[Thinlinc-technical] ThinLinc 4.5 Upgrade Issues

[Rafael Ostertag]

Hi list

We upgraded from ThinLinc 4.4.0 on Ubuntu 14.04 to ThinLinc 4.5.0, 
Today, and stumbled across an issue: We first upgraded VSM Server from 
4.4.0 to 4.5.0, and left the VSM Agents (different hosts) untouched at 
version 4.4.0. After that, existing session could be reconnected as 
expected. However, in this mixed setup, we were unable to create new 
sessions. The VSM Server log (`/var/log/vsmserver.log`) showed an 
exception being thrown:

> 2015-11-25 07:50:28 INFO vsmserver.session: User with uid NNNN (XXXX) requested a new session
> 2015-11-25 07:50:28 INFO vsmserver.session: User XXXX is listed for explicit agent selection in /vsmserver/explicit_agentselection. Selecting tl6 as agent host
> 2015-11-25 07:50:31 INFO vsmserver: VSM Agent tl6 successfully created a new session for XXXXX
> 2015-11-25 07:50:31 ERROR vsmserver.session: Unhandled exception trying to unbind ports for display 5 on VSM Agent XXX:904: <type 'exceptions.KeyError'> 'sessionkey' Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "/opt/thinlinc/modules/thinlinc/vsm/async.py", line 112, in iii11
>     obj . handle_read_event ( )
>   File "/usr/lib/python2.7/asyncore.py", line 444, in handle_read_event
>     self.handle_read()
>   File "/usr/lib/python2.7/asynchat.py", line 140, in handle_read
>     self.found_terminator()
>   File "/opt/thinlinc/modules/thinlinc/vsm/xmlrpc.py", line 405, in found_terminator
>     self . handle_response ( )
>   File "/opt/thinlinc/modules/thinlinc/vsm/xmlrpc.py", line 437, in handle_response
>     self . handle_returnvalue ( )
>   File "/opt/thinlinc/modules/thinlinc/vsm/call_unbindports.py", line 41, in handle_returnvalue
>     self . callback ( )
>   File "/opt/thinlinc/modules/thinlinc/vsm/loginhandler_common.py", line 71, in run_sessionscripts
>     self . send_response ( )
>   File "/opt/thinlinc/modules/thinlinc/vsm/loginhandler_common.py", line 88, in send_response
>     oOOoo ) [ 'sessionkey' ]
> KeyError: 'sessionkey'
> . Marking agent as down.

On the Agent side, the following was logged in `/var/log/vsmagent.log`:

> 2015-11-25 07:50:31 INFO vsmagent.session: Verified connectivity to newly started Xvnc for XXXX

After updating all VSM Agents to version 4.5.0, creating new user 
session went back to normal.

We double checked the Release Notes as well as the ThinLinc 
Administrator Guide and couldn't find a hint on what the sequence of 
updating should be, i.e. Server first vs. Client first.

Thus the question, is this behavior known and is there an recommendation 
where to start an upgrade (on the VSM Server or VSM Agent)?

Lastly, our user's home directories are NFS mounted using automount and 
are created outside of ThinLinc. Still, we had `make_homedir=1` set in 
our `/opt/thinlinc/etc/conf.d/vsmagent.hconf` for some historic reason. 
After upgrading the VSM Agents to 4.5.0, some Agents tried to create 
home directories for new user session which failed with `[Errno 13] 
Permission denied` and the log in failed again. That didn't happended 
under 4.4.0.

We don't rely on that feature, and also didn't pay much attention to it. 
Hence, we rectified the problem by setting `make_homedir=0`.

But we're wondering why VSM Agent 4.5.0 was unable to figure out, that 
the user home directories are already in place. Version 4.4.0 didn't 
suffer from this issue. Did anybody else experience this behavior?

Cheers
rafi


-- 
Rafael Ostertag, Technischer Assistent
Institut für Mathematik, Universität Zürich
Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zürich, Office: Y27-J40
Tel: ++41 (0)44 63-55866, rafael.ostertag at math.uzh.ch

-- 
*****
Universität Zürich
Carsten Rose
Institut für Mathematik, Y27-J40
Winterthurerstrasse 190
CH-8057 Zürich

+41 44 635 58 47 Telefon
+41 44 635 57 05 Telefax

www.math.uzh.ch
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that understand binary .. and those that don't"

-- 
Rafael Ostertag, Technischer Assistent
Institut für Mathematik, Universität Zürich
Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zürich, Office: Y27-J40
Tel: ++41 (0)44 63-55866, rafael.ostertag at math.uzh.ch