"Service Unavailable" when attempting to log into a newly updated Filr 4.2 server

  • 7024630
  • 15-May-2020
  • 15-May-2020

Environment

Micro Focus Filr 4.2

Situation

On a Filr large setup, the database and search servers have been updated from 4.1.2 to 4.2.  One or more Filr nodes have also been update from 4.1.2 to 4.2.  However, not all Filr nodes have been updated to version 4.2.

Users see the following error when logging into one of the Filr 4.2 nodes:
Service Unavailable: Try again later.

The Filr nodes which are still at version 4.1.2 still accept user logins.

Resolution

Upgrade the remaining Filr nodes to version 4.2 by following these steps:
  • Stop the Filr service on all nodes
    • rcfilr stop
  • Restart memcached on all search nodes
    • rcmemcached restart
  • Update the remaining Filr servers to version 4.2
    • This step will auto start the Filr service
  • Verify logins work on the newly updated Filr nodes.
  • Start the Filr service on the the rest of the Filr nodes.
    • rcfilr start

Cause

The documentation instructs the administrator to stop the Filr service on all Filr nodes when upgrading from Filr 4.x to Filr 4.2.  The Filr service should be started only after the 4.2 update is applied. Note: the Filr service is auto started after applying the 4.2 update, so the administrator doesn't need to start the Filr service.

In the above described scenario, the administrator started the Filr service on one or more Filr nodes BEFORE the 4.2 update was applied.  This results in the problem described above.  The problem exists because there is a schema change to the database.  That schema change makes it so login problems exist when both Filr 4.1.2 and Filr 4.2 services are running at the same time within the Filr environment.