Upgrade from Snow Leopard Server to Lion Server hangs at configuring services...

Question

Level 1

0 points

Upgrade from Snow Leopard Server to Lion Server hangs at configuring services...

I am running the Mac mini with snow leopard server 2.53 ghz 2GB of ram, 2x500GB hard drives, and have followed through the process to install Lion Server. The installation appears to be hung at the Configuring Services section of the setup process. I have left it for a couple of hours and nothing has progressed.

Should I leave it longer, hoping that it will work through the process (if in fact it is working through something)?

How long should this normally take?

As this is my work server, hosting mail, web, FTP, and file sharing, it is rather important to get it up and running as quickly as possible.

Any thoughts on how I can get it moving?

Hard power off of the Mac Mini reboots the machine, then proceeds back to the setup page, and then hangs on the same Configuring Services.

Any assistance would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

Mac mini, Mac OS X (10.7)

Posted on Jul 22, 2011 9:00 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Jul 22, 2011 10:10 AM in response to northacs

Not much of a help, but yesterday I saw something similar when I made a test migration of my 10.5 server. It took quite long in "Configuring Services", then it failed, restartet and I had the "normal" Lion back that I had before trying to install the server stuff.

I doubt that yours will resume.

Reply

Answer 2

Swoogie

Level 1

0 points

Jul 22, 2011 11:40 AM in response to northacs

I am in the same boat. Clean install of SL, then installed Lion, and now Lion server.app, but it has been hung at "configuring services" for an hour and a half.

Did you find a solution?

Reply

Answer 3

northacs Author

Level 1

0 points

Jul 22, 2011 3:56 PM in response to Swoogie

After leaving the system all night, woke up this morning to find an error about Configuring Services Failed. Along with a message similar to Will not attempt to complete. Restart to continue installation.

After the reboot, all seemed fine, new interface, looks good,

However....

All the services I had configured on the server are now not there. All my users are gone, which also means the mail settings aren't there, all my sharepoints for FTP, and all the web site I had in place. Nothing seems to have transferred across from Snow Leopard Server.

The data appears to be there, but all the configuration is not.

Can someone help me to either re-connect the services and users I had in place, or shed some light on how I roll back to Snow Leopard server and restore from a Time Capsule backup?

Anyones assistance would be appreciated.

Reply

Answer 4

Jul 22, 2011 5:07 PM in response to northacs

I am having the same problem- any ideas how to proceed? Stuck on configuring services so will wait it out but assume I will end up with the same state as northacs...

Reply

Answer 5

northacs Author

Level 1

0 points

Jul 23, 2011 10:19 AM in response to martinfromashburn

Okay, after hours of anguish, I thought the best way to solve the problem is to roll back to Snow Leopard Server. My Mac mini has 2 hard drives and no optical drive, so I had to reboot using the remote disk installer to run the installation CD. This failed, the system appeared to hang. I left it for the majority of the day, to no avail. It just appears to hang at the Apple symbol and the spinning wheel of death.

What worked was connecting the MacBook Pro to the Mac Mini, using a firewire cable. Powering on the MacBook Pro holding down the T key for target mode. Turning on the Mac Mini holding the Option Key, put the computer in Boot select mode, where I was able to select the CD drive of the MacBook Pro.

This worked, I was able to run the installation CD, then I selected to backup from a Time Machine backup, a version of the server prior to the update of Lion Server.

8 hours of loading from Time Machine backup and I am back up and running. Server running correctly as Snow Leopard Server.

One thing I did notice, back in Snow Leopard Server, is that I didn't have the most up to date version. There was a security update that I didn't get, prior to the Lion Server Install, which might have caused the "hang". I will be waiting a little longer before I upgrade again to see if the problem has sorted itself out.

Praise God for Time Machine, hey.

Good luck with getting your problems solved.

