Error after upgrade to 10.2.0

[endreottem]

We upgraded to version 10.2.0 a couple of weeks ago, and have experienced a lot of problems afterwards, mostly due to strange SSO behaviour. We have been able to sort out most of them after several days of trying all kinds of stupid (in my opinion) fixes and workarounds, but we are left with a couple of problems.

With SSO enabled, we are not able to log in to Plesk Panel at all. After submitting the username and password, it just redirects to the login page again. Somehow it seems to recognize the credentials, because it doesn't display any error message at all. If I enter an invalid username however, it says: "Error: Authentication failed: invalid username or password specified".

So far not so good. However, if I disable SSO, I can log in just fine. But if I try to open anything listed under "Business Operations", "Business Monitoring", "Business Setup" or any other links within Plesk Panel related to the Customer and Business Manager i get this error message: "Database Error Failed to connect to database. Check database configuration. "

Most SSO-related commands also displays the Database Error message.

We downloaded the MSI file manually and did a repair, without any luck.

 

[IgorG]

Did you try to repair all SSO and Billing integration with %plesk_bin/billing-repair-integration utility?

 

[endreottem]

Yes, we did. It returns the same error message:

D:\Parallels\Plesk\admin\bin>billing-repair-integration.exe
<table width="90%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-width: 1px; bor
der-style: outset; border-color:red; background-colorink;">
<tr>
<td style="text-align:left;">
<table cellpadding="2" width="100%">
<tr>
<td style="text-align:left;" width="15%">
<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<strong>Database Error</strong>
</div>
</td>
<td style="text-align:left;" width="80%">
<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small;">
Failed to connect to database. Check database configuration.
</div>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<br />

D:\Parallels\Plesk\admin\bin>

 

[IgorG]

Try to use billing-db utility for change/update settings for database connection.

 

[endreottem]

We've found out what causes this problem. During the initial Plesk Installation, the MySQL server (and MySQL databases) was installed on our D-drive:
basedir=D:\\Parallels\\Plesk\\Databases\\MySQL
datadir=D:\\Parallels\\Plesk\\Users\\Databases\\MySQL\\Data

When we updated Plesk using the Plesk Installer, we also chose to update MySQL server. Instead of updating the current instance of MySQL server, the installer has installed a new instance on our C-drive (the default MySQL Server installation path), and created a new my.ini with a datadir that points to the C-drive, while both the Billing, Sitebuilder and user databases are still located on the D-drive:
basedir=C:\\Program Files (x86)\\MySQL\\MySQL Server 5.0
datadir=C:\\Program Files (x86)\\MySQL\\MySQL Server 5.0\\data

Infact, all our existing MySQL settings have been ignored and replaced with the default MySQL Server settings in the new my.ini.

There seems to be a serious bug in the Plesk installer. Infact, when I run the installer again now, it still says that there are updates available for MySQL Server. If I run it again, it still updates the new MySQL server located on my C-drive (and not the one installed by Plesk initially). I get a message that the update was successful, but if I run the installer again, it still wants me to update MySQL Server.

I'm currently not able to use billing and Sitebuilder. Customer databases are unavailable (this server is not deployed yet, though, due to the amount of bugs and problems with Plesk 10).

Please advice.

 

[NeuroPsyche]

Same issues here. I had to restore back to 10.1.1 after upgrading to the 10.2... although 10.2 was to contain many fixes for issues in 10.1.1 it created new issues of it's own.

 

[endreottem]

Well, this is still not solved! Could someone from Parallels please explain how this could happen, and what we need to do to fix it?

 

[PavelV]

main billing database is stored in MySQL database server. MySQL Database and user are created during installation of Billing. These credentials are not stored in plain view in configuration file, they are encrypted and stored in small SQLite database. This small database is managed using %plesk_dir%\admin\bin\billing-db.exe utility.

Your error can be caused by desynchronization of credentials stored in this database and in MySQL database server.

You can try to initialize billing database manually:
1) create database and user in MySQL database
2) "%plesk_dir%\Databases\MySQL\bin\mysql.exe" -uYOURDBLOGIN -pYOURDBPASSWORD YOURDATABASE < "%plesk_dir%\billing\sql\billing_scheme.sql"
3) "%plesk_dir%\admin\bin\billing-db.exe" --set --host localhost --name YOURDATABASE --user YOURDBLOGIN --password YOURDBPASSWORD

If you have had working Billing before upgrade then you don't need to create new database, just launch billing-db.exe (as described in step3) with proper credentials.

I hope this can help you.

 

[endreottem]

Your suggestion may (or may not) fix the issue with Billing, but what about the user databases and the Sitebuilder database? The problem is (as I have already explained) that the Plesk Installer has installed a new, clean MySQL Server instance during the update to 10.2, instead of updating the existing one.

