ebox kills networking when enabling network module

[quadrox]

I have rented a dedicated server from strato (http://strato.de/server/dedicated/power/index.html) running ubuntu 8.04. I have updated all packages and added the ebox repository. I installed ebox, enabled some modules and tried to save my changes. This results in an utterly unresponsive server. I have tried this twice now, with the same result.

The first time I installed all ebox packages, the second time I installed only the most necessary: no samba, vpn, dhcp, software etc., but only webserver, email, firewall, users and a few more. The first time I made a whole lot of changes, the second time I simply tried enabling the webserver as well as the users modules. Both times I had the same result, the server pretty much died when clicking "apply changes" in the top right.

EDIT: after playing around a bit, I have found that this happens whenever I enable the network module. After logging into ebox the first time, I do nothing else except for enabling that module. This will make the webserver stop responding, and I am unable to login with SSH from my home computer. I can still login remotely through the recovery console though, which is placed on the same network as the server.

Enabling the network module leaves two zombie processes. Killing the parent process (apache2 run by ebox user) and restarting networking and apache2 using the init.d script does not resolve the issue, not even after resetting the /etc/network/interfaces file to its original contents.

I am completely stumped as to how to solve this problem, please help :/

[javi]

what's your network configuration? Number of interfaces, which are external or internal and so on?


Could  you post your /etc/network/interfaces file before eBox makes any change at all?

[quadrox]

my interfaces file:

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

The server should have only a single interface with one IP address. At first I thought it might be because ebox tries to set up a DHCP server which the rest of the network doesn't like, but I don't really think that's it, since I did not install the dhcp package. But then again, when enabling the networking module it says something about enabling an DHCP hook. I don't reall understand what that means though :/

btw, if it wasn't clear from before, my server is placed in some big room with a whole bunch of other servers, none of which belong to me or should/can be controlled by me. As such it would be nice if ebox did not make any attempts to disturb the rest of the network (such as setting up it's own DHCP server).

Thank you for trying to help me, btw, it is very much appreciated

[javi]

Ok, your interfaces looks fine

What eBox version are you using? Did you mark your network interface as external? If you did that's the cause you can't connect to your eBox as the firewall is very restrictive by default.

If you didn't mark the iface as external, we can go with another approach: telling eBox not to control your network interfaces at all. This involves adding a line to /usr/share/perl5/EBox/Network.pm

[quadrox]

I am using the ebox build from the hardy repository as outlined in the installation manual http://ebox-platform.com/community/installation-guide/
. I believe the version is 0.12.

I did not enable the firewall module, so I don't think that's it. Also I was able to log in remotely through a recovery console which is placed on the same network. But when I did login, the whole system was somewhat sluggish. That was the first time though, when I basically installed everything I could get

I could not log in directly from my home computer though, so maybe it was the firewall after all.

I will try again when I get back home. Can you already tell me what line should be added in case it helps?

Thanks again for helping me out.

[quadrox]

Okay, I just tried it again. Network interface is NOT set as external. Top in the recovery console shows this, when sorting by process status:

Code: [Select]

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND           
22825 ebox      20   0     0    0    0 Z  0.0  0.0   0:01.07 ebox-glob <defunct>
22842 ebox      20   0     0    0    0 Z  0.0  0.0   0:01.13 ebox-glob <defunct>
What do you think I should do now? I can only access the server through the recovery console, how do I undo the damage? Reinstalling takes 30-45 minutes, and I'd rather not have to wait on that but get on with the installation

Edit: nevrmind, I just reinstalled the server. I do hope that I get it running with ebox sometime soon though.

[quadrox]

I am starting to think that ebox is not for me after all. It seemed so nice... but it does not support SSH, and it keeps disabling the network connectivity when enabling the network module. I've even tried disabling all firewall rules as outlined in the following post: http://forum.eboxplatform.com/index.php?topic=205.0.

I suppose I will have to set up my services manually.

Thank you for your patience, mine has run out :/

[javi]

Thank you for your patience, mine has run out :/

Sorry to hear that But it seems there's something in your installation that eBox doesn't like. I was really curious to know what.

