Problem with upgrading to V11

[NotHappy]

Hi,

So I've had a 3cx installation for over a year now - running V10 on a dedicated Windows Server 2008 R2 box. I had all the latest service packs etc for V10 installed.

I spent a lot of time setting everything up and was pretty happy with the result.

I noticed V11 was available soon - and I even bought more upgrade insurance so I could get it.

Today I finally got around to trying the upgrade to V11. Here is what I did :

1) I downloaded the V11 binary.
2) I ran it on the target server - it told me I needed to backup the settings, uninstall old version, install new version then restore settings.
3) I went to the 3cx backup and restore tool - and took a backup of everything. I even did it twice to different locations just to be sure.
4) I uninstalled 3cx V10
5) I installed 3cx V11
6) The setup wizard for V11 asked me if I wanted to restore a backup - great I thought this is nice and easy...
7) I selected my backup file created earlier - and I get a message about "unsupported backup"
8) I try the other backup I made - same problem
9) I try doing the restore from the 3cx backup and restore tool - it tells me the is a problem with the header of the backup
10) I try uninstalling V11 and installing again - same problem
11) I try several other things - but no joy - it seems I have lost my 3cx install completely and its not coming back.
12) As I type this - I'm trying to do a full restore of the server from a low level backup - which isn't something I've done before - so there's some chance I might have to rebuild the server from scratch before this is over.

Conclusion - it is a very bad idea to try to upgrade to 3cx V11. The upgrade process relies on the backup/restore of the settings - but there are problems with this which mean you can lose the whole configuration of 3cx.

- NotHappy

 

[mixig]

just to be sure, did you select IIS server instead of Abby on the beginning of installation? v11 on server 2008R2 must be installed with IIS server

 

[NotHappy]

just to be sure, did you select IIS server instead of Abby on the beginning of installation? v11 on server 2008R2 must be installed with IIS server

No I didn't - I always selected the other webserver - which always worked fine for me. I don't have IIS installed.

It still gave me the option to do the other web server in V11?

Anyway - would that explain why my backups don't restore?

- NotHappy

 

[mixig]

Hi,

i am not sure but I will try with that first... so uninstall current v11 and choose IIS on next installatino, 3cx will automatically configure IIS, you dont need configure nothing for IIS, you just click next next finish... let me know when you tried that...

 

[NotHappy]

Hi,

I've eventually got V10 working again.

In the end I had to do a full image level restore of the OS drive (luckily I had one from yesterday) - i.e. boot into system repair and nuke the whole system from orbit. Before that I tried restoring the system state and the 3cx folders etc - but that didn't do the trick.

Before I try anything else in terms of V11 install - I need to establish a less extreme way to roll back if it doesn't work. i.e. my 3cx backup zip files don't seem to be working in any version. I never tried to use them before - but I'd been doing backups using the 3cx backup tool regularly - but it seems they are not restorable.

How can I get backup / restore working? How can I even test that without potentially screwing it all up again?

Thanks anyway for your help.

- NotHappy

 

[mixig]

i am doing restore backups (with 3cx backup/restore tool) from v9 to v10, v9 to 11, v10 to v11, every time working without any errors.. you can try restore backup on some test machine which has 2008R2 to see is there will be any errors

 

[danhriscanu]

Hi,

It would be good if you would save some logs before restoring your system. This could help us to find where the problem is in fact. Could you by any chance PM me and send me one of your not working backup so I will try to find what is happening? Did you try to restore your backup on v10 and it didn't worked also?

 

[NotHappy]

Hi,

Yes - the restore isn't working on V10 either - the upgrade to V11 was just the first time I'd tried to use it in anger.

When I try to restore on V10 I get :

Restore failed...Error: Wrong Local header signature: 0xB405BCEC

However - I just discovered something - I was preparing a backup to email to you as requested - but to make the file small enough to email - I didn't select any of the options (voice prompts, hold music etc). This backup does restore without error!

Therefore something in the other options breaks the format of the backup file. Before I was choosing everything except 'Include Call Recordings'.

Does that make any sense?

- NotHappy (but feeling a bit better now at least the V10 installation is back up and running!)

 

[danhriscanu]

Hi,

Yes, this is making sense in case you are making the backup during a live system with active calls recording. This is a known issue and it was solved by our team.
You can do the following:
Try to make a backup without Include Call recordings.
Copy manually the call recordings folder from C:\ProgramData\3CX\Data\Recordings to another safe location.
Install the new v11 SP1 of 3CX Phone System on another test machine
Restore the backup you just made.
Copy saved recordings in the same location on the test machine and see if everything comes right.

If everything is ok you can repeat the procedure for your production server.

 

[NotHappy]

Hi,

Thanks. I've now sucessfully upgraded to V11.

The key thing was taking the backup without any of the optional extras selected. Note the issue wasn't Call Recordings as this was the item I never selected.

Also note - this time I tried the install using IIS as suggested earlier in the thread given Window Server 2008 R2 - however it gave some errors and died - so I repeated the install using the other webserver (Abyss?) and it seems ok again.

Anyway - v11 seems to be working well. Moral - make sure you can sucessfully restore a backup before trying the upgrade - there are some backup options that don't work so well (in V10 backup tool at least).

- HappierNow