apache – Networks and rants

Hi all

Today I was trying to install netbox on a Linux server. I have done it before but just for testing and never connected it to apache or nginx for a production enviorment. I used the guide supplied in the official manual but I managed for some reason to fail completely. Not sure where the error was if I just did something completely stupid orthe manual was just incomplete. You can check the manual here if you need.

My issue was that when all the commands I had to run for the HTTPS server according to the manual I still got an error. The lovely 503 Service unavailable.

Service Unavailable
The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.

Apache/2.4.41 (Ubuntu) Server at netbox.example.com Port 443

When I checked the service I got the following response:

manager@ubuntults:~$ systemctl status netbox
● netbox.service - NetBox WSGI Service
     Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/netbox.service; enabled; vendor preset>
     Active: activating (auto-restart) (Result: exit-code) since Tue 2020-05-26>
       Docs: https://netbox.readthedocs.io/en/stable/
    Process: 1217 ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/gunico --pid /var/tmp/netbox.pid --p>
   Main PID: 1217 (code=exited, status=203/EXEC)
lines 1-6/6 (END)

In the active section you can see that it says activating and not activated and Main PID: gives me: (code=exited, status=203/EXEC)

This tells me that the system has issues executing the files for starting the service. I followed this up by going to the service file where all the settings are made for the service.

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/netbox.service

I then continued to look at the execution parameters for the service.

ExecStart=/opt/netbox/venv/bin/gunicorn --pid /var/tmp/netbox.pid --pythonpath /opt/netbox/netbox --config /opt/netbox/gunicorn.py netbox.wsgi

When I checked for the gunicorn file in the filesystem I couldn’t find the file gunicorn in /opt/netbox/venv/bin/. Therefor I entered the command “which gunicorn” that returns the correct path for gunicorn to me.

manager@ubuntults:~$ which gunicorn
/usr/local/bin/gunicorn

The correct syntax would then be:

ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/gunicorn --pid /var/tmp/netbox.pid --pythonpath /opt/netbox/netbox --config /opt/netbox/gunicorn.py netbox.wsgi

When you have done the change you need to update the service like I have done below:

manager@ubuntults:~$ sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/netbox.service
[sudo] password for manager:
manager@ubuntults:~$ sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/netbox.service
manager@ubuntults:~$ systemctl daemon-reload
==== AUTHENTICATING FOR org.freedesktop.systemd1.reload-daemon ===
Authentication is required to reload the systemd state.
Authenticating as: manager
Password:
==== AUTHENTICATION COMPLETE ===
manager@ubuntults:~$ systemctl restart netbox
==== AUTHENTICATING FOR org.freedesktop.systemd1.manage-units ===
Authentication is required to restart 'netbox.service'.
Authenticating as: manager
Password:
==== AUTHENTICATION COMPLETE ===
manager@ubuntults:~$

Now the server should work perfectly 🙂

I couldn’t have solved it hadn’t it been for this post and the answer from Russell Molimock. That put me on the correct track for finding the issue 🙂

In my new job I have been working a little bit with cPanel and WordPress. It sounds easy enough and both of the products are easy enough normally. But there is always one of these fun errors that just makes you wonder. What the f*** could be the problem here. Everything seems fine but everything is so wrong.

When the users where going to upload files we changed the upload limit on the PHP server and everything should be working fine. The users should be able to upload files up to 250 MB. At least that was what I was thinking. But no matter what I did I got the following error up: “Post-processing of the image failed. If this is a photo or a large image, please scale it down to 2500 pixels and upload it again”

My picture was below this size and I belive I tried every single solution to this issue I could find on the internet. The only solution that worked for me was the plugin Add from Server, with this plugin I was able to get my pictures to the libary.

After hours of googling and talking to coworkers we suddenly discovered that cPanel is not delivered with mod_fcgid turned on in Apache. This simple feature took me ages to find out. In addition you need to install the imagick module.

imagick you can install in cPanel by go to Software -> Module Installer in the left menu. Manage the PHP PECL and search and install imagick for all needed PHP versions (at least where you run WordPress).

Then you need to enable mod_fcgid. This can be done in Software -> Easy Apache 4 on the left side menu and choose Customize on the menu showing. Now you can go to Apache modules and search for mod_fcgid. When this module is enabled you can try to upload again. Hopefully it works now!

Be aware that the changes done here needs to be done by your hosting provider and unless you have access to the WHM console you need to forward them this article to fix the issues.

Tag: apache

Issues installing Netbox web service

Can’t upload image to wordpress due to large size