Question Upgrade Virtuozzo container from CentOS 7

[SteveITS]

Server operating system version

CentOS 7

Plesk version and microupdate number

18.0.52

I see the latest update readme mentions a script to upgrade from CentOS 7 to AlmaLinux 8. However it says Virtuozzo and Docker containers are not supported.

Is there an alternative way to upgrade a container?

If not, has anyone switched to using VMs instead of containers so future upgrades can be performed in place? It seems like that could be a large increase in RAM usage.

 

[scsa20]

If you're trying to get to AlmaLinux 8, your best bet would be to spin up a VM running AlmaLinux 8, install Plesk on there, install a trial license, and then run the migration tool to migrate from the older server running in the container to the new server.

I don't remember how many domains the trail allows but if you need more than what the trail allows then you can send an email to their licensing team asking them to temporary raise the limit to whatever amount you need to migrate the domains over.

But once you get all the domains over, you can update the DNS to point to the new server and make sure everything is working before you grab your license information from the old server to install onto the new server and destroy the container on the old server.

 

[SteveITS]

Hi, thanks for the response. So you use VMs now instead of containers? It costs a bit more in Virtuozzo and uses more RAM but if it allows in place upgrades down the road that could save a bunch of time every ~5 years.

I hadn't thought of a trial license, or been aware they'd increase it like that. An interesting approach. It does mean we'd move them all at once but that might be a good thing.

Another thing we haven't hit yet is that we feed all our Plesk domains into public slave name servers so we will need to find out what happens if we add (migrate) the same domain to another server that uses the same slaves. We've migrated many into Plesk over the years but not sideways to another Plesk server yet. But that's a different question.

 

[sergej-wv]

Hello,

as the previous poster said create a new container and use the Migrator extension to move everything. About the slave nameservers these should not care about the master. The extension also migrates the DNS entries. I did it once and the public slaves had multiple masters, all Plesk servers.
You can bite the bullet and by a new license for the new server and cancel the one on the old after migration.
About the containers we also create a new container and move everything. Actually it is pretty uncommon to update a system in-place. I pressume that many create new servers and move the data, whether physical, VM or container. Also containers only use the memory that is currently needed. VMs reserve the whole space. That is how containers are advertised.

 

[SteveITS]

Thanks. Yes my first thought of upgrade-in-place was that sounds like a great way to crash everyone's site at once. But it avoids the migration headaches and DNS changes.

 

[SteveITS]

The extension also migrates the DNS entries. I did it once and the public slaves had multiple masters, all Plesk servers.

For the record I just tried this on a domain on 18.0.52. The Plesk migrator extension does migrate DNS. It does create an AAAA record for ipv4.domain and an A record for ipv6.domain. It tries to "addzone" the domain and doesn't say it fails but then immediately rejects the transfer:

May 19 10:11:21 ns1 named[17931]: received control channel command 'addzone example.com IN { type slave; file "example.com"; masters { 74.x.x.x; }; };'
May 19 10:11:21 ns1 named[17931]: received control channel command 'refresh example.com IN '
May 19 10:12:28 ns1 named[17931]: received control channel command 'refresh example.com IN '
May 19 10:12:28 ns1 named[17931]: received control channel command 'refresh example.com IN '
May 19 10:12:30 ns1 named[17931]: received control channel command 'refresh example.com IN '
May 19 10:12:31 ns1 named[17931]: received control channel command 'refresh example.com IN '
May 19 10:12:36 ns1 named[17931]: client @0x7f0d8c106000 74.x.x.x#22124: received notify for zone 'example.com'
May 19 10:12:36 ns1 named[17931]: zone example.com/IN: refused notify from non-master: 74.x.x.x#22124

If I delete the account off the old server, I can make a DNS change on the new server and update it, and then it pushes the zone to the slaves correctly. I did not try to Disable DNS on the source, that might work without deleting everything.

As a side note it seems like the DNS Slave extension should also add IPv6 addresses as masters because the NSs reject IPv6 notify commands. Which the master is using despite me having specified an IPv4 as the master and slave IPs. Probably because it's resolving the NS hostname and using that?

 

[SteveITS]

I don't remember how many domains the trail allows

3

https://support.plesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/12388069544215-How-to-get-Plesk-Web-Host-edition-trial-license-for-migration

 

[SteveITS]

Since this is my thread I'm going to resurrect it...

Virtuozzo 7.5 update 5 hotfix 1 added "The ability to convert the CentOS 7.x, CentOS 8.x, VzLinux 7.x, and VzLinux 8.x operating systems running on a container to AlmaLinux 8.x."

Virtuozzo Hybrid Server 7.5 Update 5 Hotfix 1 (7.5.5-266) | Virtuozzo Release Notes

docs.virtuozzo.com

There is a command:

10.5. Converting Containers with almaconvert8 | Virtuozzo Hybrid Server 7 User's Guide

docs.virtuozzo.com

I have not tried this and do not know how compatible it is with Plesk.

 

[websavers]

I have not tried this and do not know how compatible it is with Plesk.

We have, and it is not. This is the result:

# almaconvert8 convert $CTID
CTID: Conversion aborted: Software unsupported by AlmaLinux 8 detected: Plesk
Please contact the software vendor and request AlmaLinux 8 support

But of course Plesk is compatible, despite that message.

