Partition size is too small (4294093)

Partition sizes do not change during an upgrade of the KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA). In order to take advantage of new partition sizes, it would be necessary to deploy a new virtual appliance template and migrate the current backups to the new appliance.

Each version of the KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) releases with new virtual appliance templates. Since the partition sizes do not change for every upgrade and when they do they are typically minor changes, this is not a necessary step on every upgrade. That being said, over time these small changes could build to a point where older templates are not suitable for new SMA versions.

Some of the possible symptoms which may indicate the necessity to look into partition sizes include:

• Performance degradation
  • Performance issues have an abundance of possible root causes, so typically this is a consideration on boxes which were created some time ago
  • It is also important to note that broken custom queries may also cause performance issues after an upgrade
    • Custom Reports
    • Custom Views
    • Custom Smart Labels
    • Custom Scripts
    • Custom Ticket Rules
    • Custom Inventory Rules
• Sudden backup failures
  • Another possible root cause of sudden backup failures after an upgrade include lower than required Technical Specifications or not enough RAM.
• Services continually failing and then restarting (without initiating a restart)
• Consistent MySQL failures
• Patch download failures
  • May be causing a filesystem full on each download

SMAs which were deployed using a template preceding version 6.4 are not suitable to run versions 8.0 or higher. SMAs which were deployed using a template preceding version 8.0 are not suitable to run version 10.0 or higher. Any SMAs deployed after version 10.x are good to run to the latest versions (13.2 as of article revision).

To resolve this situation:

It will be necessary to migrate the current SMA backups over to a new VM created with a more recent template or ISO.

Note: Please contact technical support for any assistance required in obtaining downloads which are no longer available on the downloads site.

The current partition sizes in question are as follows:

• /tmp - 12G
• /var - 12G
• Swap - 31G

The partition sizes which are not suitable for recent versions are as follows:

• /tmp - 2G or 4G
• /var - 2G or 4G
• Swap - 512M or 4096M

To determine the swap size in the current SMA:

1. Go to Settings | Support | Troubleshooting Tools | Run Diagnostic Utilities
2. Change the drop-down to TOP
3. Click Run Now

Note: The swap size is available in the first half of the information returned when running TOP in the diagnostic utilities.

To determine the /tmp and /var partition sizes in the current SMA:

1. Run the size report and review the chart at the beginning

An alternative method to see if errors about swap, /tmp, and /var exist:

1. Run the configuration report
2. Review above the section titled Appliance Disk Information

Note: If the partition sizes are too small, messages as such will appear above the Appliance Disk Information section as seen in the example above.