Failed to lock file /etc/webmin/server-manager/virtualmin-licences

I'm pushing the blame(tm) towards cloudmin only because cloudmin.physical was upgraded and coincides with when this error started. Usually every 5 minutes, I'm getting: Error: Failed to lock file /etc/webmin/server-manager/virtualmin-licences after 5 minutes

Error

Failed to lock file /etc/webmin/server-manager/virtualmin-licences after 5 minutes

If I get in manually and rm /etc/webmin/server-manager/virtualmin-licences.lock , it'll go away, and a manual run of that cron job from webmin runs successfully. I can watch the .lock file get created, then properly removed. But later on it'll start dropping me notes again.

Status: 
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Comments

What process had the PID that is in that lock file when the failures happen?

You can check with something like :

ps auxwwwww | grep \`cat /etc/webmin/server-manager/virtualmin-licences.lock\`

The PID is relevant, and active. Here's the output from it "doing it's thing" right now:

tony@chico /root >  ps auxwwwww | grep `cat /etc/webmin/server-manager/virtualmin-licences.lock`
root     14555  0.0  1.1  70768 11436 ?        S    Apr25   0:00 /usr/bin/perl /usr/share/webmin/server-manager/status.pl
tony     15718  0.0  0.0   7548   832 pts/0    S+   11:31   0:00 grep 14555
tony@chico /root > ps -ef |grep server-manager
root     14553 14552  0 Apr25 ?        00:00:00 /bin/sh -c /etc/webmin/server-manager/status.pl
root     14555 14553  0 Apr25 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/perl /usr/share/webmin/server-manager/status.pl
root     15643 15642  0 11:30 ?        00:00:00 /bin/sh -c /etc/webmin/server-manager/status.pl
root     15644 15643  0 11:30 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/perl /usr/share/webmin/server-manager/status.pl
tony     15745 15683  0 11:32 pts/0    00:00:00 grep server-manager

I suspect the cause might be slowness or throttling on our licence server.

What is your systems' IP address, so I can check our logs?

67.217.170.141 and .42

I think you may be seeing an issue that was fixed in Cloudmin 5.5 - have you upgraded to that release yet? If so, try killing the currently hanging process, and seeing if the problem re-occurs.

That would make sense. I'm on 5.4.real. I'm not seeing it show up as an upgrade candidate through virtualmin nor apt. And 5.4 is the only one available at http://cloudmin.virtualmin.com/real/debian/binary/.

Is there a secret squirrel way to get 5.5 or is it not available yet for real/debian?

Sorry, I meant version 5.4 .. it was released within the last few days. Did you upgrade to it recently?

Yes. That's when the error seemed to start.
As I said in the issue creation, I've killed the process, cleared the .lock, I've also tried running the cron job from virtualmin, and can see that it runs, creates a .lock, correctly clears it, but at some indeterminate time later, it starts misbehaving again. I've cleared the lock and killed the processes that were locked again. We'll see how it goes again from here on out.

I'm getting this error also on all my servers for the past few days. All Centos 5.5 machines. Any updates to this?

Thanks, Tom

A quick work-around for this issue is to edit the file /usr/{share,libexec}/webmin/server-manager/status.pl and remove the line :

&list_virtualmin_licences();

This will have no negative effect, apart from a possible slight delay when creating a new VM from an image that contains Virtualmin pro.

This function is new in Cloudmin 5.4, and it appears that it can take longer than expected in some cases and cause this warning email..

Completely naive question: Is this check necessary for a cloudmin.real system? I'm using to manage one VirtualMin Pro, and a few Virtualmin GPL's.

It is used only when you are using cloudmin to possibly install Virtualmin Pro on new systems, or create systems from Pro images. The bug is that this check is being done even when it is not needed ..