Author Topic: [Solved] dissapointed by 3.0  (Read 2737 times)

ctek

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[Solved] dissapointed by 3.0
« on: March 01, 2013, 12:29:20 pm »
After so much troubles with version 3.0 i reached the sad decision that this version of Zentyal is not good for me... Even if I'm not an easy quitter, it's almost impossible to make it work the way i want (also advertised).
After several fresh installs and two hardware servers changed there are issues that are stopping this to function properly. I want to share with you my personal opinion and this is not addresed to someone in particular. I do appreciate the hard work of the Zentyal team and respect their work. But maybe this 3.0 release is to "young" ad not ready to be released as stable.

First let me describe the enviroment in witch i used Zentyal:
Server desired pourposes: Home server with mail, webserver, DNS, Samba, Qos, Multiple gateways balance, and PXE with tools.

The first problem occured when i set the "domain hostname"  (the label is not to clear, either ask for the SMB domain or hostname). You have to be very careful what you set up here or it can't be changed

Later on after the zentyal installed the modules, seting up the DNS did not create the zone "db.domain.com" ! (i discovered this after some errors on the dashboard).
For Mydomain.com i configured the machine_hostname and added the public IP i got from one of the providers. Also added this to the domain.
The problem is that when asked the Zentyal DNS is reporting the public IP but also the LAN ip (without this added to the hostname SAMBA is malfunctioning!!) and for the life in me i can't make dns not to report this (even after tweaking the bind files)...

Not even several changes to DNS did not create the db.mydomain.com file... (later problems occured from this)

Roundcube it seems to be unable to install properly unless you disable the module, change the mysql setting to use innodb. and then re-install the module... Failing to do so will get you with an error Database error on webmail page.

Binding Webmail to a virtual host seems useless! when i use webmail.mydomain.com i got nothing but the empty host folder....
No problem, I made a symlink from the /roundcube folder to webmail.mydomain.com... (maybe my understanding of virtual host and that of the option to bind the webmail to it is wrong...)

Another problem the Hardware raid is not recognised monitored correctly... System reports no HW raid installed (no problem as long as it works and i know that newer cards are reported as /dev/sdx instead of old cciss...)

In File sharing i checked the Antivirus on shares but this turned out to be a mistake since a the "scanned:bla_bla_file..." appeared in each folder and not deleted.. Why ?
Creating shares is problematic also... Even if i specify the path to the folder and not from smb. The share is created in /home/samba/shares ....
Then the problem of opening files from the server (not copy) but open MKV and executables larger than 2.3 Gb, Small files up to 2.2 G have been opened but larger ones not.
Even if the source filesystem for samba share was FAT32(usbstick) NTFS internal and usb hdd or EXT4 on raid. (on FAT32 i have my reasons to agree with not  opening  4.7 image since those are Fat limitations).
After updating the Filesharing module the module apeared to stop working. It was activated in the Module status but did not work.
On other ocasion i removed the filesharing module and add it again but did not want to start...
And keep geting the errors of nsupdate not able to configure the zone.....
I 've seen the ticket on the track but no resolution was there.... even if this is a problem (not normal but high) that more users are facing

Serving PXE custom menu is not an easy task.
First you have to enable thincients, made the appropiate setting in the modules. build the image and then you have PXE. Then you have to see if you can add NFS support... because if you need to export some files you need to add nfs-kernel-server and other modules, configure exports and then try to boot but you also need to modify the firewall rules... see what to unblock and so on.
But it is a 50% success story. Currently my server is no longer able to provide nfs mounting from pxe.... (this i have to fix again) Maybe a preconfigured service in the zentyal list wold make life more easy....

So this are the problems encountered for now but i want to mention that this is on several fresh installs of either 32 and 64 bit and two different hardware setups.
The problem is that the little feedback that came from the forum was not enough to resolve the problems... I want to thank you all the members of this forum and this great community support. Since without your help this was bound to be more frustrating than it was.
After so many trials and failures i give up.... this post is not to blame someone but to share a state of facts that happened...

Thank you and best regards
Bogdan
« Last Edit: March 02, 2013, 11:11:21 am by ctek »

J. A. Calvo

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Re: dissapointed by 3.0
« Reply #1 on: March 01, 2013, 02:12:52 pm »
Were you using the Zentyal installer or installing on top of Ubuntu Server? Because of your error with roundcube I tend to think you were installing packages on commandline, but correct me if I'm wrong.

