Server Error after upgrading to v18 and debian 10 (google cloud)

[harryncts]

Hi,

I'll just start by saying this is just a test system I've made just wanting to play around with 3cx.

I am hosting 3cx using Google Cloud and did the update to v18, however it did not work.
It has been 19 hours since starting the upgrade, and I have received no email stating it failed or was successful.
When I try to login to my management console, I just get a message displaying "Server Error"

I am using f1-micro (1 vCPU, 0.6 GB memory) with 10gb boot disk size. Perhaps I need more available space or better hardware specs for the upgrade to work?

Anything helps. Thanks

 

[NickD_3CX]

Hi @harryncts ,

Truth be told, running the OS upgrade on a micro machine, due to the 0.6GB Ram, it could be there was not enough RAM to do the actual upgrade.

But, the "Server error" does usually mean that 3CX is still installed and well, just that the Management Console service is stopped (probably due to the small amount of RAM).

Log into your Google machine via SSH as root and try running these commands:

/usr/sbin/3CXStopServices
/usr/sbin/3CXStartServices

Check if you can access the Management Console again after this.

 

[Lee Cramman]

Increasing swap size can sometimes get you over that insufficient memory hump with a micro instance. Tends to make services more reliable as well.

Or take a backup, spin up a brand new PBX Express instance on GCE and restore backup.

 

[harryncts]

I deleted the old instance and created a new instance using g1-small (1 vCPU, 1.7 GB memory) and the update worked fine. No issues at all, took all of 8 minutes. So it must've been the small amount of RAM.

 

[harryncts]

Increasing swap size can sometimes get you over that insufficient memory hump with a micro instance. Tends to make services more reliable as well.

Or take a backup, spin up a brand new PBX Express instance on GCE and restore backup.

I have read the use of swap on some other forum posts, but not entirely sure how it works. Do you have any useful links to information/guides that can further explain swap and how to enable it on a GCE instance?

 

[Lee Cramman]

I have read the use of swap on some other forum posts, but not entirely sure how it works. Do you have any useful links to information/guides that can further explain swap and how to enable it on a GCE instance?

A swap file is a part of the disk that the installation treats as a sort of expanded memory. It's many orders of magnitude slower than system memory (i.e. it's really slow) but really slow memory is better than no memory, at least as far as operating system reliability is concerned... The OS is smart enough to try and keep frequently accessed memory space in actual memory and infrequently accessed memory space in swap in order to optimise performance.

It's been a long while since I used a micro instance (last time was when I discovered 3CX and wanted to test drive it) and I'm a long way from being a Linux Guru but I just Googled "Debian increase swap file" and used one of the many guides that popped up.

Sounds like you're on a test system so if you get it wrong just blow the server away and create from backup again.

If memory serves you can have up to 30GB of disk space as 'always free'. 10GB is tight for a 3CX (and once again, out of spec) so maybe think about increasing that too.

Finally, Google usually give away $250-350 worth of hosting in your first year. You don't need to struggle by on a micro instance if you don't want to, at least for up to a year!

I deleted the old instance and created a new instance using g1-small (1 vCPU, 1.7 GB memory) and the update worked fine. No issues at all, took all of 8 minutes. So it must've been the small amount of RAM.

The problem of services crashing or not starting pops up quite a bit, the answer is nearly always memory.

I'm pleased you're all sorted.

 

[harryncts]

Cheers for the advice @Lee Cramman, will look into that more. However if I were to run a customer's PBX I'd probably just want more RAM rather than relying on swap space, I'd be happy to pay for the larger instance as I'd just be on selling it anyway. We're a traditional on premise PABX company, looking to expand into hosted as that's the way the industry is going.

And yep, have been taking full advantage of Google's free trail, I've got about $540 of credit haha.

Also forgot to mention that I also increased the disk size to 30GB SSD when I created the larger instance as well (as per 3CX recommended specifications). Shouldn't run into many issues now.

Also cheers @NickD_3CX appreciate the help!

 

[Lee Cramman]

Cheers for the advice @Lee Cramman, will look into that more. However if I were to run a customer's PBX I'd probably just want more RAM rather than relying on swap space, I'd be happy to pay for the larger instance as I'd just be on selling it anyway. We're a traditional on premise PABX company, looking to expand into hosted as that's the way the industry is going.

And yep, have been taking full advantage of Google's free trail, I've got about $540 of credit haha.

Also forgot to mention that I also increased the disk size to 30GB SSD when I created the larger instance as well (as per 3CX recommended specifications). Shouldn't run into many issues now.

Also cheers @NickD_3CX appreciate the help!

More RAM is absolutely the way to go for a proper install.