[SOLVED] Change to Mountability of Root Filesystem in Webmin

5pac3m0nk3y · 01-24-2018, 11:13 AM

Hello,
New here. Thanks for having me.
We're running an old Slackware 12.1 Linux Box with Webmin 1.791. Recently something happened.
First, in 'System/Disk and Network/', an attempt was made to make /(Root File System) mountable. There was an error that resulted but it isn't in the logs and we don't recall what the error was specifically. It failed basically.

Next a new mount attempt, an attempt to create a new mount with a new folder name was made as an addition to the others. This failed as well.

After this, it was no longer possible to putty into the server as root.
Next, the list of mounted filesystems in system/disk and file systems that once had hyperlinks to various setting related, disappeared except for 'Virtual Memory'.

Next, we notice that file linking scripts pointing to various samba shares on the same server no longer work. Simply can't connect. Oddly enough, a few do, but most do not.

Going to 'File Manager' in webmin I get this error:

Code:

Error - Perl execution failed
Can't load '/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/i486-linux-thread-multi/auto/Encode/Encode.so' for module Encode: /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/i486-linux-thread-multi/auto/Encode/Encode.so: failed to map segment from shared object: Operation not permitted at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/i486-linux-thread-multi/XSLoader.pm line 70.
 at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/i486-linux-thread-multi/Encode.pm line 9
Compilation failed in require at ./filemin-lib.pl line 6.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at ./filemin-lib.pl line 6.
Compilation failed in require at /usr/local/bin/webmin-1.791/filemin/index.cgi line 5.

If I go to 'Samba Windows File Sharing' I see:

Code:

Webmin failed to get the version of your Samba server executable /usr/sbin/smbd. Check your module configuration to make sure this is the correct path.

If I check for that file in the Java File Manager in webmin, I see it is there. I check permissions and see that it is configued as shown in attached image. The path in the module is correct. So this must be a permissions issue?

How would I go about restoring the permissions to the way they were before, or what other approach should I consider to resolving this issue?

Thanks,
Al

5pac3m0nk3y · 01-29-2018, 08:45 AM

Hi all,

I was able to resolve this issue sort of..and would like to share with you what I did. Since this server was mainly a file server, we were worried about not being able to access all those files/shares. We first tried rebooting the server, but that created a brand new problem! During boot time there is this endless sbin/agetty error. I've seen many possible fixes for this problem which is a whole other thing. I didn't have time for this so how to get those files?
Simple solution: I booted from a live Ubuntu CD, plugged an external USB drive into the server. Then I simply copied over all the files and folders to the external drive. Now some of the files threw up permissions errors during this process, but they weren't too important. I got almost everything.

We had to fix some PERL scripts that referred to files on this server for various purposes by just changing usernames and passwords and UNC paths (we moved everything over to a windows server).

So now all that is left is to get the server working again for posterity. I used Gparted to make a copy of the server image to an external drive, and plan to attempt replacing the sbin folder with files from another slackware 12.1 machine I'm setting up. I got an image of it so if I make it worse, then I can restore it and start over.

Regards,
Al