Gareth's questions

I've built lots of Debian servers. They hardly ever fail but when they do I've never had a good enough logging system. So I told myself this time would be different.

I've got Apache2 and MySQL happy and working with Name Based Virtual Hosting.

I've got etckeeper and mysqlbackup and an S3 backup script.

I've got my SSL certs locked down and I've just installed Exim4.

Now comes the 2000 emails from Logcheck from five days of having no mail transport.

And now apparently I need to write a whole bunch of custom rules for Logwatch:

Wait what...

Are you for real?: http://logcheck.org/docs/README.logcheck-database

Apr  6 19:30:24 oempc wwwoffled[11763]: WWWOFFLE Online.
Apr  6 19:31:54 oempc wwwoffled[11763]: WWWOFFLE Offline.

...then the local ignore pattern you need is something like this:

^\w{3} [ :0-9]{11} oempc wwwoffled\[[0-9]+\]: WWWOFFLE (On|Off)line\.$

I just want to be a good little sysadmin and get emails I'm going to actually read about you'know, things that matter.

How do I just get Logwatch to send me "MySQL ran out of memory" or "Apache exploded" rather than 50 pages of this every hour?:

This email is sent by logcheck. If you no longer wish to receive
such mail, you can either deinstall the logcheck package or modify
its configuration file (/etc/logcheck/logcheck.conf).

    System Events
    =-=-=-=-=-=-=
    May 26 18:02:22 Debian6-VPS kernel:

**BAZZILION LINES OF NETWORK INFORMATION THAT I DON'T CARE ABOUT**

P.S. There's nothing in /etc/logcheck/logcheck.conf AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Sigh.

The drive is constantly filling up. You've hunted down all the spare and random files you can. grep'd for coredump files and even removed some of the un-needed backups...

What would be your next move.

The actual server in question has 10GB of website files and the OS shouldn't take any more than 10GB so how do you track down what's filling a 50GB (virtual) drive?

Similar to a http://whatismyip.com lookup. It would obviously need to query a computer out there. Just wondering if anyone had a clever way to do it?

Say you're running a server and you don't want to upgrade to Testing (Squeeze) from Stable (Lenny) to just install a required package or two.

What's the best way of installing only certain packages from Testing?

I had fdisk segfault and just wondered if anyone had any other options?

EDIT: It was late and that was a dumb question. Good answer though!

I'm taking over hosting of domain that simply redirects to its online booking page of a third party provider.

Because the landing page is http://example.com/generic/booking.asp I'd like to know how to find a way to trace the URL of the http redirect.

I don't have access to the existing sites .htaccess

Is this done server side and the only thing the client sees is the new address to go to?

I've got two 600GB drives in a software RAID1 setup on a physical Debian server.

I want to be able to upgrade the capacity of the server by cloning the drives to a matching pair of 2TB drives. I can then wipe the 600GB drives and use them as storage or whatever.

What's the best way to go about this?

slave:~# mount
/dev/md0 on / type ext3 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
tmpfs on /lib/init/rw type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
procbususb on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw)
udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=620)

What is the difference between a ‘Login’ and an ‘Interactive’ bash shell? I have quoted Wikipedia below but can anybody give a better answer?

EDIT: This is a community wiki so maybe rather than voting to close you could provide examples of which situations call for which type of $SHELL

Startup scripts

When Bash starts, it executes the commands in a variety of different scripts.

When Bash is invoked as an interactive login shell, it first reads and executes commands from the file /etc/profile, if that file exists. After reading that file, it looks for ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, and ~/.profile, in that order, and reads and executes commands from the first one that exists and is readable.

When a login shell exits, Bash reads and executes commands from the file ~/.bash_logout, if it exists.

When an interactive shell that is not a login shell is started, Bash reads and executes commands from ~/.bashrc, if that file exists. This may be inhibited by using the --norc option. The --rcfile file option will force Bash to read and execute commands from file instead of ~/.bashrc.

• Wikipedia

I know how to export/import the databases using mysqldump & that's fine but how do I get the privileges into the new server.

For extra points, there are a couple of existing databases on the new one already, how do I import the old servers privileges without nuking the couple existing of ones.

Old server: 5.0.67-community

New server: 5.0.51a-24+lenny1

EDIT: I've got a dump of the db 'mysql' from the Old Server & now want to know the proper way to merge with the 'mysql' db on the New Server.

I tried a straight 'Import' using phpMyAdmin and ended up with an error regarding a duplicate (one that I've already migrated manually).

Anyone got an elegant way of merging the two 'mysql' databases?

It just occured to me that it would be good to do an 'aptitude search blah' and only have non-graphical applications shown.

I know it's not a biggy but the docs don't seem to mention it and I would find it useful to know.

Thanks.

Has anyone got a nice solution for handling files in /var/www? We're running Name Based Virtual Hosts and the Apache 2 user is www-data.

We've got two regular users & root. So when messing with files in /var/www, rather than having to...

chown -R www-data:www-data

...all the time, what's a good way of handling this?

Supplementary question: How hardcore do you then go on permissions?

This one has always been a problem in collaborative development environments.

Bounty Edit: I've left the original question but would like a good answer on the whole permissions debacle that Postgres seems to bath in.
'Importing & exporting clients db's: A field guide'

I just got this job today where we need to use PostgreSQL.

The client has two hosts and they only use phpPgAdmin to access the database. There's no SSH.