I've asked, in the mostly dead OpenVZ forums, about whether they'll be adding Plesk support, but don't anticipate a response. I also asked about the vague description of how the --elevate switch is expected to function (perhaps running that will allow it to work, but didn't want to risk it without knowing more).

Frustratingly, almaconvert8 does support cPanel within the container, but not Plesk

 

[SteveITS]

We have, and it is not.

Thanks for the update. I got sidetracked on projects so didn't get back to it yet. I see Virtuozzo added the "yum install vzdeploy8" bit to the docs, I did get far enough to figure that out.

Maybe it'll work on the Plesk slave DNS if Plesk isn't installed.

I did try to convert a small non-Plesk Hyper-V VM using the native Elevate script and it failed horribly...chunked for an hour or so and then couldn't boot after. Tried twice. Fortunately I could pretty easily recreate that VM.

 

[SteveITS]

The Plesk migrator extension does migrate DNS

Just to call it out, we have run into a few scattered cases where the Plesk migrator ends up with a duplicate SPF record (which causes it to eval as failure, so Gmail now refuses mail for a nonexistent SPF) or other duplicate records such as mail.domain.

 

[moswak]

I've asked, in the mostly dead OpenVZ forums, about whether they'll be adding Plesk support, but don't anticipate a response. I also asked about the vague description of how the --elevate switch is expected to function (perhaps running that will allow it to work, but didn't want to risk it without knowing more).

Frustratingly, almaconvert8 does support cPanel within the container, but not Plesk

Do you have any news about this? was there a reaction?

 

[websavers]

Do you have any news about this? was there a reaction?

Nope. It's here, if you're curious.

 

[websavers]

It would be nice if Plesk and Virtuozzo devs could have a quick chat about how to basically merge the Plesk-specific code into the almaconvert8 script. I believe this would be the best way to do it as almaconvert8 is already designed to work for CentOS 7 => AlmaLinux 8 on containers. It *should* then just need Plesk-specific repo changes to occur to be compatible with Plesk. And we know that those repo changes must occur in Plesk's centos2alma script.

 

[Dave W]

Agreed, Plesk and VZ need to get this actioned.

 

[Peter Debik]

Hi guys, please review this thread on Github:

Conversion inside containers (Virtuozzo) · Issue #87 · plesk/centos2alma

Hello, are there plans to support conversion inside containers? (Virtuozzo?) As all our Plesk Servers are running within Virtuozzo Containers ... :-( Thank you Andreas Futureweb GmbH

github.com

At this time, no Leapp based tools can do a conversion of containers.

 

[moswak]

A new comment has now been added on Conversion inside containers (Virtuozzo) · Issue #87 · plesk/centos2alma

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commented Jan 5, 2024
Virtuozzo have a special script to convert CentOS 7 containers now. Unfortunately, it does not support Plesk. I believe we will be able to discuss it with virtuozzo developers some day and fix the problem.
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If this script already exists then it might be possible to extend this with regard to Plesk. Then the right people should get together. I hope that this happens.

 

[websavers]

We've created a shell script to make this work. It's essentially a Plesk-specific wrapper for almaconvert8 - the utility provided by Virtuozzo/OpenVZ devs. You can find it here: GitHub - websavers/centos2alma_openvz: A CentOS 7 to AlmaLinux 8 conversion utility for OpenVZ / VIrtuozzo containers running Plesk

It's a work in progress, so please be sure you have a backup before utilizing it. Even though it does snapshot the container before making any changes, and I haven't yet had any issues reverting to snapshot, I wouldn't want anyone to have that happen on a live VPS without a backup they trust (Plesk backup, or total container backup).

Pull requests welcome for bugfixes, errors, etc.

There are likely three scenarios where it won't work successfully:

1. If you use custom repos and/or RPMs installed (other than mariadb) that don't handle the switch to a new OS smoothly (believe it or not, some do)
2. If you're using different Plesk components than we've tested with
3. When we've made some changes with errors in them (it's still in testing after all)

 

[websavers]

We have used it to successfully convert a 'recommended' Plesk install on a fresh CentOS 7 test container repeatedly (it was for testing after all: convert, revert, convert, revert), as well as one live container with a less common combination of Plesk components. The latter was more complicated, and required a bunch of extra cases to be covered (now added to the script), but the container has been operating smoothly since it was converted a few days ago.

 

[Dave W]

Greetz websavers,

Excellent work on the script for Plesk

What version of VZ are you running on?
I had to install vzdeploy8-1.0.61-10.vl7 to get the script to progress past the conversion phase to the finish stage.

However Ive hit a snag;

No package spamassassin-almalinux-8-x86_64-ez available.
No package mod_ssl-almalinux-8-x86_64-ez available.
Error: Nothing to do
Error: Failed to install the template(s):
Error: spamassassin-almalinux-8-x86_64-ez
Error: mod_ssl-almalinux-8-x86_64-ez
Error: App template spamassassin not found

I was considering removing spamassassin from the vps before attempt to convert again, but I cant remove mod-ssl as this would cause alot of issues.

Dave_W