Hotfix: 2020-04-28 ImageMagick Library

Background

On the update that was installed in the morning of the 28th of April, 2020, the CentOS team released an update to the ImageMagick library with a new library version that was incompatible with LiquidFiles. The ImageMagick library is used to manipulate images, such as creating thumbnails in images uploaded in Shares.

Impact

If you have Automatic Updates or Automatic System Updates enabled (enabled on default), after this update has been installed, the system web interface will become unavailable.

How To Fix

If you don't have automatic updates enabled, the easiest fix is to update to LiquidFiles v3.4.5 or later (you can update your system by going to Admin → System → Updates, or by running ft update on the command line.)

If the system is unavailable, please login to the System Console as root and run the following command:

curl https://updates.liquidfiles.com/hotfix/libfix.sh | bash

This will reinstall the missing ImageMagic Library and restart the web application.

Further Changes

As a result of this issue, we've made several changes to LiquidFiles to ensure this won't happen again, and will have less impact if it does.

• We've changed how system updates are installed. From v3.4.6 and onwards, system updates will only be installed when the application is updated. This will make it much less likely that a future update breaks the application while still keeping the virtual appliance up to date with the latest version of libraries and functions for stability and performance reasons. We still recommend keeping auto-updates enabled.
• The F3 Support command has had dependencies removed so it should work even if future system dependencies are not met.
• We've added a web-based way of enabling the support connection that's separate from the LiquidFiles web application. This separate system is only available during system startup and will be disabled as soon as the LiquidFiles web application has started. You will receive information from support how to enable this if needed.

We still recommend keeping automatic updates enabled as that's the best long-term solution both from a security and performance point of view.