Posts Tagged ‘Thanksfully’
Tuesday, July 17th, 2012
I use Debian Linux for my desktop for quite some time; Even though there are plenty of MP3 / CD players around in Debian, I’m used to the good old XMMS, hence I often prefer to use XMMS to play my music instead of newer players like RhythmBox or audacious.
Actually audacious is not bad substitute for XMMS and is by default part of Debian but to me it seems more buggy and tends to crash during playing some music formats more than xmms ….
As most people might know, XMMS is no longer supported in almost all modern Linux distributions, so anyone using Debian, Ubuntu or other deb derivative Linux would have to normally compile it from source.
Compiling from source is time consuming and I think often it doesn’t pay back the effort. Thanksfully, though not officially supported by Debian crew XMMS still can be installed using a deb xmms prebuilt package repository kindly provided by a hacker fellow knuta.
Using the pre-build deb packages, installing xmms on new Debian installs comes to:
debian:~# echo 'deb http://www.pvv.ntnu.no/~knuta/xmms/squeeze ./' >> /etc/apt/sources.list
debian:~# echo 'deb-src http://www.pvv.ntnu.no/~knuta/xmms/squeeze ./' >> /etc/apt/sources.list
debian:~# apt-get update && apt-get -y install xmms
There are also deb xmms built for Ubuntu, so Ubuntu users could install xmms using repositories:
deb http://www.pvv.ntnu.no/~knuta/xmms/karmic ./
deb-src http://www.pvv.ntnu.no/~knuta/xmms/karmic ./
That’s all now xmms is ready to use. Enjoy 🙂
Tags: amp, Auto, buggy, Compiling, consuming, Crew, deb, deb packages, Debian, Desktop, Draft, fellow, hacker, Installing, Linux, linux distributions, mp3 cd players, music, music formats, package, pvv, quite some time, repositories, repository, RhythmBox, squeeze, substitute, Thanksfully, time, time consuming, Ubuntu, update, way, XMMS, xmmsThere
Posted in System Administration | No Comments »
Thursday, April 5th, 2012
I've been planning to run my own domain WHOIS service, for quite sime time and I always postpone or forgot to do it.
If you wonder, why would I need a (personal) web whois service, well it is way easier to use and remember for future use reference if you run it on your own URL, than wasting time in search for a whois service in google and then using some other's service to get just a simple DOMAIN WHOIS info.
So back to my post topic, I postpopned and postponed to run my own web whois, just until yesterday, whether I have remembered about my idea to have my own whois up and running and proceeded wtih it.
To achieve my goal I checked if there is free software or (open source) software that easily does this.
I know I can write one for me from scratch, but since it would have cost me some at least a week of programming and testing and I didn't wanted to go this way.
To check if someone had already made an easy to install web whois service, I looked through in the "ultimate source for free software" sourceforge.net
Looking for the "whois web service" keywords, displayed few projects on top. But unfortunately many of the projects sources was not available anymore from http://sf.net and the project developers pages..
Thanksfully in a while, I found a project called SpeedyWhois, which PHP source was available for download.
With all prior said about project missing sources, Just in case if SpeedyWhois source disappears in the future (like it probably) happened with, some of the other WHOIS web service projects, I've made SpeedyWhois mirror for download here
Contrary to my idea that installing the web whois service might be a "pain in the ass", (like is the case with so many free software php scripts and apps) – the installation went quite smoothly.
To install it I took the following 4 steps:
1. Download the source (zip archive) with wget
# cd /var/www/whois-service;
/var/www/whois-service# wget -q https://www.pc-freak.net/files/speedywhois-0.1.4.zip
2. Unarchive it with unzip command
/var/www/whois-service# unzip speedywhois-0.1.4.zip
…
3. Set the proper DNS records My NS are using Godaddy, so I set my desired subdomain record from their domain name manager.
4. Edit Apache httpd.conf to create VirtualHost
This step is not mandatory, but I thought it is nice if I put the whois service under a subdomain, so add a VirtualHost to my httpd.conf
The Virtualhost Apache directives, I used are:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin hipo_aT_pc-freak.net
DocumentRoot /var/www/whois-service
ServerName whois.pc-freak.net
<Directory /var/www/whois-service
AllowOverride All
Order Allow,Deny
Allow from All
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
Onwards to take effect of new Webserver configs, I did Apache restart
# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/apache2 restart
Whenever I have some free time, maybe I will work on the code, to try to add support for logging of previous whois requests and posting links pointing to the previous whois done via the web WHOIS service on the main whois page.
One thing that I disliked about how SpeedyWHOIS is written is, if there is no WHOIS information returned for a domain request (e.g.) a:
# whois domainname.com
returns an empty information, the script doesn't warn with a message there is no WHOIS data available for this domain or something.
