Upgrading Viprion 9.6.1

David,

 

 

It looks like you're running a Viprion-only release (builld 9.6.1) of the Big-IP platform. The F5 Management Pack is using a slightly different approach for connecting to a Viprion, vs. a standard Big-IP device. The problem here is the Viprion platform version that you're running (build 9.6.1), which was the first release of its kind and has been immediately hot-fixed after release. Consequently, our management pack supports Viprions starting with build 10.0.1.

 

 

That being said, we have a couple of options here:

 

 

1. Upgrade the Viprion platform to the latest version.

 

2. Wait a couple of weeks, for our next Management Pack release, which would include a "downgrade" fix for supporting the 9.6 Viprions as well.

 

 

Please let us know if any of these options would work for you. We do understand that the issue is critical and if none of the alternatives above are acceptable, we can explore other ways to unblock you.

 

 

In the meantime thank you for your patience and understanding.

 

Julian

 

 

Hi Julian,

 

 

We downloaded the 1.5.0.254 version of the management pack and were able to install the bits. We got a little further with this installation since it recognized the devices but it wanted us to upgrade the big3d agent. We used one of our lab F5's to test the big3d upgrade byt manually installing it but when we tried to issue the "bigstart start big3d" command the following error is encountered:

 

 

Nov 2 16:15:46 big3d[4099]: 012b0003:0: Digital signature of /usr/sbin/big3dshim failed -- terminated

 

 

We have reverted back to the previous version of the big3d. What else is required for this to work?

Hi Bryan,

 

 

The error that you got is usually a sign for the big3d binary being tampered with, so I assume the upgrade hasn't been done correctly (probably by manually copying the binary over), but I may be wrong. Click here to follow the manual upgrade procedure on the big3d. If you have already done this, or you still get the error, let us know and we'll go deeper in troubleshooting. Make sure you start the upgrade procedure from the reverted (good) version of the big3d.

 

 

Let us know how it goes.

 

 

Thanks!

 

Julian

That is acutally the article that I followed to manually upgrade big3d. I copied the big3d binary from a machine that I installed the MP on to the F5 device with pscp.

 

 

I will try the steps again and let you know the result.

 

Here are the details of the file from the Management pack:

 

 

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root webusers 809787 Jun 24 04:13 big3d

 

 

Here is the Version:

 

 

[root@bigip2:Active] temp ./big3d -v

 

./big3d version big3d Version 10.0.1 for linux

 

 

Same error:

 

 

big3d[27208]: 012b0003:0: Digital signature of /usr/sbin/big3dshim failed -- terminated

 

 

The digital signature error seems to imply that it is from big3dshim, does this file need to be updated witha newer version as well?

Hey Ryan,

I think everything you've done is right, and I have a feeling that the problem is actually with the big3dshim version, which I assume would be 9.6.1 (you can check to make sure, running big3dshim -v within /usr/sbin/). I'll send you the v.10.0.1 big3dshim and we'll take a stab at it, before elevating this [Viprion upgrade] issue to a possibly more experienced team, on the topic.

Try to replace the big3dshim with v.10.0.1 (attached) and then run the manual upgrade procedure, see if it works.

Another alternative, if possible for you, would be to push the upgrade from a different Big-IP (non-Viprion) platform, that would already be updated to v.10.0.1, running

   
    big3d_install    
   

where is the IP address of the remote (~up-to-date) Big-IP (non-Viprion) box.

Can you explain what the big3dshim binary does? What possible impact could we run into running a version 10 big3d and big3dshim on the viprion platform where the rest of the code is version 9.6?

 

big3dshim is used to for compatibility between the legacy version of the iQuery protocol that existed on v4 3DNS, and the current version of iQuery introduced in v9 and above. It is a "shim" that translates between the two versions of the protocol.

 

 

This solution helps reveal how big3dshim is used:

 

https://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/solutions/public/4000/000/sol4039.html

 

 

If you're replacing your big3d with a v10 big3d, you should do the same for big3dshim too.

 

 

As a best practice, make a backup of each binary before you replace it. But I would not expect any issues by updating to v10 versions of the big3d and big3dshim binaries though the rest of the system is v9.6. That sort of thing is common in GTM environments.

 

 

 

(Check out "man big3d" too, and note that there is a way to run the big3d agent without forking off big3dshim also, since big3dshim is only really used when you have v4 boxes around too.)

 

 

 

I will admit however that I haven't upgraded big3d or big3dshim on a 9.6.1 Viprion, so I really can't say that there won't be any side-effects.