WebGUI hangs on package export.

Initial investigation of this problem, with help from preaction, has resulted in the following conclusions:

a) our WebGUI database contains some assets of which the links to files in the upload directory tree are missing [ cause yet unknown ]; although the folder that we attempt to export as a WebGUI package does not directly contain these assets, one of our templates possibly does: our webgui.log file contains some, possibly related, messages, log file excerpt given below:

2007/01/16 11:47:16 - ERROR - www.main.vir.conf - main::[[undef]] - Could not set uid/gid on '/data/domains/www.main.vir/public/uploa
ds/temp/CC/CC5p6D2jCyLRF6ercd8Bqg/000001000001000098000004.json'
2007/01/16 11:47:17 - ERROR - www.main.vir.conf - main::[[undef]] - Could not set uid/gid on '/data/domains/www.main.vir/public/uploa
ds/8D/hr/8DhrdqhM4KvqkCtu6ISApw/thumb-a1.jpg'

2007/01/17 10:47:38 - ERROR - www.main.vir.conf - main::[[undef]] - Couldn't copy file /data/domains/www.main.vir/public/uploads/xK/O
3/xKO3cefe_opJtW2Sq8n_1Q/changelog to /data/domains/www.main.vir/public/uploads/9L/PJ/9LPJXEoGIQJ3zW3jULlGtA/changelog because Is a directory

2007/02/07 10:25:40 - ERROR - www.main.vir.conf - WebGUI::Storage::Image::generateThumbnail[129] - Couldn't read image for thumbnail c reation: Exception 435: unable to open image `/data/domains/www.main.vir/public/uploads/qa/Hd/qaHd-bvzPVBY_EiQ8bXz-w/Templates/KnK/0
03.000.002/green/images/headleft_green.jpg': No such file or directory
2007/02/07 10:25:40 - ERROR - www.main.vir.conf - WebGUI::Storage::Image::generateThumbnail[129] - Couldn't read image for thumbnail creation: Exception 435: unable to open image `/data/domains/www.main.vir/public/uploads/Xq/pm/XqpmRezA_yDIcRiomZx3BA/Templates/KnK/0
03.000.002/green/images/mainmenubg_green.gif': No such file or directory

 2007/02/07 10:54:28 - ERROR - www.main.vir.conf - WebGUI::Storage::Image::generateThumbnail[129] - Couldn't read image for thumbnail creation: Exception 430: unable to open file `/data/domains/www.main.vir/public/uploads/cv/mU/cvmUyydK8xPvyislITKtzQ/Templates/KnK/00
3.000.002/green/un_green.png'
2007/02/07 10:54:28 - ERROR - www.main.vir.conf - WebGUI::Storage::Image::generateThumbnail[129] - Couldn't read image for thumbnail creation: Exception 435: unable to open image `/data/domains/www.main.vir/public/uploads/ib/HQ/ibHQr-GON2CsRns9XPBhHg/Templates/KnK/0
03.000.002/green/images/headleft_green.jpg': No such file or directory
 

b) /data/WebGUI/lib/WebGUI/Storage.pm gets confused because of this and attempts to access various invalid locations (e.g. ./etc/lvm/, ./etc/cups/, ./proc, etc) and - assumably - tries to enumerate these recursively, in an attempt to compile a package export tarball; apache error log excerpt given below:

c) WebGUI hangs in the export because of this (browser interface is unresponsive) and the server slows down and eventually mysql and apache crash with zero swap space problems.

A replacement for Storage.pm line 792, as suggested by preaction, is given below (first the original line, next the replacement line):

original line 792:

chdir $self->getPath;

replacement line 792:

chdir $self->getPath or warn "Could not chdir to '".$self->getPath."': $!";

The earlier log file excerpt was without this change. With this change, similar error messages (but reported at line 795, i.s.o. 794, as I commented out the original line). The log file produced by Storage.pm with the replaced line, does show this (indicative of an asset without reference):

Could not chdir to '/data/domains/www.main.vir/public/uploads/2_/e2/2_e2ymt4vU1OwwPiPYis1Q': No such file or directory at /data/WebGUI/lib/WebGUI/Storage.pm line 793.

--

AMH_mari 

# ls -la /data/domains/www.main.vir/public/uploads/FP
total 96
drwxr-xr-x    7 root   root  4096 Apr 11 12:16 .
drwxr-xr-x 4074 nobody root 69632 Apr 17 10:22 ..
drwxr-xr-x    3 root   root  4096 Apr 11 11:57 1J
drwxr-xr-x    3 root   root  4096 Apr 11 12:13 6W
drwxr-xr-x    3 root   root  4096 Apr 11 12:16 nS
drwxr-xr-x    3 root   root  4096 Apr 11 12:10 W2
drwxr-xr-x    3 root   root  4096 Apr 11 11:56 Xy

There seems to be no apparent reason why WebGUI would not be able to create the gA directory in the above path.

The reason you get the permission denied errors is because these files are owned by root and in this case only the owner is allowed to write. The owner of your uploads directories should be the user as whom apache runs. 

c) If, in the above log file excerpt, WebGUI complains with a Permission denied message, is that possibly because some process, executing with nobody privileges, attempts to create new content in a upload subdirectory owned by root?

# ps -ef |grep spect
root      2357     1  0 07:12 pts/0    00:00:07 perl spectre.pl --daemon
root      3241  2159  0 10:40 pts/0    00:00:00 grep spect
# ps -ef |grep http
root      2361     1  0 07:12 ?        00:00:25 /usr/sbin/httpd
nobody    3025  2361  0 09:45 ?        00:00:07 /usr/sbin/httpd
nobody    3026  2361  0 09:45 ?        00:00:09 /usr/sbin/httpd
nobody    3027  2361  0 09:45 ?        00:00:04 /usr/sbin/httpd
nobody    3029  2361  0 09:45 ?        00:00:03 /usr/sbin/httpd
nobody    3030  2361  0 09:45 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/httpd
nobody    3031  2361  0 09:45 ?        00:00:01 /usr/sbin/httpd
nobody    3033  2361  0 09:45 ?        00:00:03 /usr/sbin/httpd
nobody    3139  2361  0 10:15 ?        00:00:06 /usr/sbin/httpd

In this case apache is running as nobody and thus the uploads directories should be owned by nobody. Spectre is running as root, which is not necessary! Spectre can be run by a nonpriviledged user as long as you tie it to a port > 1024. By default spectre uses port 32133 so that should not be a problem.

Does this information solve your problem?