I want to thank you for your feedback, but in order to address your problems separately and fix them as soon as possible, the best thing you can do is to open separate tickets for each issue at trac.zentyal.org, giving as much detailed information as possible about how to reproduce it.

Thanks again and best regards.
Zentyal Server Lead Developer

ctek

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Re: dissapointed by 3.0
« Reply #2 on: March 01, 2013, 03:08:44 pm »
Hi J.A.
All the setups have been done from the Zentyal installer. I'm doing this since i started to use eBox since i've seen once that an install on top of another system is prone to errors. So the short answer is that i used the installers (32/64).

Regarding the opening of tickets, I tend not to open since i know that most of the times there are already opened issues. I try to find the solutions myself and then seek help.

Since i'm aware that this is community driven support i look for answers in the forum or wiki.
Again this is not intended to blame someone but maybe this grouped problems will help someone to figure them out.

Tonight i'll do an install from scratch with Zentyal 3.0 and log everything in the process. Than if you want i'll send the results.

Thank you again and best regards
Bogdan

J. A. Calvo

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Re: dissapointed by 3.0
« Reply #3 on: March 01, 2013, 04:55:10 pm »
If there are already similar opened issues you can comment on them confirming the problem and if possible providing more information, that will be always welcome, so I encourage you to do so.

Thanks again!
Zentyal Server Lead Developer

Joeg1484

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Re: dissapointed by 3.0
« Reply #4 on: March 02, 2013, 06:20:30 am »
I have to agree with your disappointment!

I have spent the last 3 hours installing and re installing Zenyal only to have it continually fail with the samba and user accounts.

Funny thing is I tested this last weekend on an actual hardware setup, but now I'm using ESXi and the whole user share thing is broken!

I can set up groups, shares, and users, but no one can connect from Linux or windows even despite being in the Domain admins group or what ever group I set up. If I set up a finance group, add some users, then create a finance share and set the acls for access by finance and domains admins, not a one of them can connect...

I can ssh to the server and have the local file acls work as users not allowed access get access denied when trying to cd into those shares, and users with access get the access that is specified.

This is quite strange behavior and was not present last week.

I have to get this server up by Sun night so I can present it to my users on Mon morning, and now I either have to go back to 2.x.x or just create my own server from scratch... What a way to spend a weekend.

Unfortunately, I don't have time to wait a week for a reply, so I mine as well start installing software... Pitty, I really loved Zentyal and used 2.x.x for a couple of years with out ANY issues as all... Now, I can't even download it on the website anymore... Maybe I have an old copy.

Joe

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Re: dissapointed by 3.0
« Reply #5 on: March 02, 2013, 06:25:23 am »

Joeg1484

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Re: dissapointed by 3.0
« Reply #6 on: March 02, 2013, 06:28:07 am »
Joe:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/zentyal/files/

Ohh, yeah, 2.3.2 :). Thanks so much!!!!

Once I get my server back up, I will install another VM with 3.0 on it and start troubleshooting! But at least now I can get something up and running!

Thanks man!!!!
Joe

Sam Graf

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Re: dissapointed by 3.0
« Reply #7 on: March 02, 2013, 06:30:32 am »
Welcome.

ctek

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[Fixing] dissapointed by 3.0
« Reply #8 on: March 02, 2013, 11:08:36 am »
I have worked on zential last night and fixed the pxe mounting of nfs exports. Here is what i did and maybe can help someone.

Update nfs-kernel-server and re-install nfs-common, also install nfswatch for debug
create some services in network section of Zential admin then follow this steps to add ports to that service. I have name it nfs_access.

we make sure that you are using nfs-kernel-server on specific asigned ports then add them to the firewall Like this.
edit /etc/default/nfs-common:

NEED_STATD=yes
STATDOPTS="--port 4000 --outgoing-port 4001"

Make changes to the firewall with this ports in the section regarding internal networks access to zentyal.
Then modify: /etc/default/nfs-kernel-server

RPCMOUNTDOPTS=" --port 32263 "

Also add this port to your service and then also add the port 111 used by sun rpc

Note. Make sure when exporting your folders with nfs to add the option "insecure" to the mount.
edit /etc/exports like this:

/folder/folder_to_read     172.29.10.0/24 (ro,no_subtree_check,no_root_squash,async,insecure)
/folder/folder_to_write    172.29.10.0/24 (rw,no_subtree_check,no_root_squash,async,insecure).

