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Well what a week. Thank you readers for dropping by at my tech blog once in a while. I know i don't frequently update it due to lack of time but here I am, ready to post new ideas again.

Yesterday, we ran into a "not so difficult" problem, at all. Here's the story.

We need to install the Sitebuilder package since one of the clients need the application. We installed the Sitebuilder support using the Plesk updater. Installation successful as per Plesk but upon checking, still no sitebuilder support. Next step, we did an upgrade from Plesk 8.4 to Plesk 8.6. We got a prompt again saying that the upgrade was successful. Ok got it. But, after a few minutes, Plesk started acting really weird. We checked the status of the PSA service and here comes the real fiasco. We got an error of course:

psa dead but subsys locked

Oh not again. I happen to encounter this kind of problem on the http, vsftp etc daemons. But I can easily fix them by just restarting the machine or deleting the corresponding /var/lock/subsys file and then start the service again. I did this for a couple of times for the PSA service but to no avail, Plesk isn't just working! I looked at the logs and I just can't find any clues there.

Well, what we did is to email the Parallels Support team. We didn't got any answer overnight so we are feeling a bit hopeless about the case. The next morning, ideas are fresh and we started looking at the key answer to the problem.

/tmp/autoinstaller3.log

So yup. I looked into the updater logs and found this:

Trying to establish test connection... ERROR 1044 (42000): Access denied for user 'root'@'%' to database 'mysql'
Trying to establish test connection... ERROR 1044 (42000): Access denied for user 'root'@'%' to database 'mysql'
Trying to establish test connection... ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user 'admin'@'localhost' (using password: N
O)
Trying to establish test connection... ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user 'admin'@'localhost' (using password: Y
ES)
Trying to establish test connection... ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user 'admin'@'localhost' (using password: N
O)
Trying to establish test connection... ERROR 1044 (42000): Access denied for user 'root'@'%' to database 'mysql'
Trying to establish test connection... Could not open required defaults file: /root/.my.cnf
Fatal error in defaults handling. Program aborted

ERROR while trying to establish test connection

Check the error reason(see log file:
/tmp/psa_8.6.0_cos4.build86080722.02_upgrade.090207.07.37.log), fix and try
again

Aborting...

error: %post(psa-8.6.0-cos4.build86080722.02.i586) scriptlet failed, exit
status 1

Attention! Your software might be inoperable.
Please, contact product technical support.

Unable to connect to Mysql? Duh?. FYI, the script looks into the .psa.shadow for the mysql password. But here's the dish. We can login into the mysql server using the password defined in the .shadow file. So how come we cannot run the upgrade without the creepy errors?

Per Parallels support, we we're running a "mixed" version of Plesk. Probably because of the failed upgrade.

Just in case you noticed this error, I stumbled into a knowledgebase entry regarding the /root/.my.cnf file.

SYMPTOMS:

Plesk upgrade or installation fails with the error in upgrade log:

Access denied for user 'admin'@'localhost' (using password: YES)\n")


RESOLUTION:

Make sure that there is no /root/.my.cnf file with MySQL password. Plesk uses environment variable to pass the password to MySQL server, but the .my.cnf file has greater priority and MySQL uses the password from the file. If it does not match, restoration fails.

Also, check that you are able to connect to MySQL from the command line with:


# mysql -uadmin -p`cat /etc/psa/.psa.shadow` psa

You should not have any .my.cnf file on the /root directory. Although I tried creating a symlink to /etc/my.cnf. But it didn't made any difference. The error for the missing .my.cnf was gone but we we're still not able to finish the upgrade.

SOLUTION

We replaced the admin password to a more simplier password.

Login into the mysql server. and then run this command:

UPDATE mysql.user SET Password=PASSWORD('password') WHERE User='admin';

and then

flush privileges;

Do not FORGET to update the /etc/psa/.psa.shadow file for the new password.

Then re-run the upgrade.

# cd /root/86/dist-rpm-CentOS-4.2-i386
# rpm -Uvh --force base/*.rpm opt/migration/*.rpm opt/backup/*.rpm

Finally, Plesk is now behaving perfectly fine! There you go. A complex problem with a really simple solution.

Hope this sheds a light to anyone out there having the same problem.

Current Mood: Fulfilled but exhausted.

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Well what's your busiest day of the week?

I work 6 days a week and most of the time im busy. But for me, it's Saturday. I do automated backup of some of the system files but of course, the thing still needs supervision! But still loads of stuff needs to be done.

Saturday, Saturday and Saturday.

Good luck to me!

Current mood: Exhausted

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When attempting to log into Plesk Control Panel the following error message is received:

DefPackageMng() constructor failed: defpackagemng failed: Access is denied.(Error code 5) at CreateProcess 'C:\\WINDOWS\\system32\\cmd.exe /c ""C:\\Plesk\\admin\\bin\\defpackagemng.exe" --get"' at execUtil C:\\Plesk\\admin\\bin\\defpackagemng.exe --get on C:\\Plesk\\admin(PleskSrvClient::execUtil line 420)at execute console command --get(vconsoleapp::start line 128) at execute C:\\Plesk\\/admin/bin/defpackagemng --get(vconsoleapp::run line 138)

RESOLUTION
Such error occurs when Plesk Control Panel web server service cannot access the C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe ( C:\Windows\SysWOW64\cmd.exe on 64bit Windows version). This may happen when administrator has manually changes permissions to access the file. User SERVICE should have Read+Execute; Read on the file.

The following permissions should be set on cmd.exe :

- Administrators - Full Control
- System - Full Control
- Service - Read+Execute; Read
- Interactive - Read+Execute; Read

The file owner should also be administrator, otherwise it will not be possible to change these. File owner can be checked in file’s Properties, Security tab, Advanced button, Owner tab.

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Hot on the heels of the CNN Alerts: my custom alert email spam comes a new variant: msnbc.com: BREAKING NEWS spam.

The emails follow the same format as the CNN spam, with the link to the supposed featured story going to an unrelated third-party website which attempts to attack the users PC.

Read more on SecurityWatch.

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