rocket.chat server stopped on an update

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Today our self-hosted rocket.chat server suddenly stopped running, and it turns out I am not the only one experiencing this problem

When I check the server, use the command to check status of rocketchat server and its mongo:

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$ service snap.rocketchat-server.rocketchat-server status
# this shows mongodb cannot be connected
$ service snap.rocketchat-server.rocketchat-mongo status
# this shows mongdb is not running

So apparently there is something wrong with MongoDB. When I check the mongo start log with command:

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journalctl -u snap.rocketchat-server.rocketchat-mongo

There are some errors about the versioning:

[initandlisten] WiredTiger error (-31802) [1589310297:583337][24694:0x7fbd44f65d00], txn-recover: unsupported WiredTiger file version: this build only supports major/minor versions up to 1/0, and the file is version 2/0: WT_ERROR: non-specific WiredTiger error

It turns out snap did an update to our rocket.chat server, and updated it to the new version, which now runnign mongodb version 3.6 and changed some database files. Now the database files cannot be run under mongo3.4 anymore (which rocket.server needs).

So I followed this method here:

  1. Download version 3.6 in mongodb’s website
  2. cd to version 3.6 bin: ./mongod --dbpath /var/snap/rocketchat-server/common/
  3. in the same 3.6 bin folder, use mongo connect to the server: ./mongo
  4. now is the key part, run commnad: db.adminCommand( { setFeatureCompatibilityVersion: “3.4” } )
  5. exit both above mongo and mongod
  6. cd to /snap/rocketchat-server/current/bin
  7. run ./mongod --repair --dbpath /var/snap/rocketchat-server/common/
  8. once it is done, try start rocketchat-mongo: service snap.rocketchat-server.rocketchat-mongo start, then check its status again: service snap.rocketchat-server.rocketchat-mongo status, it should be running now.

The MongoDB is running, but when I use:

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service snap.rocketchat-server.rocketchat-server start

to start the rocket.chat server, it still doesn’t work. By checking its log:

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journalctl -u snap.rocketchat-server.rocketchat-server

Found there is a line:

fs.js:646
return binding.open(pathModule._makeLong(path), stringToFlags(flags), mode);
^
Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, open ‘/snap/rocketchat-server/1436/star.json’

When I cd to /snap/rocketchat-server/1436/ folder, there is no “star.json” file. But the old version 1427 has it: /snap/rocketchat-server/1427/

So I guess there is an error in this new version, have to roll it back to previous version and forbid it to update the latest version:

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$ snap revert --revision=1427 rocketchat-server
$ snap run --shell rocketchat-server
$ snapctl get snap-refreshing #which returned "true"
$ snapctl set snap-refreshing=false

Now start the server again:

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$ service snap.rocketchat-server.rocketchat-server start

check the status:

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$ service snap.rocketchat-server.rocketchat-server status

Now it works!!! after spending several hours on this … what a fun day :D

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