WebObjects 5.4.1 & loss of data?
WebObjects 5.4.1 & loss of data?
- Subject: WebObjects 5.4.1 & loss of data?
- From: Juan Manuel Palacios <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 03:36:27 -0430
Good evening everyone! I'm subscribing to this list to inquire about
a problem I'm experiencing that has me startled and that I'm
unfortunately relating to the WebObjects 5.4.1 update, given what I've
found so far in my investigations. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't
want to come off making any accusations what-so-ever (even less while
still partially blind); I'll instead explain my problem and present my
findings so far, so as to hopefully get some feedback and thus find
the real problem.
Well, I'm sad to say that I lost all the contents of my /Library/
WebServer/Documents folder, that is, all my webserver! Thankfully,
there wasn't much there and most of the important files were actually
symlinks to the real data, so not much harm was done. Nevertheless, I
did loose some stuff and I believe this is a serious problem that
warrants investigation regardless of impact magnitude.
Here's an excerpt of my apache access log (I'm hosting the sandbox
for the new MacPorts website, among other personal things):
66.249.65.203 - - [12/Feb/2008:20:36:23 -0430] "GET /macports/
ports.php?by=library&substr=checkpassword-pam HTTP/1.1" 200 7124 "-"
"Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.
html)"
As you can see, that returns 200, so everything is OK. Little less
than a half hour later:
66.249.65.203 - - [12/Feb/2008:21:03:43 -0430] "GET /macports/
ports.php?by=library&substr=seahorse HTTP/1.1" 404 216 "-" "Mozilla/
5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)"
My server starts returning 404, meaning the files are no longer
there. Coincidentally, Just prior to that last timestampt, 12/Feb/
2008:21:03:43 -0430, the postinstall script for the
WebObjectsRuntime.pkg package is run by Installer.app, according to /
var/log/installer.log:
Feb 12 21:02:45 MacBookPro Installer[2035]: run postupgrade script
for WebObjectsRuntime
And then the completion indicator:
Feb 12 21:03:05 MacBookPro Installer[2035]: Displaying 'Install
Succeeded' UI.
As you can see, the WebObjects installation ends just seconds prior
to when my server starts returning 404, from 21:03:05 to 21:03:43,
just a 37 seconds interval. As I don't personally recall doing an "rm -
rf" on my own personal web server documentroot, and as the WebObjects
files are indeed still there and labeled as last modified Feb 12:
$[jmpp @MacBookPro: Scripts](60/0,2) -> ls /Library/WebServer/
Documents/ | grep WebObjects
drwxrwxr-x 5 root admin 170B Feb 12 21:03 WebObjects/
This all seems to me like too much of an indication that something
went awfully wrong with the WebObjects 5.4.1 upgrade, or at least with
the WebObjectsRuntime.pkg package, which is the one running the
suspicious postinstall script (again from /var/log/insall.log):
Feb 12 21:02:45 MacBookPro Installer[2035]: run postupgrade script
for WebObjectsRuntime
Feb 12 21:02:45 MacBookPro /private/tmp/scripts.w0fI/./
postinstall[2088]: WebObjects 5.3 Installer: WebObjectsRuntime Package
Post Install script running: Tue Feb 12 21:02:45 VET 2008 <--- (why
does it say WO 5.3?)
Feb 12 21:02:45 MacBookPro /private/tmp/scripts.w0fI/./
postinstall[2088]: -- State of the world: --
Feb 12 21:02:45 MacBookPro /private/tmp/scripts.w0fI/./
postinstall[2088]: NEXT_ROOT = /
Feb 12 21:02:45 MacBookPro /private/tmp/scripts.w0fI/./
postinstall[2088]: WO_DOCUMENT_ROOT = /Library/WebServer/Documents
Feb 12 21:02:45 MacBookPro /private/tmp/scripts.w0fI/./
postinstall[2088]: WO_ADAPTOR_DIR = /Library/WebServer/CGI-Executables
Feb 12 21:02:45 MacBookPro /private/tmp/scripts.w0fI/./
postinstall[2088]: WO_ADAPTOR_NAME = CGI
Feb 12 21:02:45 MacBookPro /private/tmp/scripts.w0fI/./
postinstall[2088]: Copying the contents of WODocumentRoot to /Library/
WebServer/Documents ...
That last line raised my eyebrows even more, so I extracted that
postinstall script from the package through pkgutil(1) and learned
that this copying of contents is done through ditto(1):
# Copy over the contents of WODocumentRoot into the chosen document root
echo Copying the contents of WODocumentRoot to $WO_DOCUMENT_ROOT ...
/usr/bin/ditto "$wodocroot" "$WO_DOCUMENT_ROOT"
Now, ditto(1)'s man page says nothing about overwriting the source
directory, and true to that I'd be lying if I didn't say that a
"touch /Library/WebServer/Documents/hello" survived a second run of
the postinstall script through a trial re-installation of the
WebObjectsRuntime.pkg package.
So, overall, I'm seriously confused and worried as to what might have
caused this data loss, so I'd really appreciate some pointers and
advise on the subject (other than using Time Machine, as I --arguably
foolishly-- excluded all of /Library from my backup policy).
First off, has anyone seen any of this before after applying the
5.4.1 update and/or installing WebObjects in any form?
Thank you very much in advance for any help that anyone may provide!
Regards,...
-jmpp
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