This is not so important as this kind of behaviour of 'error' handling can easily be changed with minimum changes in the php code.
If you wonder, why do I need the web whois service, the answer is it is way easier to use.
I don't have more time to research a bit further on the alternative open source web whois services, so I would be glad to hear from anyone who tested other web whois service that is free comes under a FOSS license.
In the mean time, I'm sure people with a small internet websites like mine who are looking to run their OWN (personal) whois service SpeedyWHOIS does a great job.
Tags: Auto, code, contrary, domain, domain web, domain whois, download, Draft, free software, goal, google, idea, info, information, installation, minute, mirror, nbsp, open source software, pain in the ass, personal domain, personal web, programming, project, project developers, quot, scratch, scripts, Search, service projects, sime, software, software php, someone, SpeedyWHOIS, Thanksfully, time, top, topic, Virtualhost, wasting, wasting time, way, web service, web whois, wget, while, whois, whois web, yesterday
Posted in Everyday Life, System Administration, Web and CMS | 6 Comments »
Tuesday, March 13th, 2012The default picture viewer on Xubuntu's XFCE is risterroro. Risterroro is quite lightweight, but anyways is lacking even basic functionality with reading a number of pictures in a directory and showing, them one by one lacks any picture automated slider. The lack of picture back/forward functionality makes picture viewing very inconvenient on those Linux distro.
Thanksfully this kind of unconfortable default behaviour on Xubuntu can easily be changed to use a handy picture viewer program called gpicviewxubuntu-linux:~# apt-get install --yes gpicview
Gpicview is a good minimalistic program which has all the functionality of the default GNOME picture viewer program eog – (eye of the Gnome). If you're aaccustomed to GNOME's eog you can always install and use eog instead 🙂
Tags: Auto, behaviour, default, default behaviour, directory, distro, Draft, eog, functionality, Gnome, gpicview, gpicviewGpicview, kind, Lack, Linux, linux distro, minimalistic, number, picture, program, Risterroro, slider, Thanksfully, viewer, XFCE, Xubuntu
Posted in Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop, System Administration | No Comments »
Saturday, February 4th, 2012If you're using Debian GNU/Linux wheezy/sid, you have already figured out GNOME3 settings to start GNOME in Classic mode (like in GNOME 2), starts gnome in a mode where the desktop is not showing the usual Computer, Home, Trash etc.
Besides that in that strange back-compitability Classic GNOME mode its impossible to add any program as a link in desktop like in the good old GNOME 2.
Thanksfully this abusive behaviour of the backwards compitability mode is easily fixable by two simple steps, here they are:
1. Install gnome-tweak-tool – (Tool to adjust advanced configuration settings for GNOME
root@debian:~# apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool
2. Start gnome-tweak tool
Press ALT+F2 and run gnome-tweak-tool or run it via xterm / gnome-terminal:
moonman@Moon:~$ gnome-tweak-tool
Change in Desktop, Have file manager handle the desktop the settings to ON
Once the Screenshot Handle Desktop is set to ON, further drag and dropping any application to the Desktop will be working.
Something really irritating is that launching applications in GNOME 3 does not work properly if you just press ALT+F2 and type in lets say gnome-terminal , to work around this weirdity you will have to install gnome-shell package.
Tags: Auto, behaviour, classic mode, compitability, configuration settings, debian gnu, desktop icons, Draft, f2, Gnome, gnu linux, Handle, Install, link, Linux, manager, Mode, moon, moonman, package, Press, root, shell package, sid, simple steps, something, Start, Thanksfully, tool, tool 2, tool change, tool tool, trash, type, weirdity, wheezy, xterm
Posted in Gnome, Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop | 1 Comment »
Friday, January 27th, 2012By default latest Debian GDM does not provide an automatic way to login using user AVATARS (like Windows does).
This is pretty strange, especially if you compare to Ubuntu and many other Linux distributions which already has support for AVATAR login via GDM
The reason for this is that currently Debian is shipped with old version of gdm2 and this gdm version does not have support for clickable login avatars.
Debian looks by default like this:
Thanksfully this non-user friendly GNOME login screen behaviour can be changed by simply installing gdm3
root@debian:~# apt-get --yes install gdm3
...
This will remove the old gdm installed package as well as fast-user-switch-applet and install the gdm3.
Having installed the gdm3 with configured a background will look like so:
I was quite stunned that gdm3 does not have included support for themes . As far as I've spoken with some ppl in irc.freenode #gnome the reason for this oddity is it crashed a lot when a theme is configred.
By default the gdm2 themes are provided by a package called gdm-themes, since gdm3 does not support themes (yet), the package gdm3-themes is missing.
