FindIT Stuck on "Initializing" Page

[parkernathan]

I have FindIT running in a VirtualBox VM (using the pre-built appliance from Cisco.com) on an iMac. 

Today when I try to access the FindIT interface through a web browser, I keep getting the "Initializing" message, and it never allows me to login to FindIT, even though FindIT has been running for hours.

How do I get past this to successfully login to FindIT? Do I need to keep rebooting the VM until it takes?

Thanks!

[David Harper]

Hi Nathan,

That's certainly not expected behaviour.  Which version of FindIT did you download?  2.1.1?  Has this ever worked, or have you simply downloaded the VM image, loaded it in to VirtualBox, and been stuck at initializing ever since?

Cheers,

Dave.

[parkernathan]

It has worked before until this past week (I set this up back in March this year). I am able to successfully get the FindIT command line to load in VirtualBox. Is there a way I can run a command there to check for the version? Off the top of my head, I can't remember what version I have.

Thanks!

[David Harper]

The versions should be displayed as part of the banner you get after logging in to Linux.

So if it was working previously, did you change anything - change config, apply OS updates, or upgrade FindIT?  Having the screen sitting at Initializing constantly basically means the Manager application is not starting up properly.  If you haven't made any changes, then we need to have a look at the logs to see what is happening.  Logs are located in /var/log/findit/manager.  If you can zip up all the .log files in that directory and PM them to me, I can have a look for you.

Cheers,

Dave.

[parkernathan]

I'm attaching a picture of my current FindIT screen. How do I get to the logs so I can PM you the log files?

I haven't upgraded FindIT in a while. Not sure if it upgraded automatically. I probably need to upgrade it to Cisco Business Dashboard.

Thanks!

[David Harper]

Sorry, I meant the banner that appears after you log in.  If you have never logged in on the console before, then the credentials will still be the default username cisco with password cisco.  But most likely you logged in at least once when setting it up, so the password will be different.

To get the log files, you will need to log on to the console and package the directory up into some form of archive.  If you are not particularly familiar with Linux, then you can use the command 'tar czf finditlogs.tgz /var/log/findit'.  That will create a single archive file called finditlogs.tgz that contains the contents of the folder containing all the FindIT logs.  You can then copy the file off the manager using WinSCP or similar.  If you need some help getting this done, you can call the Cisco support team on the local phone number listed on https://cisco.com/go/sbsc.

Cheers,

Dave.

[parkernathan]

Sounds good. I will see what I need to do about this to get these log files. Thanks again!

[parkernathan]

Got the log files.

[David Harper]

Hi Nathan,

Sorry to take a couple of days to get back to you on this.  I spoke to the TAC engineer handling your case yesterday, so he may have already asked you this question, but I wanted to ask whether you connected to each of the docker containers in the manager when doing updates and applied updates to the packages within the containers as well?  The log files are showing errors symptomatic of a known compatibility problem between later versions of RabbitMQ and the FindIT application, and right now the most plausible explanation is that you updated RabbitMQ.

Cheers,

Dave.

[parkernathan]

I believe the packages were updated on it. I'm in the process of running the update to Cisco Business Dashboard and will followup with you on the case you're communicating with the Cisco Engineer on. We can post the solution here as well once we know what resolves it in case anyone else here needs to know about this.

[parkernathan · Accepted solution]

I worked with Dave and another Cisco engineer (Blake) on this issue, and I wanted to report back here with the steps we took to resolve it in case anyone else has the issue:

1. We downloaded a new FindIT VM with the same version number as the version of FindIT I had a backup of my FindIT settings.

2. We setup the new FindIT VM, then imported my existing FindIT settings into it.

3. We then upgraded FindIT to the latest version of Cisco Business Dashboard, and so far, everything is working great.

Thanks again to Dave and Blake for your assistance!

[parkernathan]

Hi Dave,

I was attempting to update Cisco Business Dashboard through the web UI when my Internet messed up in the middle of the update. Now the stuck on “initializing” error has returned. I have a snapshot of my VM, plus a backup of my Cisco Business Dashboard settings. Should I try restoring the snapshot and see if I can get back in again, then attempt another update? If the snapshot restore fails, would I just download the version of Cisco Business Dashboard I’m currently running, restore my settings, then update it to the latest version?

Thanks!

[David Harper]

You haven't been having a good run with this have you?  When you say the internet messed up, do you mean the connection between you and the dashboard broke, or between the dashboard and the internet?  Also, do you know if the problem happened while the update was downloading or while the update was being processed?

If you want to do some investigation into what is broken, then sending through the upgrade.log and nm-manager-web.log files from the /var/log/ciscobusiness/dashboard/ directory would be helpful.  But if you want to jump straight to fixing the problem, then there are a couple of options depending on how happy you are working with linux:

1. Download the cisco-businesee-dashboard-2.2.2.xxxx.sh file from https://cisco.com/go/cbd-sw, copy it to the server, and execute the file.  That will rerun the installation and should resolve the problem.

2. Restore form snapshot and rerun the upgrade.  This may or may not be an issue depending on how old the snapshot is, and may mean you need to go through multiple upgrades if the snapshot is a pre-2.2.0 version.

Cheers,

Dave.

[parkernathan]

Yeah, with my flakey ISP, plus I’m running FindIT/Cisco Business Dashboard on a VM on an older iMac, it has been a little troublesome.

I tried to restore the snapshot, but my iMac is having issues connecting to the backup drive since it’s still encrypting the last backup. Got to love how my IT issues keep compounding.

The Internet went down during the upgrade process, about the time the download was finishing, but it froze everything up just enough to completely muck it up again. Love how my ISP always adds more headache to my tech work.

I was able to boot the VM to the command line. The versions it’s showing are:

Dashboard 2.2.2.20201216
Probe 2.2.0.20200731

Should I attempt downloading the shell files and re-run the installation?

Thanks!

[David Harper]

At this point, downloading the sh files and running manually is probably the quickest way out of this.  But can you send me the upgrade.log and nm-manager-web.log files before you run the sh files.  I'd like to try and identify why the upgrade failed, since we really should recover from this type of scenario without any intervention.

Cheers,

Dave.