Upgrading appliances from 1.2 to 2.0 beta

[PeterNic]

AppLogic 2.0 beta release provides an automatic upgrade tool that updates all custom (user-created) appliances to AppLogic 2.0. The tool converts all applications, custom user-created catalogs, application-local catalogs, as well as singleton appliances. The tool is provided to grid maintainers (check with your hosting provider when migrating to 2.0; they will be able to do the upgrade for you). The tool works well with all appliances that are branched from the system catalog and don't have much updates to the OS distro itself.

Note: only custom appliances need upgrading; all catalog appliances released with AppLogic 2.0 beta are fully functional and don't need to be updated.

Two problems have been observed when updating appliances from AppLogic 1.2 to 2.0 beta, especially appliances that were not branched from the catalog (e.g., using new Linux distros) or have been significantly upgraded after branching (e.g., using yum update).

The first problem is present for appliances running Fedora Core 4/5/6 upgraded using yum update from the FC3 base appliance.

To resolve the problem, delete the following files on the appliance boot volume
/var/lib/rpm/__db.00*

Optionally, once the appliance starts, run
rpm --rebuilddb

This problem is documented in more details in https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=143532

If you need assistance with updating your appliances for 2.0 beta, please post here.

[PeterNic]

The other problem we have seen is one of the old kernel files and/or path.

1. After installing the new kernel and initrd in the appliance, please rename or delete the old kernel in the /boot directory of the appliance boot volume (incl. the config file for it). The build system in AppLogic checks for the presence of the old kernel files as one of the methods to warn you and prevent failed starts with kernel versions it knows will not work on 2.0 (this check will likely be fixed in a future version, so it does not give you false positives)

2. Make sure the class attributes related to the kernel settings point to the correct kernel and initrd (right click on the appliance in the editor, edit class, general, see the kernel and initrd paths)

The migrate tool that comes with AppLogic 2.0 takes care of these items; if you are updating an appliance manually, keep those 2 in mind.