Tags: avatar, avatars, behaviour, Debian, debian gnu, freenode, GDM, Gnome, gnu linux, Linux, linux distributions, login, nbsp, non-user, oddity, old version, package, ppl, reason, root, screen, squeeze, support, support themes, Thanksfully, theme, Ubuntu, version, way
Posted in Gnome, Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop, Various | No Comments »
Wednesday, August 24th, 2011While I was deploying a new Nagios install to Monitor some Windows hosts I’ve came across the following error in Nagios’s web interface:
Sorry, but Nagios is currently not checking for external commands, so your command will not be committed!
Read the documentation for information on how to enable external commands...
This error is caused by an option configuration for /etc/nagios/nrpe.cfg (part of the nrpe-nagios-server Debian package.
The config variable in nrpe.cfg causing the error is check_external_command=0 , the fix comes to changing the variable to:
check_external_command=1
As well as restart the /etc/init.d/nagios-nrpe-server and /etc/init.d/nagios3 services:
debian:~# /etc/init.d/nagios3 restart
...
debian:~# /etc/init.d/nagios-nrpe-server
...
This changes has work out the error Sorry, but Nagios is currently not checking for external commands, so your command will not be committed! , however immediately after another kind of error appared in Nagios web interface when I tried to use the send Nagios commands button. The error was:
Error: Could not stat() command file '/var/lib/nagios3/rw/nagios.cmd'!
This error is due to a deb package, which seems to be affecting the current deb versions of Nagios shipped with Debian 6 Squeeze stable, as well as the Latest Ubuntu release 11.04.
Thanksfully there is a work around to the problem I found online, to fix it up I had to execute the commands:
debian:~# /etc/init.d/nagios3 stop debian:~# dpkg-statoverride --update --add nagios www-data 2710 /var/lib/nagios3/rw
debian:~# dpkg-statoverride --update --add nagios nagios 751 /var/lib/nagios3
debian:~# /etc/init.d/nagios3 start
And hooray Thanks God the error is gone 😉
Tags: Button, check, checking, command, config, deb, deb package, dpkg, ERROR, file, god, hooray, information, kind, lib, monitor, nagios, online, option, package, squeeze, Stable, stat, Thanksfully, Ubuntu, var, web interface, work, www data
Posted in Linux, System Administration | 8 Comments »
Wednesday, August 24th, 2011I’ve been playing with configuring a new nagios running on a Linux host which’s aim is to monitor few Windows servers.
The Linux host’s exim is configured to act as relay host to another SMTP server, so all email ending up in the Linux localhost on port 25 is forwarded to the remote SMTP.
The remote smtp only allows the Linux to send email only in case if a real existing username@theserverhostname.com is passed it, otherwise it rejects mail and does not sent properly the email.
As the newly configured Nagios installatio is supposed to do e-mail notification, I was looking for a way to change the default user with which Nagios sends mails, which is inherited directly after the username with which /usr/sbin/nagios3 and /usr/sbin/nrpe are running (on Debian this is nagios@theserverhostname.com).
Thanksfully, there is a work around, I’ve red some forum threads explaning that the username with whch nagios sends mail can be easily changed from /etc/nagios3/commands.cfg by passing the -a “From: custom_user@myserverhostname.com” to all occurance of /usr/bin/mail -s , its preferrable that the -a custom_user@myserverhostname.com is inserted before the -s “” subject option. Hence the occurance of mail command should be changed from:
| /usr/bin/mail -s "** $NOTIFICATIONTYPE$
To:
| /usr/bin/mail -a "From: custom_user@theserverhostname.com" -s "** $NOTIFICATIONTYPE$
Now to read it’s new configurations nagios requirs restart:
debian:~# /etc/init.d/nagios3 restart
...
Now in case of failed services or Hosts Down nagios will send it’s mail from the custom user custom_user@theserverhostname.com and nagios can can send mail properly via the remote relay SMTP host 😉
Tags: aim, com, command, custom, debian gnu, default user, e mail notification, email, exim, forum, forum threads, gnu linux, hosts, Linux, linux host, localhost, mail command, myserverhostname, nagios, notification, NOTIFICATIONTYPE, occurance, option, port, preferrable, relay, smtp server, Thanksfully, theserverhostname, username, usr, way, whch, windows servers, work
Posted in FreeBSD, Linux, System Administration | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011I’m trying to compile vqadmin on x86_amd64 (64 bit Debian) and I got error during ./configure . The error I got is as follows:
debian:~/vqadmin-2.3.7# ./configure --enable-cgibindir=/var/www/mail/cgi-bin -enable-htmldir=/var/www/mail/ --enable-isoqlog=y
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
/downloads/vqadmin-2.3.7/missing: Unknown `--run' option
Try `/downloads/vqadmin-2.3.7/missing --help' for more information
configure: WARNING: `missing' script is too old or missing
checking for gawk... gawk
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes
checking build system type... Invalid configuration `x86_64-unknown-linux': machine `x86_64-unknown' not recognized
So my compile failed with:
checking build system type… Invalid configuration `x86_64-unknown-linux’: machine `x86_64-unknown’ not recognized
Thanksfully, there is a tiny script which originally is part of the CVS project. I’ve modified a bit the script to remove few lines of code which are not necessery. The `x86_64-unknown-linux’: machine `x86_64-unknown’ not recognized fix script fix_x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.sh is here
To fix up the broken configure all required is:
debian:~/vqadmin-2.3.7# sh fix_x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.sh
Next on I could compile normally again vqadmin just fine.
