Backups fail due to missing Apache logs

Submitted by cerebrum on Wed, 04/01/2015 - 20:51

Hi there,

Since we deployed the latest update of webmin-virtual-server:amd64 4.16.gpl, backups are reported as failed. Checking the status mails, I assume this is due to missing Apache log files:

Backup is partially complete. Final size was 354.89 MB. Total backup time was 08 minutes, 59 seconds.
Virtual servers that failed :
[...]
Creating backup for virtual server example.com ..
    Copying virtual server configuration ..
    .. done

    Backing up Cron jobs ..
    .. none defined.

    Saving mail aliases ..
    .. done

    Saving mail and FTP users ..
    .. done

    Backing up mail and FTP user Cron jobs ..
    .. none to backup

    Backing up Dovecot control files ..
    .. done

    Copying Apache virtual host configuration ..
    .. done

    Copying Apache log files ..
    No such file or directory

    Copying SSL Apache virtual host configuration and certificate ..
    .. done

    Dumping MySQL database example_typo3 ..
    .. done

    Dumping MySQL database example_wordpress ..
    .. done

    Copying Procmail and SpamAssassin configuration files ..
    .. done

    Creating incremental TAR file of home directory ..
    .. done

.. completed in 1 minutes, 2 seconds

We are using Apache's CustomLog and ErrorLog for writing log files, so I assume, virtualmin is unable to detect the files:

CustomLog "|/usr/sbin/rotatelogs /home/example/www/log/access_log.%Y%m%d 86400" combined
ErrorLog "|/usr/sbin/rotatelogs /home/example/www/log/error_log.%Y%m%d 86400"

Any suggestion what we could do to configure virtualmin to ignore the standard location and file name of log files (and as a consequence do not report the backups as failed)?

Maybe item "Fixed a few backup-related bugs triggered when a user is out of quota" (see ChangeLog of version 4.16) causes this issue?

Cheers

Michael

Status: 
Active

Comments

Submitted by JamieCameron on Wed, 04/01/2015 - 23:45

Yes, it looks like the fix for the quota issue triggers this indirectly ... in this case, the cause is the use of rotatelogs command rather than writing to the log file directly.

Submitted by AnastasiosMagoutas on Thu, 04/02/2015 - 00:49

I'm afraid it is more complicated. After the update to 4.16 this message appears on all alias servers backup. But for some of those servers (not all) if you try to open the website the redirect fails. In some cases it shows:

Forbidden You don't have permission to access / on this server.

and in some other case the browser shows a warning page that the redirect failed. I tried to delete and recreate the alias servers. In some cases it worked, in some other it didn't.

Submitted by andreychek on Thu, 04/02/2015 - 08:59

Someone in the Forums had a good idea for how to get the backups up and running again, while we work to resolve the bug in this issue.

In your Backup Schedule, if you go into Features and settings, you can disable the "Include log files" option.

That will tell Virtualmin to stop attempting to add the Apache log files to the backups.

Submitted by cerebrum on Tue, 04/07/2015 - 20:07

Another option would be to downgrade to version 4.15.gpl-2. Under Debian 7.x, you can do this by executing the following commands:

apt-get install webmin-virtual-server=4.15.gpl-2

To prevent Debian to install the 4.16 update later on (or any other update that becomes available), you can set the package "on hold":

apt-mark hold webmin-virtual-server

However, you should carefully monitor which versions are released and do not forget to re-enable the update (I am sure, the guys will publish a version that fixes the "issue" soon :-)

apt-mark unhold webmin-virtual-server

Just to be clear: these commands work on Debian GNU/Linux 7.x and newer. If you are running a different Linux distribution, different commands might be required.

Submitted by helonaut on Sat, 05/02/2015 - 16:47

Thank you andreychek, this approach also works for onetime backups. Does anyone know the terminal version for this option? Like --no-logfiles or something?