vbq.solarspeed.net/pub/BlueOnyx/5106R/CentOS6/blueonyx/i386/RPMS/iproute-2.6.32-23.el6.i686.rpm

5.) Enter the VPS in question with the command "vzctl enter <CTID>"
where <CTID> again is the container ID (VPSID).

6.) Force the install of the RPM:

rpm -hUv --force /tmp/iproute-2.6.32-23.el6.i686.rpm

7.) Edit /etc/yum.conf and in the line 'exclude=' add iproute to it.
Your exclude line should then look like this:

exclude=iproute

That will prevent YUM from updating iproute to the "bad" version next
time around.

8.) Exit the VPS by pressing CTRL+D

9.) Restart the VPS: "vzctl restart <CTID>" where <CTID> again is your
container ID (VPSID).


Fast work around:
=================

Only use the "fast work around" if you haven't already lost network
connectivity on that VPS. Like if it wasn't rebooted since the install
of the 6.5 updates:

1.) Enter the VPS as "root" or SSH into it.

2.) Run this command to install the RPM:

rpm -hUv --force
http://vbq.solarspeed.net/pub/BlueOnyx/5106R/CentOS6/blueonyx/i386/RPMS/iproute-2.6.32-23.el6.i686.rpm

3.) Edit /etc/yum.conf and to the "exclude=" line add "iproute" as
explained above.

4.) Done. No restart needed.


Reminder:
=========

If you run Aventurin{e} 6106R you do NOT need to do anything. You're not
affected.

If your BlueOnyx (dedicated or VPS) doesn't run on Aventurin{e} 6105R
then you're not affected either.


-- 
With best regards

Michael Stauber