Malfist's questions

So I setup my mail server eons, and I'm doing maintenance on it right now and I'd figure I'd fix a few things with it that's bugged me forever. Mainly, I'm trying to move all the mail storage into a single folder and make it a hidden folder.

However, I can't figure out why sent mail is being stored it ~/mail while received mail is being stored in ~/Maildir. Everything I read says that it's my client storing it in the mail folder, but I don't see how that's possible. What configuration file/property determines where users' sent mail is stored?

Server setup:

• Ubuntu 14.04
• Postfix
• Courier

I have several small virtual private servers running ubuntu 11.04. I currently have VirtualMin managing the backups for the server, however, it only backs up the users' home folders and the configuration of various things to do with now Apache or FTP or whatnot is setup to support the individual virtual host.

I would like to do something that is more robust. I would like to be able to, in the event of an emergency, be able to take the most recent backup, move it to a new VPS and unzip/untar it and have the new VPS be essentially clone of the old.

Currently all the backups are stored on Amazon S3, and I'd like to keep it that way. I'd also like to avoid reliance on a specific tool to do the restore (i.e., storage in custom/proprietary binaries).

Essentially, how can I back my server up so that I can unpack a backup into a new server and have them behave the same way. I understand there are special considerations with databases, I've already got a backup strategy for MySQL.

I currently have a VPS hosted in Charleston, NC. My current provider is offering a deal to purchase an identical (resource wise) VPS in another data center. Although I rarely experience downtime, I would like to purchase the other VPS and set it up as a hot spare to take over automatically in case of a failure of the VPS in Charleston.

My server runs provides my clients with a web server (apache), a database (mysql), a mail server (postfix + courier), and DNS (bind9). The OS is Ubuntu Server 11.04

How can I setup the additional server to it automatically functions as a failover, and how can I keep everything in sync.

I am using VirtualBox to run a Ubuntu 11.04 Server as a guest OS. However, using NAT the VM get's a private IP.

I want my guest oses to get their own IP on the network the host is on. I.E., my host's IP is 192.168.10.109, I want the guest to be 192.168.10.110 instead of 10.?.?.?.

How may I do this?

I have a server running MS SQL Server 2008 Express. Windows Authentication is used to authenticate the accounts to determine what they can and cannot access.

I have no problems accessing the server from any computer under my username (say, HQ\user1). However, on computers that are not the server, other users cannot access it, even though I've granted them permission. To make it even more strange, if the user account attempts to access the server while logged onto the server, they're not denied.

What am I doing that could cause this to happen, and how can I make it so that all users can access the server?

I have a backup that is from FS\SQLExpress. It was taken using the SQL Database backup tool in sql server management studio.

If I try to "restore" my database on THESTUDIO\SQLExpress with it's backup it tells me that it's for the wrong server. How can I make it accept it?

Every port on my server is blocked except port 222 which is were ssh connects too. This server is pretty much a backup server, and I have my clients rsync to it.

I do this by using ssh's port forwarding (-P 222 -L 873:myserver.com:873), however, I want to do this with just using the rsync command. Is that possible?

This is what I've been trying:

sudo rsync -avv --progress --inplace --rsh='ssh -p 222 -L 873:myserver.com:873' . rsync://bt-backup@localhost/backup-bt-backup

but it doesn't work because I try to log into localhost, instead of myserver.com.

doing:

sudo rsync -avv --progress --inplace --rsh='ssh -p 222 -L 873:myserver.com:873' . rsync://[email protected]/backup-bt-backup

lets me login through ssh, but rsync tries the remote host instead of the localhost where the port has been forwarded too

I'm trying to enable Gzip on my webserver and am not succeeding. By all means, I should have by now, I've done it before but success is eluding me.

I have this in my httpd.conf

<Location "C:/Program Files (x86)/Apache Software Foundation/Apache2.2/htdocs/bt/web">
    # Insert filter
    SetOutputFilter DEFLATE

    # Netscape 4.x has some problems...
    BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html

    # Netscape 4.06-4.08 have some more problems
    BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip

    # MSIE masquerades as Netscape, but it is fine
    # BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html

    # NOTE: Due to a bug in mod_setenvif up to Apache 2.0.48
    # the above regex won't work. You can use the following
    # workaround to get the desired effect:
    BrowserMatch \bMSI[E] !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html

    # Don't compress images
    SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \
    \.(?:gif|jpe?g|png)$ no-gzip dont-vary

    # Make sure proxies don't deliver the wrong content
    Header append Vary User-Agent env=!dont-vary
</Location>

And

<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
<FilesMatch "\.(js|css|html|htm)$">
SetOutputFilter DEFLATE
</FilesMatch>
</IfModule>

mod_deflate is enabled.