The Sitebuilder database, billing database and the user databases are not present in the new MySQL server. My question is, why did the updater install a _new_ database server without data (replacing the one already installed), and how do I fix it so that all databases are available again?

And a bigger issue is: Since the Plesk installer first installed MySQL in one location, and then in another location (during update), how do I know what instance will be working when I update Plesk next time? We could put a lot of time and effort into moving the old databases to the new instance or we could try to get the old instance up and going again, but if Plesk just installs new database servers (or randomly selects between the installed servers) during updates, any of these methods would be to no avail.

 

[endreottem]

Still waiting for a solution from Parallels. I will keep bumping this thread until this problem has been solved.

 

[PavelV]

Please read private message from me at May 7. We need more information from you.

What is your current state? Mysql was updated into default paths and now it is empty (without horde, billing, sitebuilder and client's databases)? Could you please check Windows Service called "MySQL Server", open its properties and check your path to executable. Please post it here or in private message.

 

[endreottem]

Well... I read and replied to the private message. Sent the requested information to Parallels. Waited.. Waited some more.. 9 days now, and still no reply. I have explained the problem in detail in this thread, but Parallels seems to be ignoring this problem. I guess this means they don't know what's wrong, or simply don't care..

I'm still waiting for them to reply to an e-mail I sent them january 24th. That's more than five months ago. On January 19th, they promised to do an update on one of our servers for free due to all the problems they have caused us in the past. We are still waiting..

This particular Plesk license was infact given us for free as a compensation for the huge amount of troubles we have had with Parallels products and Parallels support staff. Quite the compensation, regarding the fact that the product does not work at all. It's been just more than five months now since we received this license, and the product is still not working.

Could someone at Parallels please tell me what the .... is going on?

 

[IgorG]

Do you have any support ticket ID that you have submitted? Please provide me ticket ID and I will check why you have not received any reply from support team.

 

[endreottem]

Do you have any support ticket ID that you have submitted? Please provide me ticket ID and I will check why you have not received any reply from support team.

I don't really know why I bother answering. I have mentioned this several times on various occations, but nobody at Parallels seems to care anyway. But here goes...

1) I am still waiting for an answer to ticket ID #1048932. This is a ticket regarding Parallels Sitebuilder templates containing at least one copyright infringed image, published by Parallels without permission, and where Parallels for days tried to blaim our customer until Parallels eventually admits distributing the image without obtaining the rights, and being fully aware of the infringement at the time we created the ticket. My mail dated January 24th, sent to Sergey Kalmykov ([email protected]) and Claudius Helmich at Parallels Legal Councel International, raises some important questions that no one ever bothered replying to. I have asked Parallels to follow up on this many times since then, the last time was two days ago.

2) On May 11th, PaveIV asked me to send him autoinstaller3.log regarding the issue at hand. This was sent by mail to [email protected] on June 23rd, and is still not answered.

For others finding this thread by searching the forum, I can tell you that we eventually registered a ticket (#1166981), as it seems that the forum moderators have a tendency of abandoning forum threads dealing with issues they don't understand. For the first three days, Parallels didn't really do much other than moving the ticket between different technicians that clearly did not understand the problem. In fact, we were so concerned about the lack of qualifications that we had to block Parallels ip addresses in our firewall until they reassured us that they had understood what the problem with the server was, and promised that they would assign qualified technicians to the ticket. After all, we don't let just anybody play around on our servers, do we? At this point, the less qualified technicians had already managed to introduce new errors that were not there initially.

At one point, Parallels didn't bother to send us updates at all, even though we sent numerous mails asking them to update us. They didn't answer until I registered another ticket (#1167435) just to ask them to update us on the first ticket. To be fair, Parallels have for the most part been polite in their answers, but looking thru the ticket log, it looks like they don't know anything about their own software at all.

So Igor, excuse me for not beeing a big fan of Parallels and your "support" resources. Perhaps Parallels think they are where they should be support wise, but if you do, I think you should spend some time looking through these forums, reading ticket transcripts and evaluate your KB articles. This forum could have been an amazing source for knowledge and help when a problem arises, but everytime one of your customers have taken their time to explain a problem here, you either ask them to file a bug report, issue a ticket, read some KB articles that more often than not is not related to the problem or just simply abandon the thread. Wouldn't it be better to try to improve your support (and also spend a little more time on product quality assurance)? It seems that noone at Parallels realizes that you are actually loosing business because of this.

I'm quite certain that you will not provide me with any good explanation, answer questions I asked months ago or do anything to reassure me or anybody else that you are actually doing something to improve your products or your performance as far as support goes. When dealing with Parallels, I've found it is better to expect to be disappointed. I hope time proves me wrong, though..

