Using ISPConfig on mirrored primary and secondary servers

[wxman]

I hope Till or Falko sees this because they've covered articles about it before.

I've been experimenting with ways to do two Linux servers using ISPConfig, and Webmin. I used past discussions get the idea how to set it up so I could use my second server as a backup to the first, as well as a slave nameserver. I then used rsync and mysql database replication to keep the backup server up to date.

This first problem I found was when you add a new site to the primary server using ISPConfig, it mirrors the database to the second server so now ISPConfig has the entry there as well. The problem is the site doesn't actually get made on the second server, just the entry in the DB so it looks to ISPConfig that it's there. I then thought to kill the database replication for ISPConfig to the second server, and do the entry manually. That would work except, do I make it a master, or slave file? If I make it a slave, will it still work if I have to switch over and use the secondary if the primary server went down?

I know this would all be moot it I would get brave, and redo everything to use the High-Availability Load Balancer setup.

[falko]

Originally Posted by wxman

This first problem I found was when you add a new site to the primary server using ISPConfig, it mirrors the database to the second server so now ISPConfig has the entry there as well. The problem is the site doesn't actually get made on the second server, just the entry in the DB so it looks to ISPConfig that it's there.

Yes, that happens because the /home/admispconfig/ispconfig/.run file is missing - it gets created whenever you change anything in ISPConfig, so that the backend knows that it has to write some configuration files. If you mirror that file over to the second server as well, everything should be fine.

[wxman]

Thanks Falco I'll give it a try today.

I went looking for that file on my primary server, but it wasn't there. Does it get removed, if so, how long is it there?

[trexen]

Mirrored primary and secondare:

How did you do to mirror /etc/passwd and shadow to the secondary server ?

rgds
Marcus

[falko]

Originally Posted by wxman

I went looking for that file on my primary server, but it wasn't there. Does it get removed, if so, how long is it there?

It is created once you change something in the web interface; the ispconfig_wconf process checks the existence of the file every 10 seconds, and if it is there, it performs the necessary tasks and then deletes that file.

[wxman]

Originally Posted by falko

It is created once you change something in the web interface; the ispconfig_wconf process checks the existence of the file every 10 seconds, and if it is there, it performs the necessary tasks and then deletes that file.

How do you copy that without making a cron check for it every 10 seconds?

Originally Posted by trexen

Mirrored primary and secondare:
How did you do to mirror /etc/passwd and shadow to the secondary server ?

Good question. That's not being done well either. I wonder what else I'm missing.

[falko]

Originally Posted by wxman

How do you copy that without making a cron check for it every 10 seconds?

Good question. Maybe you have to write a script that takes care of this.