Reply To: Failed upgrade to FreePBX

If FreePBX is not too badly damaged (i.e. it has not messed up its own settings) you may be able to recover by just copying the full database with schema from the working node to the defective node. This assume you have followed all of the other advice in the installation guide regarding FreePBX modules/versions/etc.

If not, the Telium support team has tools to attempt to realign the two FreePBX installations. These tools move files/directories/databases/links etc to attempt to make FreePBX identical on both peers. Because of the potential to really make of mess of the peers, Telium does not offer these tools to the public. Instead you would need to purchase 2 hours of service (from the Buy tab) and grant direct SSH access to each peer. That’s usually the quickest route to recovery, but doesn’t always guarantee success (depending how badly the second peer is damaged).

If you want to recover the systems on your own, the next quickest way to recover your cluster is to mirror the primary PBX disk to the secondary PBX disk, and then adjust settings on the secondary to turn it into a unique peer. (Network settings, host name, and HAAst settings). Using ‘dd’ (or Ghost4Linux) is the easiest way to mirror the disk. Keep the secondary PBX unplugged from the network throughout this recovery, and resume at step 2 of the link you posted above.

After that your cluster will be up and running again!

In the future, I suggest you follow the HAAst Maintenance Guide before you apply any updates, or enable any FreePBX modules. Fortunately this problem is appears to be unique to FreePBX, as all other Asterisk based PBX’s we have encountered which use MySQL databases seem to detect any code-database mismatches and allow the user to simply UPDATE the configuration generator to recover.

Treat the FreePBX program as very fragile – so follow the upgrade instructions. As well, be sure to disable Automatic Updates in FreePBX as this too can cause problems.