 

[IgorG]

endreottem,

As I see there both your tickets #1048932 and #1166981 have last reply from Parallels supporters without any your response. Ticket #1048932 is marked as 'resolved' with last reply from supporter.
Why you don't continue to work with a problem in these tickets, and say, what to you haven't answered there?
Unfortunately PavelV can't answer to your email because he is on vacation now till 10 Jul. I hope that he will reply as soon as he will return.

And I would like to remind you that a forum is not support helpdesk but place for discussions. You should understand that here is not supporters at a forum and that forum doesn't assume the problem resolution by means of research directly on your server. Therefore at forum you can receive only any councils, recommendations, directions in the form of mentioned KB articles, links to documentation and so on. You can receive it not only from Parallels staff members but from any other forum users! Once again - it is community but not support helpdesk. If we understand that a problem serious and earlier not meeting, we send it to developers as bugreport. If we understand that the problem demands detailed research on your server, we direct you to support team as only they have the rights for login to your servers.

 

[endreottem]

Igor,

You are wrong, and if you had put a little effort in reading my post thoroughly you would see that. You should dive a little deeper into ticket #1048932. Parallels followed this up by mail, and I have received at least 17 mails (that I can find right now) from Mathias Malmgren, Sergey Malmykov and Claudius Helmich that have not gone through the ticket system. If you read my post, I also wrote:

My mail dated January 24th, sent to Sergey Kalmykov ([email protected]) and Claudius Helmich at Parallels Legal Councel International, raises some important questions that no one ever bothered replying to.

Parallels took this ticket out of your ticket system and decided to follow it up by mail. Actually the ticket continued for more than two months after Parallels marked it as resolved (which I also on several occation stressed them not to do). That doesn't mean that the ticket is solved. I am still awaiting reply for that mail. I suggest you talk to both Sergey Kalmykov, Claudius Helmich and Mathias Malmgren to get the full extent of this case.

Now, Ticket #1166981 is not marked as resolved, and will be followed up on by us because the technicians have made wrong assumptions as to why the problem with MySQL happened. The error is due to a bug in the Plesk Panel updater, and I have asked Parallels to confirm that they are doing corrections to fix this so that it doesn't happen again next time we update Plesk (or when others with a similar configuration are updating Plesk). Parallels doesn't seem to recognise this as a bug, even though I have issued enough proof to show you that it clearly is.

As for this forum, I never said that I expected it to be a place for problem resolution. What I said was:

This forum could have been an amazing source for knowledge and help when a problem arises, but everytime one of your customers have taken their time to explain a problem here, you either ask them to file a bug report, issue a ticket, read some KB articles that more often than not is not related to the problem or just simply abandon the thread.

This meaning that if Parallels actually put some efforts into really coming up with some real suggestions in this forum, it would be helpful to your customers. If other users come up with solutions, great! But when they can't, Parallels should step up and try to come up with better answers than you do. I have never found answers to any of my problems in these forums or in your KB articles. I think you should take a look at what your competition is doing.

You wrote:

If we understand that a problem serious and earlier not meeting, we send it to developers as bugreport. If we understand that the problem demands detailed research on your server, we direct you to support team as only they have the rights for login to your servers.

If this was really so, you should have filed a bug report based on my post in this thread dated april 29th. Since it took your support staff three days to understand what the problem was when we eventually registered a ticket, I have to assume that this is not case. Nobody from Parallels followed up on my post April 29th, which points to what may be some serious issues with the Plesk updater. Also, based on what I have received from your support staff, chances are that nothing is being done to resolve this issue.

The way you ignored part of my previous post and tried to turn this on me proves that this forum is not about helping your customers. And, you managed to disappoint me again. Now, you could either continue coming with no good excuses, or you could step up and do something about these things.

 

[IgorG]

You demand attention at forum for yourselves, but you don't fulfill the requirement from us. Why at Apr 29 you haven't paid attention to specially sticked thread and haven't filled the form if you consider what it is a bug and it should be considered developers? Why you do not use specially KB article for escalation your tickets if you consider that it is urgent for you?

 

[IgorG]

I have discussed with Sergey Kalmykov and he promised to answer you soon.

 

[endreottem]

You demand attention at forum for yourselves, but you don't fulfill the requirement from us. Why at Apr 29 you haven't paid attention to specially sticked thread and haven't filled the form if you consider what it is a bug and it should be considered developers? Why you do not use specially KB article for escalation your tickets if you consider that it is urgent for you?

I never said it was urgent for me. This is a really serious problem with the Plesk updater, but to me it was not urgent because this server was not put into production. If this had happened to a server in production (which is bound to happen at some point if you do not fix it), it would have been very urgent.

I was merely pointing at what you said in your previous post:

If we understand that a problem serious and earlier not meeting, we send it to developers as bugreport. If we understand that the problem demands detailed research on your server, we direct you to support team as only they have the rights for login to your servers.

..so once again, you do not read what I write, and make your own assumptions.