New Server - Use What Version?

Ruler2112

Ruler2112

I'm in the process of building a server to replace a very old, very tired RedHat 9 box. This server will be responsible for a variety of things:

IP Masquerading
BIND for DNS
Apache Web Server for Internal Use
Shared File Space
Jabber Instant Messenger Server
Anti-Virus/Spyware Update Server (the server DLs the updates and each box pulls them from the server)
FTP Server
Postfix Mail Forwarding
Running a custom Perl script to extract/upload information
LDAP Server (maybe)
Asterisk (very maybe)


I'm going to use gmirror to do RAID-1 on 2, 400 gig drives. I've got the box pretty much built and am wondering what would be the best release to use. I was going to use 8.0, but have seen more than a few posts on here from people with problems with it. Plus, the supported release table suggests that 7.1 will be supported for longer than 8.0.

I'm currently running my mail server on 7.1 and the only time it goes down is when the power goes out for longer than the UPS can handle. I would like to have this same stability in the new server, but don't want to create more work for myself in a few months. (I've tried updating once from 7.0 to 7.1 and botched it, so badly that I ended up staying all night rebuilding the server from scratch on 7.1.) Given that this box is inside our corporate network, I may not even do many updates on it.

I usually download and install a server about 1-2 weeks before new versions of the OS/software come out (unknowingly), but there's no expected release date for 8.1 yet listed. Does anybody have a rough guess as to when 8.1 will be released?

What are the opinions of the people who have used 8.0 - should I use it on a new server or use an older release?
 
I'd say go for 8.0. I haven't experienced any problems with it and am running it on a few quiet loaded servers, though I am not using all of the listed services (they are mostly web/database/mail servers).

As of the supported release table, yes that is currently true, because 8.0 doesn't have an extended support. However, future releases from stable/8 branch will surely get this and upgrading from 8.0 to 8.X, will be much more easier then from anything else.

There is no schedule for 8.1 yet, as our release engineering team is now working on the 7.3 schedule (estimated to be released sometime around the March 2010). I expect 8.1 to be released in ~3-4 months later (sometime in the summer).
 
Welp, I tried installing 8.0. Everything appeared to be the same as 7.x during setup, but when I rebooted, I got the following instead of a login prompt:

Code: 
init: getting pseudoterminals resource limit: Invalid argument
init: getting swapuse limits: Invalid argument

I press enter a couple times and the login prompt comes up, but when I try to log in, these same two errors scroll by and I'm not allowed to log in.

A minute or two after booting, got the same two errors with cron instead of init.


I'm going to give it another shot - wipe the first 100 meg of the drive with dd and reinstall. (I'd offer my log files, but not being able to log in makes it difficult. ;) ) There's really nothing unusual about the box - AMD Athlon chip, 2 gig of RAM, 2x400 gig IDE drives, DVD-RW, and 3 NICs.
 
Tried again after wiping the first 1/2 gig of each drive and must've done something wrong, because it got done quickly and on reboot, froze where it should hit the HD for the boot code.

So, I repeated the same process, only was certain of everything I typed so that I didn't have to back up at all. Installed fine, but on reboot it says [cmd=]DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER[/cmd] - I'd wager that the boot loader wasn't installed right.


I'm getting upset and it's almost time to go home, so I'm just going to leave it for now. Anybody have any idea of what I'm doing wrong? I'm no expert at installing, but have done two systems before without trouble. It's not like the setup utility is difficult to follow or anything... just go through each step and follow the directions on the screen. (Which really makes me feel stupid right now for not being able to get it to work.)
 
Ruler2112 said:
Tried again after wiping the first 1/2 gig of each drive and must've done something wrong, because it got done quickly and on reboot, froze where it should hit the HD for the boot code.

So, I repeated the same process, only was certain of everything I typed so that I didn't have to back up at all. Installed fine, but on reboot it says [cmd=]DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER[/cmd] - I'd wager that the boot loader wasn't installed right.
Click to expand...

