Werk #9355: Platform update to Debian stretch

Component Firmware
Title Platform update to Debian stretch
Date Apr 10, 2018
Appliance Version 1.4.0
Level Major Change
Class New Feature
Compatibility Compatible - no manual interaction needed

The update from firmware 1.x to 1.4+ is a major platform update. In this step we move the underlying OS from Debian wheezy, which reaches it's EOL in April 2018, to Debian stretch.

The changes we get with this update affect the CMA platform in several ways. Here are the most important changes:

  • The update from wheezy to stretch involves a lot of packages being updated. Have a look at the ChangedPackages file, which can be found on the download page, for details. In case custom software components you installed manually rely on some of these packages, you may have to update them manually.
  • The new platform is now based on systemd. This brings a lot of changes. It's not just the whole init system, systemd also comes with changes to the way pysical network devices are named. This means that all interface names change from eth[0-9]+ to en*. For details have a look at the systemd manual "Predictable network interface names". We care about this renaming during the update procedure for the standard CMA configuration. In case you didn't do fancy own stuff on the device, you will likely not notice this change in the first place. If you have configured the network interface names in some custom components, you will have to migrate the names on you own. You can find information about the old names and their MAC address in "/etc/cma/pre-1.4-interface-names" on your updated device. Use the MAC address to match it with the new interface name.
  • The new platform requires all Check_MK versions to be reinstalled / updated to the new platform. Sites using platform incompatible versions can not be started anymore. To solve this, you need to either replace the previously installed Check_MK version with a platform compatible one or install a new platform compatible version and update your site to this version. Do it like this (clusters: on the active node only):
    • First go to the "Site management" page and check your sites Check_MK version. In case it is marked as compatible you can simply start it now and you are done.
    • If it's incompatible proceed with opening the Check_MK download page and download the exact same Check_MK version for the CMA 1.4+ platform. Or, in case it's not available, download a following Check_MK version that is compatible with the new platform. For example, if you site runs Check_MK 1.4.0p23, you need to download one of the newer Check_MK 1.4.0p-versions that have a CMA 1.4+ package. In case you already use e.g. 1.4.0p25, you can download 1.4.0p25 and proceed with this version. You could also advance from Check_MK 1.4 to a 1.5 release, but since this is a upgrade from one Check_MK major release to the next, you will likely need to do additional migrations within your Check_MK configuration. We recommend to do these things in a separate step.
    • Now that you have downloaded the CMA 1.4+ Check_MK package to your computer, navigate to the "Check_MK versions page" and upload the file there.
    • Then go to the "Site management" page again and update your sites to the 1.4+ compatible versions if needed. In case you replaced the old platform package with the new platform package, the site update step is not needed.
    • Now you can start the site as usual on the "Site management" page.
  • If you have configured two appliances as cluster, the update to CMA 1.4 needs a special procedure when updating clusters. The update can only be done offline, which means you will have a downtime. You need to proceed like this:
    • Disconnect the cluster nodes using "Disconnect cluster" on the cluster page
    • Update one node to 1.4+
    • Update the other node to 1.4+
    • Open up the cluster page and use "Reconnect cluster" to re-establish the cluster connection. The cluster page should show all resources in "OK" state after a short time.
    • Then you need to check your sites and Check_MK version to update them to the new platform as written above.

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