We need to the export the data and then import it to a local dev machine.

Being wise in the way of MySQL I'm a little lost as to the correct process.

There's PostgreSQL >> database >> export
and from there one gets:

I've been hitting up the documentation but to tell you the truth, I can't find a simple explanation and don't really care about the db or Postgres at the moment. All we need to do is tackle the sites PHP.

Hit me up with a synopsis/cheatsheet/guide my sysadminy syblings.

Edits:
Changed the question to be include the PostgreSQL permissions on importing a db.
There really does seem to be more to setting up a new PostgreSQL server as far as permissions go.

I ask specifically about phpPgAdmin because my server is not localhost & has no GUI.

I get a feeling that it's a permissions thing http://pgedit.com/public/sql/acl_admin/index.html

Clarified no SSH on clients box.

Still can't find concise documentation on this whole process. Am really avoiding task till I've a clearer idea. Might look to convert into MySQL db for ease.

This case scenario started me wondering about the limitations of Small Business Server:

I have a client who came to us initially regading building them an intranet for managing staff training and document sharing etc. but as they use two other software packages (one for POS & one for inventory [they are not linked >< ]) I have advised them to start with looking at their overall I.T. infrastructure.

Bear in mind they don't have a dedicated I.T. staff member and their overall turnover I would guesstimate at a conservative AU $16M /year between 8 stores.

Infrastructure overview (as I understand it):

• One server ( I don't know the specs) hosted at main office running Small Business Server.
• Only one of the stores currently connecting via VPN to that server and the Inventory software running on it.
• Seven other existing stores to eventually connect to the server.
• Currently several hundred employees
• Company wants to double to sixteen stores within next 3 years.
• Probably ~20 (two/three per store) POS machines sending data to the server.
• Probably ~8-10 Desktop machines connecting to the server for Inventory/Backend

I found some links but would like to hear some real world experiences

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/sbs/default.mspx
http://www.sbslinks.com/Us_v_them.htm
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/platform-small-business-server-2003,1151.html

Basically like some of my own that I've posted below. I'm looking for added functionality to the programme 'screen'. At the very least have a look at the last line for a fantastic 'menu bar' at the bottom of a screen session.

## gyaresu's .screenrc 2008-03-25
# http://delicious.com/search?p=screenrc

# Don't display the copyright page
startup_message off

# tab-completion flash in heading bar
vbell off

# keep scrollback n lines
defscrollback 1000

# Doesn't fix scrollback problem on xterm because if you scroll back
# all you see is the other terminals history.
# termcapinfo xterm|xterms|xs|rxvt ti@:te@

# These will let you use 
bind -c selectHighs 0 select 10 #these three commands are 
bind -c selectHighs 1 select 11 #added to the command-class
bind -c selectHighs 2 select 12 #selectHighs
bind -c selectHighs 3 select 13
bind -c selectHighs 4 select 14
bind -c selectHighs 5 select 15


bind - command -c selectHighs   #bind the hyphen to 
                                #command-class selectHighs 


screen -t rtorrent  0   rtorrent    
#screen -t tunes        1   ncmpc --host=192.168.1.4 --port=6600 #was for connecting to MPD music server.
screen -t stuff     1
screen -t irssi     2   irssi
screen -t dancing   4       
screen -t python    5   python
screen -t giantfriend   6   these_are_ssh_to_server_scripts.sh
screen -t computerrescue    7   these_are_ssh_to_server_scripts.sh
screen -t BMon      8   bmon -p eth0
screen -t htop      9   htop
screen -t hellanzb  10  hellanzb
screen -t watching  3   
#screen -t interactive.fiction  8
#screen -t hellahella   8   paster serve --daemon  /home/gyaresu/downloads/hellahella/hella.ini 

shelltitle "$ |bash"

# THIS IS THE PRETTY BIT
#change the hardstatus settings to give an window list at the bottom of the                                                                        
##screen, with the time and date and with the current window highlighted                                                                            
hardstatus             alwayslastline                                                                                                                          
#hardstatus string '%{= mK}%-Lw%{= KW}%50>%n%f* %t%{= mK}%+Lw%< %{= kG}%-=%D %d %M %Y %c:%s%{-}'
hardstatus string '%{= kG}[ %{G}%H %{g}][%= %{= kw}%?%-Lw%?%{r}(%{W}%n*%f%t%?(%u)%?%{r})%{w}%?%+Lw%?%?%= %{g}][%{B} %d/%m %{W}%c %{g}]'

I've got a new client that wants to send batches of around 1000 emails weekly to their client list (all opt-in recipients).

Previously when I've built something for a client it has been their own mail server.

Can anyone recommend any alternatives to hosting their own mail server?

Google apps seems to have a 500 emails in 24hr limitation.

Google Groups would require recipient sign-up & wouldn't use the clients email address.

Other third party services?

Thanks.

I'm just looking at installing a Debian production server and would like any helpful links to documentation.

You know how things change so fast. I'm likely to be looking for whole sub-systems that have been deprecated.

Useful links:
http://www.debian.org/doc/
http://wiki.debian.org/
LAMP install: Apache Mysql PHP(http://wiki.debian.org/LaMp)
http://www.debianhelp.co.uk/
http://www.howtoforge.com/

sudo aptitude install vim 
sudo update-alternatives --config editor (then select vim.basic)
update-rc.d service defaults (setting runlevels for programmes)