Trouble with getting to Connect interface, also VirtualBox idiosyncracies

[mfoos]

Hi folks,

I wanted to try the quickstart for sandboxing tagging, and I followed the directions, installed virtualbox (6.0.4 on Mac OS X Sierra 10.12.6), imported the .ova file, and got to the "Getting Started" page without incident.

But when I clicked the blue "Log Into RStudio Connect" button and was taken to "http://localhost:5000/rsconnect/" it did a spinner, which soon turned into "Something happened! The service should have started by now." and eventually to an error saying that to make it work on my machine, I needed to install a preview license. I'm actually pretty impressed that it was still trying to make things work!

Anyway, it sent me to the get license page, which worked, but the final step is to copy the XML from the VirtualBox to the webapp and hooboy is that not a straightforward process. I have no experience with VirtualBox, and I was frustrated, so I won't claim to have tried everything or...understood all the directions I found on the Oracle fora, but I spent hours on it (installing extensions and guest packages and restarting and reimporting) and eventually gave up. I realize this is not the fault of RStudio, but I also know that it's not the experience you want your users to have. So I'd like to hear thoughts about workarounds (I will be looking into SSHing into the Virtualbox today), and wanted to see if others are experiencing this problem.

thanks!
M

[cole]

Hey @mfoos! Thanks for your patience and sorry for the trouble!! Did you "request a new MAC address" when you imported the .ova file? If not, or if you want to give it another shot, you could always try re-importing and selecting this option to see if it generates the trial correctly.

If you want to go through the licensing piece, you actually don't need to SSH into the VirtualBox (although that is an option). You can use RSP at http://localhost:5000/rstudio and just navigate to the terminal pane The rstudio user is a sudoer, so you should be able to do the necessary semantics.

You are exactly right, though - this is definitely not our desired user experience. Unfortunately, ensuring that every user gets a trial without these semantics is a tough nut to crack at present. The best way to ensure a trial is to "request a new MAC address" as described at https://rstd.io/quickstart .

Again, thanks for your patience! This is a very difficult situation to reproduce, so if you don't mind executing these commands in the terminal and sharing the output before you do the XML work, that would be helpful for us to see what we can do to improve!!

cat /etc/rstudio-quickstart/version
ifconfig -a
sudo /usr/lib/rstudio-server/bin/license-manager status
sudo /opt/rstudio-connect/bin/license-manager status
sudo /opt/rstudio-pm/bin/license-manager status

[cole]

And please. if you continue having trouble, feel free to say so You are in an admittedly painful (and hopefully rare) case, and we would love to get you unstuck with minimal wall-head-banging

[mfoos]

I posted a response but it said it went to moderation? Anyway, I got to the XML step (over ssh) and it still didn't work, failing with "Error begin offline activation: (1): Licensing operation failed."

EDIT: that error was my fault, didn't double check my clipboard before C&P, it seems to have worked now

[cole]

Ahh that moderation stuff can be frustrating. Sorry about that! And exciting that the XML piece worked! Definitely let me know if you keep experiencing troubles. Hopefully the service will start now. Licensing can be (very) annoying and troublesome

[mfoos]

I restarted the server and now I do get to the connected-dots Connect landing site, so I'm pretty sorted out (I hope!) but happy to supply any more info that could be helpful

[mfoos]

I did do the "Generate new MAC addresses for all network adapters" both times I imported the .ova, so unless there's another place I have to do it, I don't think that's the issue.

I was able to ssh into the VM with this tutorial, although it has the wrong menu paths in a few places (like every VirtualBox tutorial, it seems!): https://code-maven.com/virtualbox-host-only-network-ssh-to-remote-machine which is good, because localhost:5000/rstudio doesn't work either.

I don't think of my computer as having a particularly unusual or restrictive setup, but I guess that just means I haven't hit a wall yet ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Here are the requested outputs:

cat /etc/rstudio-quickstart/version
20190209-111823

ifconfig -a (this is going to be "wrong" because I modified it for the ssh setup - I'd start again but I can't cut and paste)
enp0s3: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
inet 10.0.2.15 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 10.0.2.255
inet6 fe80::a00:27ff:fe11:659 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x20
ether 08:00:27:11:06:59 txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet)
RX packets 26652 bytes 38271506 (38.2 MB)
RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 2659 bytes 708752 (708.7 KB)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0

enp0s8: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
inet 192.168.56.10 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.56.255
inet6 fe80::a00:27ff:fe0d:a093 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x20
ether 08:00:27:0d:a0:93 txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet)
RX packets 49 bytes 8136 (8.1 KB)
RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 53 bytes 14952 (14.9 KB)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0

lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING> mtu 65536
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 255.0.0.0
inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128 scopeid 0x10
loop txqueuelen 1000 (Local Loopback)
RX packets 1507 bytes 190353 (190.3 KB)
RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 1507 bytes 190353 (190.3 KB)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0

sudo /usr/lib/rstudio-server/bin/license-manager status
RStudio License Manager 1.2.1114-1

-- Local license status --

Trial-Type: Verified

Status: Expired

Has-Key: No

Has-Trial: No

License-Scope: System

-- Floating license status --

License server not in use.

sudo /opt/rstudio-connect/bin/license-manager status
RStudio License Manager 1.2.502-1

-- Local license status --

Trial-Type: Verified

Status: Expired

Has-Key: No

Has-Trial: No

License-Scope: System

-- Floating license status --

License server not in use.

sudo /opt/rstudio-pm/bin/license-manager status
RStudio License Manager 1.2.1191-1

-- Local license status --

Trial-Type: Verified

Status: Expired

Has-Key: No

Has-Trial: No

License-Scope: System

-- Floating license status --

License server not in use.

[cole]

Yes, that is a weird one!! Thanks for the information!! It's very strange that the new MAC address didn't get you a trial. Can you hit the internet from inside the VM? I.e. if you curl -I https://www.rstudio.com/, do you get a HTTP 200 response?

I'm glad that things are up and working, though! Please definitely let us know if you run into any more trouble!

[mfoos]

I do get a 200 status:

HTTP/2 200
server: nginx
date: Thu, 28 Feb 2019 18:37:50 GMT
content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
x-pingback: https://www.rstudio.com/xmlrpc.php
link: <https://www.rstudio.com/wp-json/>; rel="https://api.w.org/"
link: <https://www.rstudio.com/>; rel=shortlink
wpe-backend: apache
x-cacheable: SHORT
vary: Accept-Encoding,Cookie
cache-control: max-age=600, must-revalidate
x-cache: HIT: 175
x-pass-why:
x-cache-group: normal
x-type: default