This is a tutorial of how to use OVH rescue mode to recover the files and MySql data.
If you get accidentally locked out of your VPS and cannot access Port 80 (HTTP) or Port 22 (SSH), OVH rescue mode helps you recover the files and mysql data
OVH is one of my favourite VPS providers. For a paltry sum of $3.49 per month, OVH offers a VPS which has the following specifications:
• OpenStack KVM
• 1 vCore
• 2.4 GHz
• 2 GB RAM
• 10 GB SSD
• Local RAID 10
(See also Cheap VPS | 5 Best Budget Hosts To Trust)
The VPS is fast and responsive.
The price is also cheap. A VPS from Linode with 2 GB RAM costs $10 per month though it offers 30 GB of storage as against the paltry 10 GB of storage offered by OVH.
OVH’s SSD 2 VPS offers 20GB SSD with 4GB RAM for $6.99 per month which is still less than that charged by Linode.
Problem: Port 80 blocked
I had the unpleasant experience when during an upgrade process, the ports 22 and 80 and all the other ports of my OVH VPS were blocked.
The result was that my VPS was not accessible at all. The web pages were not opening nor was I able to access the VPS through SSH using putty.
The VPS was, however, responding to pings which showed that it was powered on.
A check at yougetsignal revealed that all the ports were closed.
I tried rebooting the VPS multiple types but it did not help.
OVH Rescue Mode
The OVH control panel offers the option to boot the VPS in rescue mode.
The VPS vps354….ovh.net will reboot in rescue mode (estimated time 3 minutes).
Rescue mode
Some actions are not available in rescue mode. To restore functions, you must restore the local boot by clicking “Restart your VPS”
After a few minutes, you will receive an email containing the following information:
OVH HOSTING INC. – http://www.ovh.com
1801 ave. McGill College | Suite 800
Montréal (Québec) H3A 2N4
CanadaDear Customer,
Your VPS has booted into rescue mode, meaning that a Linux OS has been launched on your VPS. The reboot is not related to your system, which is correctly installed:
– Your VPS’s tree structure has mounted into ‘/mnt’.
You can log in to your VPS (51.254……..) via SSH with the following parameters:
– username: root
– password: 210JVd8oYou can now carry out the necessary maintenance to restore your VPS. For example, you can:
– check and, if required, deactivate your firewall
– perform a backup or data recovery
– check and update your network configuration files
– etc.If you think that you have identified the cause of the problem and wish to reboot your VPS normally, you must configure the netboot of your VPS on the hard disk (normal mode).
You will find additional information in our guide:
http://docs.ovh.ca/en/RescueMode/
Now, log into the VPS using the username and password set out in the email.
Find the path where the files are kept. Obviously, it will be the partition where the most space is occupied.
df –h
login as: root root@51.254.....'s password: root@rescue-pro:~# df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda1 4.7G 1.3G 3.2G 29% / udev 10M 0 10M 0% /dev tmpfs 393M 5.3M 388M 2% /run tmpfs 982M 0 982M 0% /dev/shm tmpfs 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock tmpfs 982M 0 982M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup /dev/sdb1 9.8G 8.0G 1.3G 87% /mnt/sdb1
Navigate to the partition you want:
cd /mnt/sdb1
See all the files in it
ls
In Centminmod, the website files are in the /home folder
(In Easyengine, they are in the /var/www folder)
Once you spot the files you want, take a backup with the command
tar -cpzf backup_30032017.tar.gz *
This command will make a tar file of all the contents in the folder.
MySql backup
Normally, to take a backup of the Mysql data, one uses the command
mysqldump --all-databases -uuser -ppassword >database30032017.sql
However, this command will not work in the rescue mode because the mysql service is not working and is not accessible.
Fortunately, we have access to the raw mysql database files (more details are available at jb.demonte.fr)
Go to the /var/lib/mysql folder. Here, you will find all the database files bearing the names of the respective databases.
Take a backup of these files with the command
tar -cpzf mysql-backup-30032017.tar.gz *
or
tar -cvzf mysql-backup-30032017.tar.gz var/lib/mysql
Now, we have to bear in mind that because Centminmod and Easyengine use MariaDB as the MySQL engine, a normal MySQL should be avoided because there will be errors due to some incompatibilities of the two mysql engines.
So, set up another VPS with Centminmod.
In the rescue mode, wget will not work. So we have to use SCP (Secure copy).
Go to the new VPS and pull in the backup of the files and mysql data from the VPS in rescue mode using the command
scp root@ IP-address-of-rescued-VPS:/mnt/sdb1/home/nginx/domains/name-of-backupfile-.tar.gz /home/nginx/domains/-path-of-new-VPS
Unzip the website files in the required location (/home/nginx/domains/) with the command:
tar -xzf backup-30032017.tar.gz
With regard to the mysql backup data files, go to the /var/lib/mysql folder and deposit the files in that folder.
All the files in the /var/lib/mysql folder must be owned by MySql
This is achieved by executing the following command when inside the folder:
chown mysql:mysql –R *
Or
chown -R mysql:mysql /var/lib/mysql/
If you have set up the new VPS with the same password as that in the rescued one, there is no problem. Otherwise change the root password using the command:
mysql -u root -p
use mysql;
update user set password=PASSWORD('your_new_password') where User='root';
flush privileges;
quit
With this, the website files and mysql data is restored to the same condition in which it before you got locked out.
P.S: When you get access to the rescued VPS, try disabling the CSF, IP Tables (if Centos 6) or FirewallD (if Centos 7). Also try manually opening ports 80, 22 etc. If this works, all the trouble to take a backup and move to another VPS etc can be avoided.
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How to change root password in rescue mode?
OVH has a nice video tutorial on how to change the root password when one is in rescue mode.
The steps outlined by OVH are the following:
Changing a password when it is lost
Step 1: Identify the mount point
The mount is created automatically on any VPS in the 2016 range, so you just need to identify where your partition is mounted. To do this, you can use two commands:
df -h
The output to the command is as follows:
root@rescue-pro:~# df -h Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/vda1 4.7G 1.3G 3.2G 29% / udev 10M 0 10M 0% /dev tmpfs 774M 8.4M 766M 2% /run tmpfs 1.9G 0 1.9G 0% /dev/shm tmpfs 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock tmpfs 1.9G 0 1.9G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup /dev/vdb1 20G 934M 18G 5% /mnt/vdb1
Then, enter the command:
lsblk
The output to the command is as follows:
root@rescue-pro:~# lsblk NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT vda 254:0 0 4.9G 0 disk └─vda1 254:1 0 4.9G 0 part / vdb 254:16 0 20G 0 disk └─vdb1 254:17 0 20G 0 part /mnt/vdb1
The output shows that the system partition is mounted on /mnt/vdb1.
Step 2: CHROOT permissions
You now need to edit the root directory, for the changes to be applied to your system. You can do this by using the chroot command. Please enter the following command:
root@rescue-pro:~# chroot /mnt/vdb1/ root@rescue-pro:/#
You can check by typing the ls -l command, which will list the content stored in the root directory of your system:
root@rescue-pro:/# ls -l
Step 3: change the root password
Now, you just need to change the root password with the passwd command:
passwd Enter new UNIX password: Retype new UNIX password: passwd: password updated successfully
Finally, reboot your VPS on its drive via your OVH Control Panel.