What am I doing wrong?

I'm trying to figure out how LVM snapshots work so I can implement it on my fileserver but I'm having difficulty finding anything on google that explains how it works, instead of how to use it for a base backup system.

From what I've read I think it works something like this:

• You have an LVM with a primary partition and lots and lots of unallocated freespace not in the partition
• Then you take a snapshot and mount it on a new Logical Volume. Snapshots are supposed to have changes so this first snapshot would be a whole copy, correct?
• Then, the next day you take another snapshot (this one's partition size doesn't have to be so big) and mount it.
• Somehow the LVM keeps track of the snapshots, and doesn't store unchanged bits on the primary volume.
• Then you decide that you have enough snapshots and get rid of the first one. I have no idea how this works or how that would affect the next snapshot.

Can someone correct me where I'm wrong. At best, I'm guessing, I can't find anything on google.

vgdiplay

obu1:/home/jail/home/qps/backup/D# vgdisplay
  --- Volume group ---
  VG Name               fileserverLVM
  System ID
  Format                lvm2
  Metadata Areas        1
  Metadata Sequence No  3
  VG Access             read/write
  VG Status             resizable
  MAX LV                0
  Cur LV                2
  Open LV               2
  Max PV                0
  Cur PV                1
  Act PV                1
  VG Size               931.51 GB
  PE Size               4.00 MB
  Total PE              238467
  Alloc PE / Size       238336 / 931.00 GB
  Free  PE / Size       131 / 524.00 MB
  VG UUID               qSGaG1-SQYO-D2bm-ohDf-d4eG-oGCY-4jOegU

I have a fileserver that I just setup lvm on. I have two LVM partitions /dev/fileserverLVM/home /dev/fileserverLVM/backup

I'd like to take and store the snapshots in /dev/fileserverLVM/backup. The stuff I've read all has you creating a new logical partition. Can this be avoided and the snapshot written directly to /dev/fileserverLVM/backup? Or do I have no options?

I've been following this tutorial http://olivier.sessink.nl/jailkit/howtos_chroot_shell.html to setup a chroot jail for my ssh users.

My sshd_config has this in it:

Match group backup-users
        ChrootDirectory /home/jail/

But what happens when I log in is that the ssh connection gets terminated immediately.

The /var/log/auth.log says:

Jul 13 19:37:02 obu1 sshd[21225]: Accepted password for testuser from ###.###.###.### port 63718 ssh2
Jul 13 19:37:02 obu1 sshd[21225]: pam_unix(sshd:session): session opened for user testuser by (uid=0)
Jul 13 19:37:03 obu1 sshd[21225]: pam_unix(sshd:session): session closed for user testuser

What am I doing wrong?

output of attempted ssh:

jerome@obu1:~$ ssh localhost -p 222 -l testuser
testuser@localhost's password:
Linux hostname 2.6.26-2-amd64 #1 SMP Sun Jun 21 04:47:08 UTC 2009 x86_64

The programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are free software;
the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.

Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent
permitted by applicable law.
Last login: Mon Jul 13 20:08:55 2009 from localhost
Connection to localhost closed.
jerome@obu1:~$

I'm running a debian etch server where users will be logging into (hopefully) a chroot jail through ssh. How can I have the commands they execute logged in a way they cannot delete, nor prevent?

I would like to setup a chroot jail for most (not all) users logging in though SSH. I've heard it's possible with the latest versions of openssh, but I've not been able to find out how to do it. The How To's all talk of patching an old version, and the patch is no longer available.

I'm running debian etch.

I'm setting up a new debian server and I don't need FTP so I want to remove it. According to netstat -tap, ftp isn't listening on anything. However when I do a port scan (nmap) externally it says the ftp port is open (21). inetd isn't starting anything, xinetd isn't on the system.

What should I do?

result of netstat tap

obu1:/etc/pam.d# netstat -tap
Active Internet connections (servers and established)
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address           Foreign Address         State       PID/Program name
tcp        0      0 *:225                   *:*                     LISTEN     2237/sbadm
tcp6       0      0 *:ssh                   *:*                     LISTEN     2399/sshd
tcp6       0    448 obu1.hostname.:ssh rrcs-XXX-XXX-XXX-XXX:56721 ESTABLISHED  16639/sshd: username

NMap from non-local

Starting Nmap 4.90RC1 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2009-07-13 10:47 Eastern Daylight Time
Interesting ports on obu1.hostname (ipaddress):
Not shown: 972 closed ports, 26 filtered ports
PORT   STATE SERVICE
21/tcp open  ftp
22/tcp open  ssh

Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 3.60 seconds