UpgradingFrom3011To344OnSolaris9

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Oct 21 2005 14:06:42

This is a description of my experience upgrading from RT 3.0.11 to 3.4.4

All went well! err... just kidding ;-)

Some Issues

  • Solaris Issues
  • Upgrading existing custom written scripts
  • Installed version 5.8.5 of perl
  • That is straightforward enough.
  • Performance problems

Used Software

  • apache 1.3.27
  • mod_perl 1.29
  • mod_ssl 2.3.14-1.3.27
  • mysql 4.0.18

configuring CPAN

'perl -MCPAN -e shell'
  • asks to configure CPAN
  • manually done according to

http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/features/articles/req_track_1.html

Thanks Amy! :-)

  • CPAN command 'look' goes to unix shell -> 'exit' to get back out.
  • When installing from the cpan prompt we can use 'look "package"' to get to a shell prompt within that directory.
  • carry out the make etc. commands and return to the cpan prompt with 'exit'
  • This will allows us to install modules manually

compiling apache

  • I compiled apache with static modules mod_perl and mod_ssl
  • The instructions for this were from mod_perl-1.29
    • the file INSTALL.simple.mod_ssl under the mod_perl tree
  • there was a problem in a '.c' file where:
    • "I have to edit the .c files of any app that makes a call to
PEM_F_DEF_CALLBACK
  • and replace that line with
PEM_F_PEM_DEF_CALLBACK."
  • This turned out to be in the file:
  • 'apache_1.3.27/src/modules/ssl/ssl_engine_pphrase.c'
  • Then from the mod_perl subdirectory I did:
perl Makefile.PL USE_APACI=1 EVERYTHING=1 SSL_BASE=/usr/local/openssl \
APACI_ARGS=--prefix=/usr/local/apache,--enable-module=ssl,--enable-module=rewrite
  • That compiled perfectly.

ACTUAL UPGRADE

  • The main reason for this upgrade was the fact that 'update.html' loaded very slowly.
  • The database was taking a long time to process the query. More about the query later.
  • The 'update.html' file (the file that invokes the query) is the file you request when you go to comment on a ticket.

  • I started with a 3.0.11 install
  • This setup has a database of about 5.6Gig (the size of the dump file)
  • This install had the usual stuff with dependencies.
    • That is, there were some problems with perl module dependencies that I had to solve manually.
  • So the 3.0.11 install was working well except for the above mentioned problem namely:
  • slow when executing a particular query

ACTIONS

PREPARATION


  • tar up the existing rt3 directory and place the '.tar' file somewhere safe.
    • (This will save the whole tree including modifications, and config for easy rollback if upgrade don't work)
  • shutdown apache (webserver)
    • make absolutely sure that the backup file is OK.
    • Test for restorability.
  • backup existing database with dumputility
  • rename existing rt3 directory to rt3011
  • unzip and untar newly downloaded rt-3.4.4.tar.gz

INSTALLATION


  • configure and test for all modules
./configure --with-db-rt-pass='dadada' --prefix=/usr/local/rt3
perl sbin/rt-test-dependencies --with-mysql --with-modperl1

make upgrade

  • run rt-setup-database on several directories
/usr/local/rt3/sbin/rt-setup-database --dba root --prompt-for-dba-password \
--action schema --datadir /your/rt/sourcedir/rt-3.4.4/etc/upgrade/<version>
  • where version is each one of
3.1.0
3.1.15
3.1.17
3.3.0
3.3.11
  • 3.1.0 went quickly
  • 3.1.15 had no sql statements and said just that namely:
'Couldn't find schema file for mysql'
  • 3.1.17 same
  • 3.3.0 took considerably longer:
started at 11:37 - ended: 12:17 -- 34 minutes
(depending on the speed of your machine and size of your database)
  • 3.3.11 started at 12:18 ended 12:18

  • make changes to the RT_SiteConfig.pm file.
  • I kept getting this error:
'*error:*  no connection to syslog available at
/webhosting/stow/perl-5.8.5/perl5/lib/site_perl/5.8.5/Log/Dispatch/Syslog.pm line 77'
  • to deal with that read NoConnectionToSyslog
  • I had to also make sure that the $organisation variable was set correctly

  • make changes to apache's httpd.conf file.
  • in this installation that meant changing the 'DocumentRoot' and any other entries that refer to the rt3 directory.
  • if you've installed the new RT version to a directory of the same name as the old, then you don't need to change anything

