Monthly Archives: October 2010

SugarCRM upgrading 5.2 to 5.5 and beyond

I’ve started a process of upgrading our live SugarCRM system from 5.2.0c to later versions. The upgrade paths leave a blind trail at 5.5.4 as there is currently no direct upgrade to 6.1 from 5.5.4. So I am using 5.2.0 to 5.5.1 and then 5.5.1 to 6.1beta5.

The main reason for the upgrade is that we want to use the projects tracking and in 5.2.0 there is no ability to connect the projects panels with prospects/targets, only with accounts/contacts.

I use the prospects/targets for anyone that may be associated with a project but is not a key player, i.e. I dont need to see as much detail for a business or person that plays a minor role.

5.5.x fixes that limitation, and I expect 6.1 will also, but the question is how much time do I spend on 5.5 given that 6.1 is looking pretty stable.

I think I’ll be shooting for 6.1 as the next upgrade to production unless we find a show stopper in testing.

Sugar CRM upgrade IIS7 Internal Server error timeout

There are days that I loathe software. For the record, the config this relates to is Windows Server 2008, IIS 7, SugarCRM 5.2.0c, separate MS-SQL 2005 database server. PHP 5.2.6,

HTTP Error 500.0 – Internal Server Error
C:inetpubphpphp-cgi.exe – The FastCGI process exceeded configured activity timeout

Two ‘supposedly’ identical servers. SugarCRM 5.2.0c installed on production and working a treat. The dev system just just been setup for a new instance of Sugar to provide for testing of the upgrade path to 5.5.1 and probably 6.1 but first the cloned 5.2.0c had to work.

A freshly installed 5.5.1 on dev was working and apparently so was the copied 5.2.0c from production. Except that the Upgrade Wizard in the cloned copy gave the time out error shown above. The 5.5.1 however worked fine which left me thinking it was a Sugar issue, or specific to the site or app pool.

To cut a full 8 hour day down to the stuff we need to know, the issue was that while I looked at all the settings, site level, app pool, and server, for whatever obscure reason the Fast-CGI icon was not showing in the dev server configuration panel.

http://www.iis.net/download/AdministrationPack
The admin pack for IIS7 is required for that interface and provided access to the time out setting which I raised from 30 to 300 and the Upgrade Wizard could then function.

There is a marked difference in performance between 5.2.0c and 5.5.1 in the Upgrade Wizard and this is the bit that threw me at first, because the 5.5.1 clean install would run with the default timeout set at 30 while 5.2.0c would not.

Linux ntpd, ntp, ntpdate not updating

One server did not want to update it’s time and it was 12 minutes adrift of the other servers that I run. This is on an older Redhat linux installation and not my usual flavours of SME Server and Debian.

I messed around for a while ending up with the following:

[user@server]# ntpdate -v -b au.pool.ntp.org
11 Oct 08:32:47 ntpdate[27088]: ntpdate 4.1.2@1.892 Tue Feb 24 06:32:26 EST 2004 (1)
11 Oct 08:32:47 ntpdate[27088]: the NTP socket is in use, exiting

At the very start I had tried to run ntpdate and it advised that the socket was in use. This is correct if ntpd the daemon is running which it was.

[user@server]# date
Mon Oct 11 08:32:58 EST 2010
[user@server]# ntpdate -v -b 127.0.0.1
11 Oct 08:33:18 ntpdate[27102]: ntpdate 4.1.2@1.892 Tue Feb 24 06:32:26 EST 2004 (1)
11 Oct 08:33:18 ntpdate[27102]: the NTP socket is in use, exiting

So i checked the date and it was still 12 minutes out. Which said that ntpd was not updating for whatever reason as according to my reading of the options it should.

[user@server]#
[user@server]# /etc/init.d/ntpd stop
ntpd: Removing firewall opening for 0.pool.ntp.org port 123iptables: Bad rule (does a matching rule exist in that chain?)
[FAILED]
ntpd: Removing firewall opening for 1.pool.ntp.org port 123iptables: Bad rule (does a matching rule exist in that chain?)
[FAILED]
ntpd: Removing firewall opening for 2.pool.ntp.org port 123[ OK ]
ntpd: Removing firewall opening for 3.pool.ntp.org port 123iptables: Bad rule (does a matching rule exist in that chain?)
[FAILED]
Shutting down ntpd: [ OK ]

Next I played with stopping ntpd and found that I got firewall errors, but worked out that was because I had modified /etc/ntp.conf to look at different servers in the pool.ntp.org range prior to the shutdown so the firewall rules that it was expecting to find did not exist. Doing it again showed not such errors.

[user@server]# /etc/init.d/ntpd start
ntpd: Opening firewall for input from 0.pool.ntp.org port 1[ OK ]
ntpd: Opening firewall for input from 1.pool.ntp.org port 1[ OK ]
ntpd: Opening firewall for input from 2.pool.ntp.org port 1[ OK ]
ntpd: Opening firewall for input from 3.pool.ntp.org port 1[ OK ]
Starting ntpd: [ OK ]
[user@server]# date
Mon Oct 11 08:35:14 EST 2010
[user@server]# /etc/init.d/ntpd stop
ntpd: Removing firewall opening for 0.pool.ntp.org port 123[ OK ]
ntpd: Removing firewall opening for 1.pool.ntp.org port 123[ OK ]
ntpd: Removing firewall opening for 2.pool.ntp.org port 123[ OK ]
ntpd: Removing firewall opening for 3.pool.ntp.org port 123[ OK ]
Shutting down ntpd: [ OK ]

Having stopped ntpd I then ran ntpdate successfully and restarted ntpd.

[user@server]# ntpdate -v -b 127.0.0.1
11 Oct 08:35:51 ntpdate[27201]: ntpdate 4.1.2@1.892 Tue Feb 24 06:32:26 EST 2004 (1)
11 Oct 08:35:55 ntpdate[27201]: no server suitable for synchronization found
[user@server]# ntpdate -v -b au.pool.ntp.org
11 Oct 08:36:03 ntpdate[27215]: ntpdate 4.1.2@1.892 Tue Feb 24 06:32:26 EST 2004 (1)
11 Oct 08:48:05 ntpdate[27215]: step time server 220.233.79.177 offset 721.705455 sec
[user@server]#

Has this fixed it ? Don’t know but I think the issue was that the servers that were listed in ntp.conf were incorrect. I have changed them now to a more appropriate au.pool.ntp.org selection and I’ll monitor the time over the next week or two.