Anyway, one more thing could tell what's your kernel versions running:

uname -a

I've seen some strange things with custom kernels from some hostings and some of the libraries we use. That would explain it.

Thanks,

Javi

[quadrox]

I think I'm still going for the manual set-up, there isn't really all that much to set up for me anyway. I'd like to figure out what's wrong as well though in case there are other strato customers wanting to use ebox.

It's the latest kernel from the ubuntu repositories - at least I updated it before installing ebox. I did not reboot the server after that though. uname -a gives this:

Linux h1434680 2.6.24-16-server #1 SMP Thu Apr 10 13:58:00 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

I think I will ask strato support about what changes they have made to the default (network) configuration. They have made changes to the grub menu, so they have probably changed other things as well.

[vstryer]

I did consider starting a new topic, but this is exactly my problem here, maybe I have enough patience to get it solved.

I have Ubuntu 8.04 LTS running on a vserver. I updates all the packages and installed ebox and all modules from the PPA.

After switchin on the network module (which I need for a mail server, obviously) and hitting "Save changes", the webserver never came back to life. I cannot even log on via ssh, so its something deep. I can log on now via some "rescue system" mechanism my host has installed and tell you I am running kernel 2.6.16.37-domU-v1 and this is what my /etc/networking/interfaces looks like:

Code: [Select]

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
 address <my static ip>
 netmask 255.255.255.0
 up route add -host <some ip> dev eth0
 up route add default gateway <same ip>
ebox warned me about making some changes before I hit save and I thought it was something to do with the network interfaces, but this file looks good to my mildly educated eyes. And I have not (knowingly) enabled any firewall

Up until this... well, frankly, killing experience I was most exited about ebox - I have been trying to use confixx (my host includes it for free), but had to find out that it makes more problems than it solves.

@quadrox: you didn't by chance find out what the problem was/is? Considering the amount of time that has passed it seems to be something very deep and unrelated to versions of either Ubuntu or ebox...

@javi: anything I can try? I really would love to be able to use ebox...

trying to use the hint with iptables I found out that iptables was not installed and that I cannot install it with apt-get - for I have not Internet connection :-(

[quadrox]

I am sorry to say that I have not done any further research into this issue. I have configured my server manually, although that is a very time-consuming task. I expect it to be related to the configuration of the hidden network device that is used for the recovery console, but I do not really know what to look for. I wish you the best of luck in getting this issue solved, but personally I cannot afford to invest any more time into it.

[vstryer]

Still, thank you for your fast reply ;-)

Since I will have to reinstall the server anyway can someone please tell me which files exactly ebox modifies upon enabling the network module, so I can do a thorough before/after comparison?

Oh, and one more thing^TM: during installation of ebox and the modules (and the dependencies) I was warned multiple time the the kernel I am using does not support multicast. Could that be related somehow? I cannot imagine how, but who knows...

Btw, does the network module enable DHCP? In my setup (vserver) this of course would be not so good.

[vstryer]

Well, I did a reinstall. And /etc/network/interfaces was not altered by the ebox-network module, it's the same before and after enabling.

So, what else can/should I check?

[vstryer]

Interestingly, what happens when I install ebox and ebox-network from the Hardy repos (NOT the eBox PPA!) the same thing happens, even without enabling the network module!!!

I was connected via ssh and forgot to add the PPA and the last thing I can see before everything froze is:

Code: [Select]

Richte ebox-network ein (0.11.99-0ubuntu1) ...
Could PLEASE some Hero explain to me what's going on? Everybody seems so happy with ebox, but this is clearly a MAJOR bug!

[vstryer]

Even though I mostly seem to be talking to myself, maybe this will lead to something. Decades of psychotherapy can't be wrong, huh?

Now, another reinstall later, this time I took ebox 1.0 from the PPA. Installed ebox and ebox-network (and the dependencies). Now when I pretend to want to enable the network module, ebox informs me what it will do, see attached screenshot.

But /etc/network/interfaces is never changed, it looks exactly the same pre- and post-chrash. So is that the problem? Maybe ebox doesn't have the necessary rights?

The Dashboard gives me a list of network devices: bond0, shaper0, dummy0, eql, eth0, gre0, ip6tnl0.