Symptoms

Parallels Plesk-related tasks fail in Odin Operations Automation (OA) with the error message 'The requested URL returned error: 503', as in the following example:

Task name       Plesk in VPS: initial setup
Last execution output   The requested URL returned error: 503

Cause

The most probable cause of the problem is an issue with connectivity from the OA Management Node (MN) to the Parallels Plesk server, or some problems with Plesk.

Failed task may be due to Plesk panel reinitialization via CCP. For example when end user has deleted Plesk manually and then has run this process.

OA works with Plesk servers via PrivacyProxy, because the MN is always placed in the backnet and may have no external IP address. As a result, it may not work with customers' Plesk servers directly, since they are deployed in the frontnet. If PrivacyProxy cannot connect to a Plesk server, you will see error 503 in the OA logs and failed tasks.

The picture below shows how the OA MN works with Plesk servers:

Resolution

To find the cause of the problem:

  1. Find the host where PrivacyProxy is located. This can be found in the OA Provider Control Panel (PCP) at System Director > Configuration Manager > Services. Refer to Knowledgebase article #113462 for more details.

  2. Check whether the OA MN has access to the port on which PrivacyProxy is listening to requests. This port can be found in the properties of the PrivacyProxy package installed on the host you found on the previous step. Use the telnet utility on the OA Management Node to check if it has access to the required port on the PrivacyProxy server. For example:

    telnet PRIVACYPROXY IP PORT

    Replace PRIVACYPROXY_IP with the actual IP address of PrivacyProxy server and PORT with port on which PrivacyProxy is listening (by default this is 8080).

  3. If you see that OA has access to the PrivacyProxy service, then log into the host where PrivacyProxy is working and check connectivity from this host to the Plesk server using the same telnet utility.

  4. Check if PrivacyProxy is working at all.

  5. Check that Plesk is working.

  6. Try to log into the Plesk Control Panel and perform simple operations.

  7. Enable verbose logging in the PrivacyProxy configuration file and check PrivacyProxy logs for errors during OA failed task execution. On a Linux server, the default configuration file for PrivacyProxy is /etc/privoxy/config and the default log file is /var/log/privoxy/logfile.

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