Reducing OpenX to Revive AdsServer migration pain!

April 6, 2014

A few weeks ago my team decided to migrate OpenX 2.8.3 run on Debian Squeeze to Revive AdsServer 3.0.3 run on Debian Wheezy. I researched a lot and gathered as much info as possible. All preparation took a bit as platform was tested using specs which are part of open source puppet-packages deployment modules (done by us).

The upgrade process is described very well on Revive website. They suggest to read manual very carefully! I confirm, please do it and please read very carefully requirements (unfortunately I missed that step)

My steps

1.  migration to Debian Wheezy using default package sources
2.  puppet-packages/revive module has been prepared
3.  backup has been done (db, files)
4.  upgrade done like in manual prepared by Revive team but:

I experienced some problem during plugins installation and permission mismatch of previous installation folder but finally upgrade wizard confirmed that all finished successfully. Also maintenance tools confirmed that all works good!

5. to make sure all is fine I did reinstall all plugins using github master branch

I have to mention here that I had no too much experience as user of OpenX. I could confirm that UI works fine, maintenance test passed, all data exists, ads are delivered to end point.

2 weeks later!!!

Issue has been reported that statistics are not longer available. After 2 days googling, testing, tens of reinstallation I have found many issues. Will describe some of them as maybe it will save someone time in the future.

Please notice that my server location is '/var/revive' so all examples use it by default.

Logs viewing

$ tailf /var/revive/var/debug.log
$ tailf /var/log/php/error.log

On that point I have found plenty of PHP errors and no single one in revive log. All PHP errors were related to the wrong file path. Problem was in non existing constant RV_PATH or OX_PATH (previous versions). Below how to fix it if you experience that problem.

Some basic errors

Because of this issue the statistics cannot be generated as no data about impression, click etc doesn't exist. Each HTTP Request from client to server has finished with errors!

$ nano +13 /var/revive/lib/RV.php

Change line

require RV_PATH . '/lib/pear/PEAR.php'

with your server path e.g.

require '/var/revive/lib/pear/PEAR.php'

This issue should be fixed soon by revive team in next versions...

Manual statistics generation

On that point there are no errors in log files. Next step is to generate statistics manually. You can do it using:

$ php /var/revive/script/maintenance/maintenance.php ads.example.com
Segmentation fault

Unfortunately, there is next problem. Some PHP error occurred. Please read below

Problem understanding

After deeper investigation using GDB I have found PHP segmentation problem described by php team and revive team. The only solution is to update PHP but in our case the problem is that we use default sources for our Debian Wheezy (in puppet). It installs PHP 5.4.4 by default (state for date of this post). On this point it is worth to mention that plugins problems during upgrade (described above) are strongly related to PHP bug! As result of this issue some of mysql tables are not created!

Reinstallation

We have prepared small update for our puppet revive module which allows to install additional sources for apt-get package manager.

What have to be done:
- add dotdeb sources e.g. this
- apt-get upgrade for example:

$ apt-get update
$ apt-get purge php5-cli
$ apt-get purge mysql-server
$ apt-get install php5-cli
$ apt-get install mysql-server

- revive installation (please follow revive official documentation or use puppet-module)
- data migration (please follow revive official docu)

Results: no errors! manual statistics generation works fine. Please notice that inserts to db/table are done every X mins what can be configured in settings/maintenance panel (by default 60min)

Automations

Last problem I experienced is related to statistics summarization. It was not done for me automatically. You can find cached data about impressions, clicks etc in /var/revive/var/cache but no data in database. You can run time to time this

$ php /var/revive/script/maintenance/maintenance.php ads.example.com

or add cron job (which makes more sense)

$ crontab -e

then add

10 * * * * /usr/bin/php /var/revive/scripts/maintenance/maintenance.php ads.example.com

So now all should works fine and new statistics should appear in db. For me it took up to 60-70min.

DB tables which is worth to check time to time:
- ox_log_maintenance_statistics contains info about maintenance activity
- ox_data_summary_ad_hourly contains summarized info about delivery, clicks etc. for active zones

Summary

Before any update please check requirements (it is not linked to upgrade manual)

- Apache with mod_php or any webserver using FastCGI (nginx, IIS 7+, lighttpd, etc.)
- PHP 5.1.4+, 5.2.x, 5.3.x, 5.4.20+, 5.5.2+
- Required PHP extensions: zlib, pcre, xml, mysql and/or pgsql
- Suggested PHP extensions: curl and/or openssl, gd, any opcode cache extension (opcache, apc, eaccelerator, xcache)