linux reboot and chkconfig

Setting up a new linux server pair for clients, I've did some things I haven't done in a while, so I thought I'd document them here so I'd remember in the future.

To set up a service in linux, use chkconfig. Running the chkconfig --list command shows all the potential daemons that are sitting in /etc/init.d/ and whether they are set to on|off|etc for each linux run level. The main run levels to set are 2,3,4,5. You can set the to on for http like this:
chkconfig --level 2345 httpd on

It's also a good idea to go to the script for that service in /etc/init.d (httpd in this case) and modify the chkconfig line at the top of the file to add those changed params.

To reboot the server you can run reboot. It actually calls shutdown -r or shutdown -h depending on the linux implementation.

Automated Windows Deploy scripts and tricks

Permissions (domain is optional):
cacls drive:\folder /T /E /G "domain\username:C" - :C modify permissions
cacls drive:\folder /T /E /G "domain\username:R" - :R read permissions
cacls drive:\folder /T /E /G "username:F" - :F full permissions

net localgroup "IIS_WPG" "domain\username" /add - adds user to IIS_WPG localgroup

IIS configs:
Set the friendly name for an IIS website:
cscript drive:\path-to\adsutil.vbs SET W3SVC/WEB_SITE_Number/ROOT/AppFriendlyName IIS_WEB_SITE_Name
Set the port of a website:
cscript drive:\path-to\adsutil.vbs SET W3SVC/WEB_SITE_Number/ServerBindings ":8080:"
Install an IIS Application pool:
cscript drive:\path-to\adsutil.vbs CREATE w3svc/AppPools/AppPoolName MyApplicationPool
Set identity type on AppPool
cscript drive:\path-to\adsutil.vbs SET W3SVC/AppPools/WebSiteName/AppPoolIdentityType 3 (2 is the predefined network service account)
Set appPool username
cscript drive:\path-to\adsutil.vbs SET W3SVC/AppPools/WebSiteName/WAMUserName username
Set appPool password
cscript drive:\path-to\adsutil.vbs SET W3SVC/AppPools/WebSiteName/WAMUserPass password
Delete a web site:
cscript c:\windows\system32\iisweb.vbs /delete "WebSite name"\
Create a web site:
cscript c:\windows\system32\iisweb.vbs /create "IIS File Path" "WebSite name" /dontstart
Set server bindings
cscript drive:\path-to\adsutil.vbs SET W3SVC/WEB_SITE_Number/ServerBindings :80:myWebSite :80:myWebSite.com
Set virtual directory permissions
cscript drive:\path-to\adsutil.vbs SET W3SVC/WEB_SITE_Number/ROOT/vDir_Name/AccessFlags 513
Set enable anonymous user for vDir
cscript drive:\path-to\adsutil.vbs SET W3SVC/WEB_SITE_Number/ROOT/vDir_Name/AuthAnonymous TRUE
Set vDir anonymous username
cscript drive:\path-to\adsutil.vbs SET W3SVC/WEB_SITE_Number/ROOT/vDir_Name/AnonymousUserName username
Set vDir anonymous password
cscript drive:\path-to\adsutil.vbs SET W3SVC/WEB_SITE_Number/ROOT/vDir_Name/AnonymousUserPass password
Set vDir to use integrated windows authentication
cscript drive:\path-to\adsutil.vbs SET W3SVC/WEB_SITE_Number/ROOT/vDir_Name/authNTLM TRUE
Set vDir ASP.NET version
C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\version_number\aspnet_regiis -s W3SVC/WEB_SITE_Number/root/vDir_Name

Troubleshooting

Things to always watch out for when troubleshooting:
- locked out users - users who have been locked out of the system because the wrong password has been entered 3 consecutive times
- out of disk space (proper monitoring would fix this problem)
- GUI display that is contrary to what is actually happening on the system. Gac'ed dll's that really aren't gac'ed. In other words, assume nothing.
- inconsistent application of permissions across environments.
- duplicate libraries/dll's on machines.
- closed ports or ports/services not listening/running. Also port conflicts. More than one service wanting to use the same port.
- services, IO connections, db connections not getting closed/terminated properly.
- logic between functions or classes that creates infinite loops

IIS binary formatting error

Oh man, did I get a slap in the face yesterday. I was helping/coordinating a patch into production for our team and was asked if we needed to 'drainstop' (read turn off load balancing) to deploy to our app servers. I said no, I had never done that before here. Later I realized that I probably haven't done a prod patch to the app servers here period.
Anyway, we pushed our change onto running servers and everything appeared to deploy fine until we actually tried to use them. It seemed that even though we pushed new components and gac'ed them, that was ignored because the server still had a running request on the old one. Once that request was gone, our app servers were down. When our app servers go down and our web servers try to access them in that state, we get this wonderfully intuitive error called a 'binary formatter error' with a bunch of junk that doesn't make any sense.
So, in the end, two lessons learned:
1. Always drainstop servers when you're deploying onto a live system
2. Binary Formatter errors can mean that you communication with a remote servers is down.

Tomcat Alias

As my previous post says, I went live with a new website on Friday. Well, within minutes of going live I realized we didn't have an alias set up for www.myNewSite.com and got my client's administrator to add it. Once it was made live, the alias still didn't work. I had it configured in my tomcat server.xml file, but no dice. What was going on?

When I installed tomcat, I got rid of all the default sites it comes with (and I thought I had gotten rid of all their configs as well. It turned out I hadn't. In the server.xml file the host was configured correctly, but the 'engine' configuration was still pointing to 'localhost' which wasn't in my host configuration anymore. So I pointed it to my new 'root' configuration for the server - so now it looks something like this:

Engine name="Catalina" defaultHost="www.myNewSite.com"

and the host lookes like this:

Host name="www.myNewSite.com" appBase="webapps"
unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true"
xmlValidation="false" xmlNamespaceAware="false"
alias myNewSite.com alias

MySQL service restart, InfoGlue

I have MySQL running behind Infoglue for a new web app one of my clients has. We went into production on Friday with that web site. Saturday evening the hosting providing had a scheduled update and so all the boxes got rebooted. Unfortunately, the MySQL service which was configured to autorestart didn't come back up. In the application event logs (I've got it running on a Windows server) it said:

...MySQL Server 5.1\bin\mysqld: unknown option '--enable-pstack'

I searched the MySQL forums and Google for this error and nothing. I reinstalled the service a couple of times.. and nothing - same error. I was sweating by this time.

Then I started looking at the my.ini file for Mysql in the installation folder (sibling of the bin folder). I saw these lines at the very bottom:

#Print a symbolic stack trace on failure.
enable-pstack

Ah ha. So here's where that 'unknown option' was coming from. I had no idea what was making a failure happen on startup to make it print out this 'stack trace' so I just commented out that line. ...And low and behold, MySQL started up happily and things worked.

Whew.

Custom header in Cruise Control

We have multiple CruiseControl (CCNET) instances running on our build boxes and we've been wondering how to differentiate which one is which so people can know at a glance which one they are pointing at.
This turns out to be relatively easy. In a typical CCNET installation, there's a \cruiseinstalldir\webdashboard\templates directory. Inside it you'll find a file called TopMenu.vm. Open the file up and after the last '#end' put some literal spaces in and type the title of your CCNET site with some plain html formatting to make it obvious (make the font bigger and bold, for example)

...save it and refresh your dashboard page.