will reinstalling VM GPL cause problems with installed s/w and settings?

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1

Hi,

I have an installation of VM GPL on CentOS under OpenVZ. There were resource shortages that caused problems - webmin would just quit for no apparent reason, mysql would stop, etc - all very trying. The vendor of the VPS has been cooperative in allocating further resources and now it seems that the issues are settled. Certainly the work I want to do is going ahead with good response and very low latency.

The installation has got some problems. When I log in to VM as root I have the usual front page. When I click on webmin (at the top of the left pane) I get a drastically abbreviated menu consisting only of one entry - servers - which in turn has only one entry which offers to list for me the installed virtual servers.

This is redundant and inadequate, I’d really like to have a full complement of root webmin modules, so as to, for example, run webalyzer.

I had to install VM four times before install.sh would run to completion. I didn’t at the time know why and the messages were not helpful. But now that I’ve been through the resource starvation and have much more resources allocated to this VE I think this shortage must have contributed to the install issues.

I now want to reinstall VM GPL to achieve the missing functionality but am loath to overwrite databases and user accounts. I don’t know whether my concerns are realistic. I have taken the precaution of backing up my files (using VM) and FTPing them to another machine.

Will the reinstall likely add the missing functionality? and will it overwrite existing config data?

Dave

2

Well, it’s hard to put a finger on what specifically is going on – but it’s starting to sound like you may actually want it to overwrite your config data.

That is, I’m not sure if the problem is with your installation, or with the current configuration, but I suspect the configuration may play a part. If there was a resource problem during the initial installation, it’s possible some of the config files weren’t completely or accurately written.

With that in mind – you might actually consider generating a full set of Virtual Server backups, do a fresh OS install, install Virtualmin, then restore your Virtual Server backups.

Then, you’d be sure to be starting with a known good installation, and the only data you’d be keeping is that which is related to your Virtual Servers, not the actual Virtualmin or Webmin setup (note that in this case, you probably wouldn’t want to restore the virtualmin.tar.gz file, which contains virtualmin settings).

-Eric