  • apply any modifications that you may have made to your previous version.
  • this may mean that some things are broken.
  • in my case I need to change a few things, mainly where 'Ticket' became 'Object'

DEALING WITH PERFORMANCE PROBLEM

  • As stated above, I need to do this upgrade because of speed/performance problems.
  • This manifested itself mainly through the use of the 'comment' page.
  • The following SQL query is the culprit:
SELECT DISTINCT main.* FROM Users main , Principals Principals_1, ACL ACL_2, Groups Groups_3, \
CachedGroupMembers CachedGroupMembers_4  WHERE ((ACL_2.RightName = 'OwnTicket')) AND \
((CachedGroupMembers_4.MemberId = Principals_1.id)) \
AND ((Groups_3.id = CachedGroupMembers_4.GroupId)) \
AND ((Principals_1.Disabled = '0')or(Principals_1.Disabled = '0')) \
AND ((Principals_1.id != '1')) AND ((main.id = Principals_1.id)) \
AND  ( (    ACL_2.PrincipalId = Groups_3.id AND ACL_2.PrincipalType = 'Group' \
AND (   Groups_3.Domain = 'SystemInternal' OR Groups_3.Domain = 'UserDefined' \
OR Groups_3.Domain = 'ACLEquivalence')) \
OR ( ( (Groups_3.Domain = 'RT::Queue-Role' AND Groups_3.Instance = 23)  \
OR ( Groups_3.Domain = 'RT::Ticket-Role' AND Groups_3.Instance = 238803)  ) \
AND Groups_3.Type = ACL_2.PrincipalType) ) \
AND (ACL_2.ObjectType = 'RT::System' OR  (ACL_2.ObjectType = 'RT::Queue' \
AND ACL_2.ObjectId = 23) )    ORDER BY main.Name ASC;
  • I tried many things including:
  • The optimize actually includes the analyze if I understand the mysql documentation correctly.
  • The optimize made some difference in query speeds but on the whole, all of the above gave me no improvement.
  • After a fairly intensive email exchange, which can be view on the rt-users mailing list starting on 25Oct2005.
  • The thread is titled 'Huge Attachments table in 3.4.4'
  • Jesse offered me some patches.
  • 2 files named: 'clone.patch' and 'rights.patch'
  • The 'rights.patch' file contains changes to the way SQL queries are formulated and includes changes to:
Groups_Overlay.pm
Principals_Overlay.pm
Users_Overlay.pm
  • The clone.patch file contains a change to the SearchBuilder.pm file.
    • For this to work, the DBIx::SearchBuilder package needs to be recompiled.
    • To do that, I wanted to remove the existing DBIx::SearchBuilder package.
    • Since that isn't the easiest thing to do in the Perl Module world, I wrote this mini script that does it.
#!/usr/bin/perl
 
 use ExtUtils::Install;
 # you'll need to adjust the path to you .packlist file for that module
 $packlist = '/webhosting/stow/perl-5.8.5/perl5/lib/site_perl/5.8.5/sun4-solaris/auto/DBIx/SearchBuilder/.packlist';
 
 #print $packlist;
 
 uninstall($packlist);
 
'perl -MCPAN -e shell'
cpan> get DBIx::SearchBuilder
cpan> look DBIx::SearchBuilder

  • then I modified the code in SearchBuilder.pm
  • the compilation complained
  • I needed to install Clone
cpan> install Clone
  • Everything compiled nicely
  • So now I reloaded the application by stopping.... and starting apache
  • and....... the speed problem was solved
  • However I found a problem probably caused by the patches, namely
  • Members of groups were not showing up.
  • I used mysqladmin -v processlist to find that it was the following query:
SELECT DISTINCT main.* FROM Groups main , Principals Principals_1 \
WHERE ((Principals_1.Disabled = '0')) AND  ((main.Domain = 'UserDefined')) \
AND ((main.id = Principals_1.id)or(main.id != '2552'))    ORDER BY main.Name ASC
  • Since there were no indexes on Principals.Disabled and Groups.Domain, I created those 2 indexes:
create index Principals4 on Principals(Disabled);
create index Groups5 on Groups(Domain);
  • This seemed to have done the trick!
  • I could no longer fault that page load.

THAT'S ABOUT IT