Applying an upgrade to CA PAM which requires reboot does not work and the version comes up as the initial one

Products

• CA Privileged Access Manager (PAM)

Issue/Introduction

In most upgrade process, CA PAM must upgrade some critical system files, like for instance the GRUB configuration of the MySQL database schema

In general all these activities are carried out during reboot of the machine, so the upgrade patch first of all uncompresses its payload to the /var/uag/modification folder and then it proceeds with upgrade

Sometimes it has been reported that responding Yes to the prompt to accept a reboot of the appliance actually leads nowhere: it is not rebooted or it does not seem so, and the old version remains, with no patch having been applied whatsoever

Environment

CA PAM multiple releases

Cause

The patch application process implies checking the checksum for the patch to be applied. If there is any error in the downloaded patch (for instance due to some network instabilities) that will produce a patch will fail checksum and the whole process will fail in the early stages of the patch application process

If checksum is fine, then, once the patch is uncompressed, the system triggers a system reboot. If something interrupts this reboot process (for instance any service failing to shut down, the filesystem failing to respond to a sync command, a filesystem busy, etc) the reboot process will not be happen. Thus the appliance will never be migrated to the new version.

Resolution

It is recommended, first of all to retry with another downloaded patch to make sure this is not a problem of corrupted patch file

If this is not the root cause, then reboot the machine from the VMWARE console or physically so that all possible busy services or system processes are terminated and retry the upgrade application

Typically an upgrade process should last for 20 to 30 minutes, so anything taking less than that may be an indication that the whole process has not completed properly.