Timeout after virtualmin fails to lock a file

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#1 Mon, 01/05/2009 - 11:01
Ligthert

Timeout after virtualmin fails to lock a file

Hello fellow VirtualMin users,

For some time I had a perfectly working webmin/virtualmin install till just before new years eve when it started giving us problems. To be honest I can't recall making any changes to the system nor webmin/virtualmin. But all of a sudden when you try to dis/en-able mail for a domain the page starts loading and after 5 minutes it exits with an error.

[code:1]Removing from email domains list .. .. Mail for domain failed! : Failed to lock file /etc/aliases after 5 minutes at ../web-lib-funcs.pl line 1010.[/code:1]

I've had a similar error for /etc/postfix/virtual at first, but this I resolved this in an attempt to break a file lock by moving the file around the filesystems on seperate partitions. But for /etc/aliases this isn't working.

The logs don't show anything useful. The ../web-lib-funcs.pl line 1010 bit refers to a subroutine for printing errors. In search for any processes locking /etc/aliases with the command [code:1]fuser -m /etc/aliases[/code:1] show no running processes directly opening this file.

So I am at the end of my wits.

Have any of you experienced similar problems or can anybody here give me hints/tips/points on how to solve this problem?

As for the system: [code:1]# uname -a Linux lithium 2.6.16.46-0.12-smp #1 SMP Thu May 17 14:00:09 UTC 2007 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux lithium:/etc # cat /etc/SuSE SuSE-release SuSEconfig/

cat /etc/SuSE-release

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (x86_64) VERSION = 10 PATCHLEVEL = 1 [/code:1] Webmin v1.441 VirtualMin v3.55.gpl

Thanks in advance.

Greetings, Sacha

Post edited by: Ligthert, at: 2009/01/05 11:01<br><br>Post edited by: Ligthert, at: 2009/01/05 11:03

Mon, 01/05/2009 - 12:22
andreychek

Do you see any .lock files in /etc, or perhaps in /tmp/.webmin?

There may be a stale lockfile in there somewhere.
-Eric

Mon, 01/05/2009 - 12:35 (Reply to #2)
Ligthert

I thought I removed this one but:
[code:1]lithium:/etc # find . -name *.lock
./aliases.lock[/code:1]

Mon, 01/05/2009 - 12:41 (Reply to #3)
andreychek

Cool... so, assuming you haven't already gotten it working, what I might do is:

1. Stop Webmin (/etc/init.d/webmin stop)

2. Make sure no old Webmin processes are running (ps auxw | grep mini | grep webmin ) -- and kill them if there are

3. Delete the lockfile you found

4. Fire up Webmin again (/etc/init.d/webmin start)

Does it work at that point?
-Eric

Mon, 01/05/2009 - 12:42 (Reply to #4)
Ligthert

This did the trick it seems.
Thanks for the heads up!

I am somewhat puzzled how I missed this lock-file. But I'll keep testing and see if it keeps working. Guess I'll have to stress the system again to see if I can reproduce the error ;-)

Thanks!

Mon, 01/05/2009 - 12:41
mnt_schred

Well, It works again! Removing the file was enough :)

Wed, 01/14/2009 - 16:48
webwzrd

This is a great supportive forum - this was the answer I needed.

Thanks to all!

Thu, 06/02/2016 - 07:46
anybug

Thanks for the tip guys !

i had similar issue: failed backup after my domains had been transfered to a new server:

Failed to lock file .backup after 5 minutes. Last error was :  at /usr/share/webmin/web-lib-funcs.pl line 1427.

just removing /home/whoeveruser/.backup.lock file to make the scheduled backup work

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