Also The last night update to Zentyal core, samba and other modules have fixed the problems mentioned before!
and now the share are CIFS are reachable and also with very good speed over network.

Best regards
Bogdan





Joeg1484

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Re: [Solved] dissapointed by 3.0
« Reply #9 on: March 02, 2013, 08:50:43 pm »
Here is an interesting feature...

So, I got my system back up last night on the old version (Thanks again for the link), so I have some time to troubleshoot 3.0...

I installed another VM with 3.0 and, again, after creating users, groups, and shares, none of my groups can access the shares, however, the users can.

So, if I set up userA and put him into groupA and assign groupA read/write or domain admin on a share, userA will continually get prompted for a password. The logs say NT_AUTHENTICATION_ERROR or something along those lines...

However, if I set the users name, userA as read/write to the share, then they can access the share just fine.

So, it appears that the groups are not working in SAMBA.

I say this, because I can ssh into the machine as userA and all the filesystem ACLs that are in place for groups work for this user.

So, something is amiss with Samba. Perhaps an bad update?

Last week, I set up a working 3.0 box, and, by the grace of God, create a config backup.

You know what??? When I restored the previous config backup to the broken 3.0 install... it all started working as it should.

So, I am going to rebuild, set it up like I normally would, get a config backup of the broken setup, then, restore and compare last weeks config backup to the new one to see what changes.

Then, I will file bug reports on what I find.

I'm highly surprised more people have not chimed in on this over the week... I installed the system like 6 times last 2 days and every time it was broke, so it could not have been something I was doing wrong - I say this because I have a build doc that I use from the first time I was testing out 3.0 and that install worked fine!

Anyway, back to testing!
Joe
« Last Edit: March 02, 2013, 08:52:15 pm by Joeg1484 »

ctek

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Re: [Solved] dissapointed by 3.0
« Reply #10 on: March 02, 2013, 09:57:58 pm »
Hi, Joeg1484
Did you let zential update the core, samba, dns and users modules ?
And when creating the users and groups i think the priority is to create the groups, configure the user template and then create the users..

Please let us know if you manage to solve it via the update (it worked for me) and the mentioned model above.

Best regards
Bogdan

Joeg1484

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Re: [Solved] dissapointed by 3.0
« Reply #11 on: March 02, 2013, 10:04:47 pm »
Hi, Joeg1484
Did you let zential update the core, samba, dns and users modules ?
And when creating the users and groups i think the priority is to create the groups, configure the user template and then create the users..

Please let us know if you manage to solve it via the update (it worked for me) and the mentioned model above.

Best regards
Bogdan

Hi Bogdan,

Wow, I did so many installs, its all a blur now :)....

Let me see... From my notes, yes, I did an update fist off while in the console right after installation. Then, I set up my certificates, change the port of the management interface, then change the templates, change pam to allow local ssh access, then create groups, users, and then shares.

A couple of times, I changed around some things like not updating till all done with accounts, did accounts, then groups, did shares, then accounts, then groups, etc...

Like I said, I installed it and tested more than I care to admit trying to get it to work.

Funny thing, is when I was testing last week, the first install worked like a charm... I'm just glad I created a backup of my config... I usually don't do that :-D.

Thanks!
Joe
« Last Edit: March 02, 2013, 10:06:19 pm by Joeg1484 »

bksouder

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Re: [Solved] dissapointed by 3.0
« Reply #12 on: March 25, 2013, 04:29:24 pm »
Joe - thanks for all your work running this down.  I think you might be on to something with the groups as we had a similar issue.  I can totally relate to what you are saying about it being a blur from having to install and re-install.  We have been building the servers on the ZenServer hypervisor.  So it is not related to ESX - it is definitely in the current package.  You have an update to what you found?

Joeg1484

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Re: [Solved] dissapointed by 3.0
« Reply #13 on: March 25, 2013, 05:40:00 pm »
Joe - thanks for all your work running this down.  I think you might be on to something with the groups as we had a similar issue.  I can totally relate to what you are saying about it being a blur from having to install and re-install.  We have been building the servers on the ZenServer hypervisor.  So it is not related to ESX - it is definitely in the current package.  You have an update to what you found?

You know, after I restored from my backup, I didn't have any issues at all with the install. I did one other install for a client and there seems to have been some updates to Samba and the user account module that may have fixed my previous issues as I have not encountered any problems since.

Looks like they may have fixed the issues we were seeing.

Thanks!
Joe