NGfL Equiinet CachePilot Installation issues

Introduction

This article aims to deal with issues that have arisen when attempting to install KnowledgeBox onto existing CachePilots that have been supplied by NGfL in association with Easynet.

Where possible solutions will be explained and sources of required software detailed.

Installation issues

a. CachePilot Software version is incorrect.

The minimum version required for KnowledgeBox to function correctly is v 2.27.9.

In a number of circumstances the existing version has been 2.27.6 and will need to be upgraded. This is often caused by a failed nub upgrade when a previous attempt to install v2.27.9 has been run. Where this is the case the software release can be upgraded by applying the following nubs:

000497

000539

000616

Note: Check the Upgrade history log first for successful nub installs (as shown below; i.e. Maintenance; Advanced; Upgrade management; Upgrade history).

It may be the case that nub 000539 is already installed and will not be needed.

The nubs can be applied by using the “Upload new upgrades” option in the “Upgrade management” page. Nubs 000497 and 000616 will trigger a warm reboot of the CachePilot.

Copies of these nubs can be downloaded from this from Equiinet at http://upgrade.netpilot.com/~nubs/nubbank/

Once the nubs have been applied successfully the normal install procedure can be continued.

b. CachePilot Hardware failure

The most likely point of failure that may occur during an attempt to upgrade a CachePilot is a hard disk failure. The instance encountered was a failure of the hard drive to complete the boot process resulting in a shutdown of the CachePilot. This will be signalled by the three-notes-descending audio signal that the CachePilot emits as it shuts down.

In this situation the installation cannot continue as the CachePilot will not boot and will need to be replaced.

c. Failure to install nub 000616

The failure of this nub to be installed will prevent the successful installation of KnowledgeBox as the software version will remain at 2.28.8.

The Upgrade history page (shown below) details the likely error message to be encountered in attempting to install this nub.

Equiinet Tech Support has indicated that this is likely to be a hard disk failure, although not as catastrophic as explained in paragraph b. In this situation the CachePilot will continue to function but will not accept the upgrade. In order to complete the upgrade a replacement CachePilot is needed.

d. Slow network speeds prevent successful transfer of tar files

During the KnowledgeBox installation procedure it is necessary to copy tar files of the Knowledgebox resources onto the CachePilot Hard drive.

As detailed elsewhere (see Equiinetinstall.doc) this is accomplished by using WinSCP to drag and drop the files from a laptop, or other system, to the correct directory on the CachePilot. The files are some 6Gb combined in size and so this can take between 1 and 2 hours to complete depending on the transfer speed achieved (approx 900KB/s will take 2 hours; approx 1800KB/s will need around an hour). If the speed of the network cannot match these speeds it will be difficult to copy the data completely during a normal working day.

In this situation it is recommended that the smaller tar files be copied across so that resources for each of the categories (Movies, Text, Software and Lessons) exist on the CachePilot before the explode_resources script is run (see Equiinetinstall.doc). It will then be possible to complete the setup of the KnowledgeBox so that the missing assets are downloaded from 80 Strand during a normal core update overnight.

To ensure that this is done successfully any core_data_update.lock file that may be run as part of the setup procedure needs to be deleted. This can be done by logging in to the KnowledgeBox Administrator setup pages and selecting System Engineer options.

If the core_data_update.lock file is left to run and the data transfer is interrupted, the existence of this file may prevent the KnowledgeBox from talking back successfully to 80 Strand and completing an update overnight. (Note: The overnight update can take several hours.)

After the core update has been completed overnight the resources will be in the correct locations on the CachePilot and a Core Data Update log file will exist. Log in to the KnowledgeBox via the shortcut using Administrator as the user ID. Display the list of resources so that sample files from each category can be checked as normal.

Author: Mark Whelan

3.6.2004