Tags: amd, BSD-compatible, checking, configure, ERROR, fine, gawk, GNU, hereTo, Invalid, invalid configuration, Linux, linux machine, mail, mail cgi, necessery, recognizedSo, sane, shNext, Thanksfully, type, usr, var, vqadmin, www
Posted in Linux, System Administration | 12 Comments »
Wednesday, July 13th, 2011One server with a broken Raid array was having troubles with it’s software raid.
I tried to scan the raid array via a rescue cd like so:
server:~# mdadm --assemble --scan /dev/md1
just to be suprised by the message:
mdadm: /dev/md1 assembled from 2 drives – not enough to start the array.
In /proc/mdstat respectively the raid was showing inactive, e.g.:
server:~# cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [raid10] [raid1]
md1 : inactive sda2[0] sdc2[2] sdb2[1]
12024384 blocks
Respectively trying to activate the software Linux raid array with:
server:~# mdadm -A -s
Couldn’t be completed because of the same annoying error:
/dev/md1 assembled from 2 drives – not enough to start the array.
Thanksfully finally thanks to some Russian, who posted having same issues reported to be able to active his software RAID with mdadm’s –force option.
Thus enabling the problematic RAID 5 array was possible with:
server:~# mdadm -A -s --force
This solution of course is temporary and will have to further check what’s wrong with the array, however at least now I can chroot to the server’s / directory. 😉
Tags: annoying error, cat, check, course, dev, drive, ERROR, force option, Linux, md1, mdstat, option, Personalities, proc, Raid, raid 5 array, raid array, rescue, rescue cd, sCould, sda, sdb, sdc, software, software linux, software raid, solution, Thanksfully, way
Posted in Linux, System Administration | 1 Comment »
Saturday, July 9th, 2011I’m currently writting a script which is supposed to be adding new crontab jobs and do a bunch of other mambo jambo.
By so far I’ve been aware of only one way to add a cronjob non-interactively like so:
linux:~# echo '*/5 * * * * /root/myscript.sh' | crontab -
Though using the | crontab – would work it has one major pitfall, I did completely forgot | crontab – OVERWRITES CURRENT CRONTAB! with the crontab passed by with the echo command.
One must be extremely careful if he decides to use the above example as you might loose your crontab definitions permanently!
Thanksfully it seems there is another way to add crontabs non interactively via a script, as I couldn’t find any good blog which explained something different from the classical example with pipe to crontab –, I dropped by in the good old irc.freenode.net to consult the bash gurus there 😉
So I entered irc and asked the question how can I add a crontab via bash shell script without overwritting my old existing crontab definitions less than a minute later one guy with a nickname geirha was kind enough to explain me how to get around the annoying overwridding.
The solution to the ovewrite was expected, first you use crontab to dump current crontab lines to a file and then you append the new cron job as a new record in the file and finally you ask the crontab program to read and insert the crontab definitions from the newly created files.
So here is the exact code one could run inside a script to include new crontab jobs, next to the already present ones:
linux:~# crontab -l > file; echo '*/5 * * * * /root/myscript.sh >/dev/null 2>&1' >> file; crontab file
The above definition as you could read would make the new record of */5 * * * * /root/myscript.sh >/dev/null be added next to the existing crontab scheduled jobs.
Now I’ll continue with my scripting, in the mean time I hope this will be of use to someone out there 😉
Tags: bash scripts, bash shell script, blog, classical example, cron, cron job, cron jobs, crontab, definitions, dev, echo, echo 5, echo command, exact code, file, fileThe, gurus, irc, jambo, kind, line, Linux, mambo jambo, mean time, minute, nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp, nickname, ovewrite, pipe, pitfall, root, scripting, Shell, solution, someone, Thanksfully, time, use, way
Posted in Linux, System Administration | 9 Comments »
