Virtualmin + Webmin ERROR report. Not complaining, hoping to help :)

Hello!

I’m not asking for help (although I wonder “why” but that’s only secondary), I’m simply coming to help, by reporting something that is broken.

So: after I let Virtualmin update itself this morning, there was a mention of a webmin update, I noticed a pair of hours later that some things ceased to work.

Most websites were OK, but some functions ceased to work, like creating new albums in an image CMS.
Phpmyadmin reporting there was a configuration error with transformations deactivated.
A CMS simply refusing to open with a message that a tmp file couldn’t be written in the database.

So, as a professional syadmin (gigantic cough, I’m super ironic here), I decided to reboot my server.
A bad, a very bad mistake, upon reboot the mysql process simply didn’t want to be initiated anymore.
“service mysql start
[FAIL] Starting MySQL database server: mysqld . . . . . . . . . . . . . . failed!”

Half a liter of adrenalin later (I was really panicking, rebooting a production server to find the websites won’t load anymore, hurray!), I finally fixed the situation: the /tmp folder had to be chmoded from 755 (only owner can write it) to 777 (EVERYONE can write it, Mysql included).
At last, mysql accepted to start, the websites were live again.

So, well, I’ve come here to report, I don’t know why, but it looks like the latest virtualmin>webmin update broke a feature that was, at least on my server, necessary.
I say, it’s worth checking if your updater routine doesn’t break it on more than my server :wink:

I’m fairly confident nothing else could have updated rights on /tmp : I don’t have another panel, I don’t use powerful utilities likely to change important stuff, I didn’t run any other particular activity on my server in the two hours before I noticed the problem.

My server info, if needed: Linux ns316123.ip-37-187-128.eu 3.10.23-xxxx-grs-ipv6-64 #1 SMP Mon Dec 9 19:06:18 CET 2013 x86_64
Debian Wheezy (7.9)
PHP PHP Version 5.4.45-0+deb7u1

Once again, I didnt’ come to rant. But if those changes affected more than one user, it would be great to push a new update fixing things :slight_smile:

Howdy,

Sorry that you’re having problems there! However, nothing about a Webmin update should cause the symptoms you’re describing.

Webmin doesn’t affect your websites at all… and updating Webmin should never impact those.

I’m actually wondering if something else is going on, such as that particular user running out of quota space. That’s an example of what might cause that issue.

-Eric

Hello Eric,

No available space issue, still half a gigabyte left on /

I reached out to my outsourcer about it, to ask. I manage my server for daily load and activities and small maintenance, but the big stuff, installing and first setup, or Raid repairs when a disk dies and we must check if everything is fixed properly afterwards, I leave it to him, we’re basically in business relationships once a year.

His installations, for nearly all of his customers, are all webmin + virtualmin based, so I thought he’d also be interested in knowing, I contacted him a minute or two before posting here.

His answer kinda confirms what you told me, he has witnessed this erroneous change appear from times to times, on a server or another, and my occurence was only the latest of a running series, this is NOT related to the latest update in Webmin/Virtualmin.

So, no idea why it happened, but at least it’s not your last update. Sorry I raised a flag and was mistaken about it :slight_smile: