CentOS-5.6 update issues (more info)

Sunday, 10th April CentOS-5.6 was released to the YUM repositories and it caused two distinct problems on BlueOnyx. Please read for more info.

Ok, I think we now squashed all the bugs that the CentOS team has thrown our way with their updates from last Sunday. New bugs are on order. ;o)

Here is a list of the problems and the known fixes:

1.) GUI refuses to let you login and/or redirects you to the initial setup wizard - even after sucessful login as "admin".

Solution #1:

Reboot the box from SSH (as root: "/sbin/reboot"). It'll work afterwards. After a massive update like this, a reboot is always a good precaution.

IF you accidentially already went through the initial setup wizard again, then this may have changed your servers time zone and will erase the NTP server settings. So be sure to check the GUI afterwards and if need be, fix the time zone settings again and add your desired NTP server to sync' your clock against it.

Solution #2:

/etc/init.d/cced.init restart
/etc/init.d/admserv restart

THEN point your browser to http://<your-ip>:444/ , which will allow you to login without ending up in the wizard.

But make REALLY sure to erase everything in your browsers location bar AFTER the slash behind :444/, or you may still end up in the wizard.

The root cause of this problem is that one of the updates apparently interferes with CCE's ability to access the CODB database if the update is applied without reboot or without restarting CCEd. In that case CODB will simply start with some hard coded values, such as that it has never been set up for the first time.

2.) Apache no longer working right and/or refusing connections.

Solution:

"yum clean all; yum update -y" from SSH as "root". Then reboot the box.

The updated base-apache-* RPMs or the commands above should automatically fix the /etc/httpd/alias/*.db group ownerships and permissions, which now need to be different than before.