Restore Configuration via Console

Sometimes you may accidentally introduce a breaking change that interrupts network access, prevents user login or makes SSH and WebGUI inaccessible. Rolling back without a reinstall is possible if there is serial and console access.

For serial access to the console, reference this guide: Serial Console connectivity

Console access is also possible directly when running a virtual machine or hardware with VGA capabilities.

This guide describes step by step how to restore a previous configuration via console.

1. Power off the device

Since you need to influence the boot process to reset the configuration, you should start with powering off the (virtual) device.

2. Access console

Make sure you are able to access the (virtual) console, in case it is a physical machine you might want to connect a monitor and keyboard, when it is an appliance with serial access, make sure to connect to the serial/usb port using an application like putty.

3. Power on and boot

Switch the power and wait for the Ixolate splash screen to appear. Do not interact with the splash screen, wait for the actual boot to start.

When the text scrolls fast, hold the CTRL button and press C rapidly to break out of the boot process into a shell. This does not need any authentication.

4. Replace configuration

Now that you are in the shell, you can do changes to the filesystem. In our example, we will restore a previous config.xml version.

First we will evaluate which config.xml version should be restored:

cd /conf/backup
ls -la

Check out the timestamps of the backup configurations, copy the filename of one that was before you made the breaking change. We will backup our current config.xml and then overwrite it with a previous version.

cp /conf/config.xml /conf/config.xml.backup
cp /conf/backup/config-YOURTIMESTAMP.xml /conf/config.xml

Reboot and the replaced configuration will be loaded.

reboot

After the reboot, confirm that you can log in and that the breaking change has been rolled back. If not, repeat the above steps and go back further with the backup configuration timestamp.

If this cannot fix it, reinstall your appliance with the latest available image and restore a known-good configuration you have kept safe.