Haproxy fails to reload on Fedora 17

The great load balancer Haproxy has indeed a small but annoying problem on Fedora 17 (64bit in my case). While start and stop works perfect via systemctl, the balancer reload fails without any clear message what is happened.

After few hours of digging in the starter bash script /etc/init.d/haproxy we found that the problem lies outside it, it is seems in Fedora's systemctl at all, in the /etc/init.d/functions include used in the balancer starter.

How to workaround the problem of Haproxy reload? Just remove following line from the end of functions file:

"x$1" = xreload -o \

After removal script code will look like this:

if [ "$_use_systemctl" = "1" ]; then
        if  [ "x$1" = xstart -o \
                "x$1" = xstop -o \
                "x$1" = xrestart -o \
                "x$1" = xtry-restart -o \
                "x$1" = xforce-reload -o \
                "x$1" = xcondrestart ] ; then

                systemctl_redirect $0 $1
                exit $?
        fi
fi

And Haproxy starter script finally is: 

#!/bin/sh
#
# haproxy
#
# chkconfig:   - 85 15
# description:  HAProxy is a free, very fast and reliable solution \
#               offering high availability, load balancing, and \
#               proxying for TCP and  HTTP-based applications
# processname: haproxy
# config:      /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg
# pidfile:     /var/run/haproxy.pid

# Source function library.
. /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions

# Source networking configuration.
. /etc/sysconfig/network

# Check that networking is up.
[ "$NETWORKING" = "no" ] && exit 0

exec="/usr/sbin/haproxy"
prog=$(basename $exec)

[ -e /etc/sysconfig/$prog ] && . /etc/sysconfig/$prog

lockfile=/var/lock/subsys/haproxy

check() {
    $exec -c -V -f /etc/$prog/$prog.cfg
}

start() {
    $exec -c -q -f /etc/$prog/$prog.cfg
    if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
        echo "Errors in configuration file, check with $prog check."
        return 1
    fi

    echo -n $"Starting $prog: "
    # start it up here, usually something like "daemon $exec"
    daemon $exec -D -f /etc/$prog/$prog.cfg -p /var/run/$prog.pid
    retval=$?
    echo
    [ $retval -eq 0 ] && touch $lockfile
    return $retval
}

stop() {
    echo -n $"Stopping $prog: "
    # stop it here, often "killproc $prog"
    killproc $prog
    retval=$?
    echo
    [ $retval -eq 0 ] && rm -f $lockfile
    return $retval
}

restart() {
    $exec -c -q -f /etc/$prog/$prog.cfg
    if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
        echo "Errors in configuration file, check with $prog check."
        return 1
    fi
    stop
    start
}

reload() {
    $exec -c -q -f /etc/$prog/$prog.cfg
    if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
        echo "Errors in configuration file, check with $prog check."
        return 1
    fi
    #echo -n $"Reloading $prog by command: "
    #echo "$exec -V -D -f /etc/$prog/$prog.cfg -p /var/run/$prog.pid -sf $(cat /var/run/$prog.pid)"
    $exec -D -f /etc/$prog/$prog.cfg -p /var/run/$prog.pid -sf $(cat /var/run/$prog.pid)
    retval=$?
    return $retval
}

force_reload() {
    restart
}

fdr_status() {
    status $prog
}

case "$1" in
    start|stop|restart)
        $1
        ;;
    reload)
        reload
        ;;
    force-reload)
        force_reload
        ;;
    check)
        check
        ;;
    status)
        fdr_status
        ;;
    condrestart|try-restart)
      [ ! -f $lockfile ] || restart
    ;;
    *)
        echo $"Usage: $0 {start|stop|status|restart|try-restart|reload|force-reload}"
        exit 2
esac

But take in account, applying this workaround we are letting all output (echo ect) from the reload code to be printed out to a console where systemctl reload haproxy.service (or old-style service haproxy reload) will be invoked. The same actual for other services that used /etc/init.d/functions, in Fedora 17 case it's ipsec, network and few else.

Setup MongoDB on Fedora 14

MongoDB is an open source document-oriented NoSQL database system. It is used in many apps especially when it is a startup what should be cloud ready.

VMware's Cloud Found provides MongoDB out of the box and in time of writing this their Micro Edition proposes version 1.8.

To start develop with Cloud Foundry we need (it's recommended) to have the same versions of the services as on the cloud but locally.

Unfortunately Fedora 14 can propose only MongoDB 1.6, so we have to do the installation for the version 1.8 manually and there is a good description of steps we need - Use MongoDB to Store Application Data on Fedora 14 - but file locations will differ.

First ensure our system is up to date: yum update.

MongoDB will be installed in /opt/mongodb folder and data with logs will be in /var/lib/mongodb:

mkdir -p /var/lib/mongodb

mkdir data1

mkdir logs

touch /var/lib/mongodb/logs/data1.log

Create user mongodb with its home dir in our server folder:

useradd -M -r --home-dir /opt/mongodb mongodb

And make it able to access our data folder:

chown -R mongodb:mongodb /var/lib/mongodb

Download and unarchive MongoDB:

cd /opt/
wget http://downloads.mongodb.org/linux/mongodb-linux-x86_64-1.8.0.tgz
tar xvf mongodb-linux-x86_64-1.8.0.tgz
ln -s ./mongodb-linux-x86_64-1.8.0 ./mongodb

We linking actual directory to /opt/mongodb this will let us to switch between versions of MongoDB in case of a need in future.

Basic configuration of MongoDB is very simple. Need point to a listening address and set data and logs folders. Our configuration will be in /opt/mongodb/config/mongod.conf file:

# Configuration Options for MongoDB
#
# For More Information, Consider:
# - Configuration Parameters: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Command+Line+Parameters
# - File Based Configuration: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/File+Based+Configuration

dbpath = /var/lib/mongodb/data1
logpath = /var/lib/mongodb/logs/data1.log
logappend = true

bind_ip = 127.0.0.1
port = 27017
fork = true

auth = true
# noauth = true

Create service control script /etc/rc.d/init.d/mongodb:

#! /bin/sh
#
# mongodb – this script starts and stops the mongodb daemon
#
# chkconfig: - 85 15
# description: MongoDB is a non-relational database storage system.
# processname: mongodb
# config: /optg/mongodb/config/mongod.conf
# pidfile: /opt/mongodb/mongo.pid

# Source function library
. /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions

user=mongodb
prog="mongod"
mongod="/opt/mongodb/bin/$prog --fork --config /opt/mongodb/config/mongod.conf"

RETVAL=0

start() {
  echo -n "Starting MongoDB... "
  daemon --user "$user" $mongod
  RETVAL=$?
  echo
  [ $RETVAL -eq 0 ] && touch /opt/mongodb/$prog.lock
}

stop() {
  echo -n "Stopping MongoDB"
  killproc $prog
  RETVAL=$?
  echo
  [ $RETVAL -eq 0 ] && rm -f /opt/mongodb/$prog.lock
}

restart() {
  stop
  start
}

case "$1" in
  start)
        start
        ;;
  stop)
        stop
        ;;
  restart|reload|force-reload)
        restart
        ;;
  status)
        status $mongod
        RETVAL=$?
        ;;
      *)
        echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop|status|restart|reload|force-reload}"
        RETVAL=1
esac

exit $RETVAL

After this we can start MongoDB:
service mongodb start

And checking if it works

cd /opt/mongodb/bin
./mongo
MongoDB shell version: 1.8.0
connecting to: test
> 

MongoDB is up and running.