When you did your install, I'm sure you choose to install a standard MBR as in the screen below....

boot-mgr.png


So... the problem could possibly be either more than one or no partitions on your drive are set active.

I don't recall the exact boot error I got... but,... once when I installed FreeBSD to a system with a couple of partitions with UFS file systems, I forget to set only the root partition active. FreeBSD (or sysinstall) will set both partitions active if you forget to do it yourself during install.

So, it's possible you could have more than one, or maybe even no partitions that are set active, or bootable.

You can check it, and/or fix it, by booting the machine with any bootable disk that contains disk partioning utilities. Even a DOS boot disk using fdisk would be fine to take a look and set the root partition active.
 
JimW said:
So, it's possible you could have more than one, or maybe even no partitions that are set active, or bootable.
Click to expand...

That happened to me some time ago. I remember during disk selection / partitioning you need to put it bootable, otherwise it won't boot.
Installing FreeBSD works like lightning, that you easily forget this step.
 
After reading your posts, I remember doing this same thing after the botched upgrade. It was really late and I decided to just install fresh on a new box, then migrate everything over; couldn't figure out why it wouldn't boot and it turned out to be caused by the bootable flag not set.

I haven't had a chance to continue working with it since this post, but I just checked it. (Simply because I know it'll bug me all weekend long if I don't. ;) ) All 4 partitions did indeed have the bootable flag set. I cleared all of them except the partition that / is located on and.... nothing. Same disk boot error comes up. I'm going to try reinstalling again next week and pay attention to this step; you're right in that it's something that's very easy to forget.
 
Just an update - I installed again and took great care to do everything correctly - still didn't work. I tried it twice more and the next time, decided to write down every step I did as I did it. Well, I didn't feel like writing all that, so I skipped some configuration, which was easy enough to do after the system was up anyways. And you guessed it - system came up like a charm afterwards.

I'm almost certain there's a flaw in the installer that only comes into play when doing something I skipped the last time. I'm posting exactly what's on my list and making notes in comment notation about what I remember doing last time I didn't this time. Nothing that I did differently should have had any effect on the system booting, but it did. Hopefully somebody knowledgeable will be able to spot the problem based on this.

Code: 
Boot from the DVD
Enter at the boot menu
Enter for US
Standard Install
Enter for OK
Space to select ad0  (Left ad1 alone - used for RAID1 via gmirror later)
Deleted all partitions
Created 4 partitions
  - 5 gig
  - 5 gig
  - 30 gig
  - remaining ~330 gig
Set first 5 gig partition active/bootable
Chose standard MBR
Hit Enter
Created mount points
  - / in the first 5 gig partition
  - /tmp as 1 gig of second 5 gig partition
  - swap as the rest of the second 5 gig partition
  - /var as 10 gig of the 30 gig partition
  - /usr as the rest of the 30 gig partition
  - /home as the entire last partition
Chose developer install
  - Selected English documentation
  - Exit
No to ports
Exit
Install from CD/DVD source
Yes to confirm
<waited while installation took place>
OK
No to eth  # I configured nfe0 in the previous installs.
           # rl0 and vr0 were not configured
No to gateway  # Previously yes
No to inetd
No to ssh
No to FTP
No to NFS server
No to NFS client
No to customize console settings
Yes to set Time Zone
  - No to UTC
  - America
  - US
  - Eastern Time (MI)
  - Yes
Yes to Mouse
         # Enabled the mouse daemon and tested it previously
  - Exit
No to packages
Yes to add an account
  - Added users group
  - Added jim as user
Set root password
No for more config
Exit installer
Yes
Take out DVD
OK
<system reboots>
 
I did that Graaf, only I had 4 partitions instead of one. I set the one with / (and by extension /boot) to be active/bootable. After I get this server done, I think I'm going to go back and play, trying to isolate what it is that caused it to fail. There's nothing that I did differently that should have affected the boot capability of the system, which is why I hypothesize that there's a flaw in the installer. If I can isolate it, I'll post back.
 
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