Latest Contributions by Dixie_MDavis

Hello, @NicolasGIS . Thanks for your response, but I was attempting to run the webgisdr utility from a separate server that did not have any of the ESRI Enterprise software installed.  It also did not have Java installed.  At that point I had not seen in the documentation that Java was a requirement to run the webgisdr utility. Glad all worked out for you.  Best, Dixie. ... View more

David Hoy‌ Unfortunately, the patch did not resolve our issues.  Applied the patch on our standby machine and tried to import a local export made from the Portal Admin, got the same error that we have seen many times with a failure to delete the database directory.  We have worked with several folks on your end regarding this, so we will just wait for our new system.  It was definitely worth a shot!  Thanks for your time! Best, Dixie. ... View more

Hi, David. Thanks for the reply.  In regards to the "most recent patch set for 10.7.1", are you referring to the patch released in July (https://support.esri.com/en/download/7819)?  We have not installed this patch.   We have resorted to doing VM snapshots as we were not able to resolve the issues and use the webgisdr utility to restore to a standby machine.  We worked for quite awhile with technical support on the issue, but decided it would be better to use snapshots as a backup/restore option until we could upgrade to 10.8.1 on a new system.   ... View more

Thanks for your response, Jonathan. Your posts have been very helpful. I do believe the problem with the restore failing is related to the timing issue you mention. I found in the logs that the portal was restarting the database after it was found to be stopped. I tried two more times to do a restore and got the same error with failing to delete the database and then got another error we had seen before that stated the database server could not be started and the startup had timed out. Each time I was able to bring the portal back using the method you described with copying over the json connection file. There was still no content, however, since the restore had failed and we were starting with an empty standby server. I tried a third time to do another full restore with a newer backup from the primary server and it failed again with the same error regarding not being able to delete the database. This time I am not able to login to the Portal, nor can I fix it using the json connection file. Signing in from the Portal home page reports that the account is unauthorized. Trying to use the Portal admin states that the Portal is unavailable and to check the logs. The logs report that there are invalid primary and secondary checkpoint records and that the startup process was terminated. The portal log reports that the internal database is not running nor accepting connections and I should contact ESRI support. My point in trying it the third time was to try and get to the point where I could restore the Portal content by doing a re-indexing and/or by doing a Portal site import using an export from the primary's Portal.   So, how can we get past the timing issue and the rollback logic that fails? Is there something I can suggest to the analyst to try to help us work through this? We have had an open support case since the beginning of May and I need to get a resolution soon. Would the same timing issue come into play if we were to try and restore our primary server with a backup? Your responses have been invaluable, thanks again for all the time you have provided  Best, Dixie. ... View more

Hi, Jonathan. I was so hoping that I could post back that using VMs with lowercase hostnames fixed our issues. We have spent almost two weeks recreating our system using new VMs with lowercase names. And, this morning I found the full restore using our new secondary server failed. It reported one of the same errors we saw on an earlier attempt - Failed to restore the Portal for ArcGIS: Url: https://<primary server domain name>/<portal wa>. {"error":{"code":500,"details":null,"message":"Failed to import site. Failed to delete the database directory."}} We cannot log into the Portal. There are no items in the content area. Portal admin only allows us to Upgrade. There are several dbnnnnnnnnnnnn directories in the arcgisportal directory. The catalina log does have errors relating to a token: 17-Jun-2020 21:09:52.685 SEVERE [https-jsse-nio-7443-exec-10] com.esri.commons.web.rest.providers.BaseProvider.getValue Token Required. It also has one noting a servlet error relating to the request and form parameters not being what is expected for the URI https://<primary server domain name>/arcgis/portaladmin/importSite/? "...contains form parameters in the request body but the request body has been consumed by the servlet or a servlet filter accessing the request parameters. Only resource methods using @FormParam will work as expected. Resource methods consuming the request body by other means will not work as expected. 17-Jun-2020 21:20:29.783 SEVERE [https-jsse-nio-7443-exec-8] com.sun.jersey.spi.container.ContainerResponse.mapMappableContainerException The RuntimeException could not be mapped to a response, re-throwing to the HTTP container com.esri.arcgis.portal.admin.core.PortalException: The portal site has not been initialized. Please create a new site and try again." The localhost log in the tomcat directory says the portal site has not been initialized. Please create a new site and try again. The postgresql log has at least three errors stating that a particular .ready file is not found, for example: 2020-06-17 18:23:23 PDT: [4732]: LOG: could not create archive status file "pg_wal/archive_status/00000001000000000000002E.ready": No such file or directory Looking in the Event Viewer for errors logged prior to the postgres errors, we found one event that stated the "Z:\arcgisportal\db is not a database cluster directory" and one that stated, "pg_ctl: server does not shut down". There is an event regarding listening on a localhost ipv6 port. Does ipv6 need to be enabled for Enterprise? It is not on our VMs. We do have a support request logged (#02547962), but I have not heard from the analyst since 6/3 when he emailed to say he was determining if he could create a test environment to test the uppercase host name issue. I will send an update to our support analyst with the latest error information to find out if he has learned anything new. Do you have any suggestions on additional things to try? Are there any other logs I should investigate? Your input and feedback has been extremely helpful throughout this effort. Thanks for any suggestions or ideas you can provide. Best, Dixie. ... View more