Reply

Answer 6

Jul 23, 2011 9:42 PM in response to northacs

I've also got this issue. What a disaster. First it would bomb out because I had a RAID volume and it decided it didn't like that because it couldn't then install a recovery volume. Boot back to SL disk, delete RAID mirror set, set up two individual disks, restore SL server from Time Machine. Try again. Fail after trying to upgrade OD...hangs for a while on "Upgrading Services" and then fails, reboots, all configuration missing.

Boot back to SL disk, restore from Time Machine, try again. Same thing.

Appalling Apple. Desktop upgrades have all worked without a hitch but this server OS is an unmitigated disaster.

If anyone comes up with a fix for this I'd appreciate it. Until then I guess I'll stick with SL server, which at least works...

Reply

Answer 7

Jul 27, 2011 11:24 AM in response to bluesuede

Same situation for me on a 27" i5 iMac running latest Snow Leopard Server. Things seem ok until "Configuring Services." Luckily, I was attempting the upgrade on an external clone of my main drive, so rolling back to Snow Leopard just required a reboot to the internal drive.

(I can't upgrade the internal drive to Lion/Server becuase the Lion installer reports a S.M.A.R.T. error on that drive.)

I won't try again until I see an updated release.

Reply

Answer 8

haykong

Level 1

119 points

Jul 27, 2011 12:05 PM in response to bluesuede

Most server upgrades I would just do a clean install and migrate stuff manual.... with Apple Server upgrades something is bound to go wrong.

So far have Apple Mail working with no issues, finally got virtual hosts to work on the webserver. Installed Pureftpd manager 1.8 (GUI) with a new complied version of pure-ftpd 1.0.32. Installed mysql. Installed phpmyadmin. Replaced PHP 5.3.6 Mod with another version (http://taracque.hu/php5/)

I must say Apple really messed up on this one. They should have two different GUIs. One for everyone and one for advanced users.

The virtual hosts not working on the webserver is a major screw up.

I would stick with 10.6.8 server for now til they fix things... I'll keep my clients running on 10.6.8 Server.

Reply

Answer 9

zebity

Level 1

0 points

Jul 27, 2011 5:29 PM in response to northacs

Lion Server Upgraders,

beware and proceed with caution.

Apple web site is naively optimistic on the upgrade process:

"To upgrade your Mac to OS X Lion, you don’t need to drive to a store, bring home a box, and install a bunch of discs. All you do is click the Mac App Store icon, buy Lion for $29.99, and your Mac does the rest. Just make sure you have what you need to download Lion to your Mac."

And then has a 3 step process...

This is completely miss leading.

Read this document first: http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/lion_server_upgrading_migrating.pdf

It will make it readily apparent that moving from Snow Leopard Server to Lion is not going to be simple.

Having done this twice now.. I have found that:

1. Open Directory migration is a weak point. Lion & Snow Leopard Open Directory are not compatible, so if you have masters & replica then expect trouble. I have an unresolved issue trying to get a simple Lion Server to Lion Server Open Directory replica up and running. This compatibility seems to also cause migration to fail, as I found that all my local User/Groups transferred ok but non of the /127.0.0.1/LDAPv3 (Open Directory) ones did. This is a very important item, as all the mail accounts in dovecot use LDAP generated UID, so you have to be careful that you do not loose mail accounts.

2. Mail - your mail aliases will not transferred, so you will need to reapply the aliases.

3. Web Server Setup - This broke, under migration as I gather the entire Web serving tree has changed. In particular I had "Snow Leopard" Web Mail (which is based on Squirel) on my "Snow Leopard" Server and this is now dead...

4. Digital Certificates - I found that the valid (ie signed by trusted CA's) did not get migrated, so I had to re-imported my Digital Certificates. If you have paid for third party CA certificates then make sure you have got these copied somewhere, as if you loose them then you will likely need to go to your provider and get a certificate revocation and new certificate, which will cost you money!

Cheers,

Zebity.

Reply

Answer 10

Jul 14, 2012 1:43 PM in response to martinfromashburn

The upgrade process makes an entire copy of the system....in my case 400GB of data and stores it as 'Previous System' It took all night but eventually worked perfectly.

So, make sure you have plent of space on your boot HD prior to the upgrade.

Reply