Thanks for the suggestion, Jonathan.  I have sent a note to our analyst and asked if they could test the theory. ... View more

Tried the suggestion another analyst had to do a datastore restore from our primary server to the standby server prior to trying the full webgisdr import.  We could not get the datastore restore to work using either a local copy or by using a file share.  The errors were either  'Could not find a valid backup to restore the data store.' after copying the backup to the default local relational datastore location and using 'most-recent' for the target argument.  Or, 'Failed to create relational data store database '{0}'.' after specifying the backup file name with target. This weekend we we were able to successfully re-run full and incremental backups and restores on our testing environment using the webgisdr.  This fact leads me to believe our issue lies with the datastore and the problem with using upper case names in our original setup for the VMs (as I posted on 4/28).  The testing environment does not have upper case host names. We are considering creating a new set of VMs with lower-case server names to see if we can get success.  We may go ahead and use 10.8 to take advantage of the read-only setting for Portal.  We will report back if we are successful. Best, Dixie. ... View more

Well, dang!  I will have to continue to pursue help via ESRI support.  We have a pending support request about our issues with trying to get a successful restore on our standby server. Perhaps our bigger issue is centered on the data store because I could not get the datastore restore to work from either a local directory or a share.   The errors were either 'Failed to create relational data store database '{0}'.' or  'Could not find a valid backup to restore the data store.' Thanks again for all your patience and advice. Best, Dixie. ... View more

Thanks again for the guidance, E.J.! Now I seem to have a bootstrapping problem with restoring the backup.  I cannot get the secondary data store to recognize the primary data store's backup.  Did you use a share as the location for the primary data store backup and then use that same location for the restore?  Did you register that location with the secondary data store prior to issuing a restoredatastore command? Thanks again for your help and patience (^-*)! Best, Dixie. ... View more

Oh, wow!  Thanks for the information, E.J.!   So, if I understand you correctly, you ran the manual restore of the data store to your standby environment and then you ran an import of the full webgisdr backup? Thanks again for the help!  Best, Dixie. ... View more

Hi, E.J. I realize some time has passed since your post, but am curious if you were ultimately successful in your efforts with the webgisdr utility?   We are attempting to follow the same process.  We were successful using a test that consisted of three servers (primary single enterprise server, secondary single enterprise server, dedicated server for data).  Since we were successful with our testing, we decided to re-configure our enterprise environment and upgrade to 10.7.1 at the same time.  We have gotten our primary enterprise server set up, we have a dedicated data server in place, and have gotten a secondary server set up using the etc/hosts file.    Where we have not been successful is in being able to perform a consistent restore from the primary to the secondary server.  We would like to have a reliable, dependable process.  We would also like to be able to automate the process.  Would love to hear if you have been able to complete, repeat and automate your backup/restore process.  Hope you are staying safe and sane.  Best, Dixie. ... View more

Attempted another restore on the secondary server as a test.  Used the same local webgisdr export and it failed with the same error as seen on 4/29 - "Failed to import site.  Failed to delete the database directory."  I cannot log on to the Portal home and the Portal admin only allows the upgrade command. For disaster recovery, do we need to consistently start with a secondary server that has no content but is configured as the primary server?   The documentation mentions setting up scheduled tasks to routinely update the secondary machine with an export from the primary machine.  Is the secondary machine at the same state each time, meaning is it a cloned VM with just the configured software?  Or, is it at the last state it was after the previous restore - meaning it is has content but is out of sync (content, etc.) with the primary server? ... View more