Richard Stelling's questions

Preface

Skip this if you just want the question, just some background

We've been using Google Apps for Domains for years with out any (major) issues. But yesterday I removed an alias domain and added it new (secondary) domain. Then I changed my primary email address form [email protected] to [email protected].

But, this removed my admin rights, I just keep getting bounced to;

https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/newcompany.com/UserHub

I can't login using [email protected] at:

https://www.google.com/a/old-company.co.uk/

It fails and trying to reset the admin password results in a server error. And to boot [email protected] was/is my only admin account.

All this has resulted in my email [email protected] working but all other *@newcompany.com emails bouncing - *@old-company.co.uk still work however.

Question

After scouring Google forums for answers to the above situation it seems this is a semi-regular issue but Google can take 2 weeks to respond!

What I need is an emergency mail server, I just want to point my newcompany.com MX records at this server and it to accept all emails (I can filter later). Are there services that do this, anyone will do (except Google).

I need to configure a server (*nix) that runs our (bespoke) CMS and Applications.

In the past I have defaulted to using Cent OS 5, but I find this outdated difficult to upgrade the software to the versions we require.

For example, we need PHP 5.3, but CentOS 5 has 5.2. Updating is fine but breaks something else (normally MySQL support in PHP).

Eventually it will get to a situation where I can't upgrade because of missing dependancies and incompatible versions.

Error: Missing Dependency: httpd = 2.2.3-43.el5.centos.3 is needed by package httpd-devel-2.2.3-43.el5.centos.3.i386 (updates)

Is there a better alternative OS for hassle free updates, I need:

• Apache 2.2.17 (the development version for apxs)
• MySQL 5.5.8
• PHP 5.3.5

Is there an Apache module or similar that will allow me to serve images and varying sizes?

We have a a lot of images (gif, jpeg and png) that are all around 150x150, some are bigger but all are 1:1 in size.

I would like to be able to serve images like this:

http://images.ourserver.com/image/path/realimage.png?50x50 http://images.ourserver.com/image/path/realimage.png?100x100

And get back a resized version of the original file. A cache of the resized file should also be created.

This sounds like a problem that should have already been solved.

(We run currently run CentOS servers but all options will be considered.)

I'm trying to update my Cent OS 5.2 system using yum. But I've been getting this error:

Transaction Check Error:
  file /usr/share/man/man1/pcregrep.1.gz from install of pcre-8.02-1.jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package pcre-6.6-2.el5_1.7.i386
  file /usr/share/man/man1/pcretest.1.gz from install of pcre-8.02-1.jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package pcre-6.6-2.el5_1.7.i386
  file /etc/my.cnf from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386
  file /usr/share/man/man1/my_print_defaults.1.gz from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386
  file /usr/share/man/man1/mysql.1.gz from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386
  file /usr/share/man/man1/mysql_config.1.gz from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386
  file /usr/share/man/man1/mysql_find_rows.1.gz from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386
  file /usr/share/man/man1/mysql_waitpid.1.gz from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386
  file /usr/share/man/man1/mysqlaccess.1.gz from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386
  file /usr/share/man/man1/mysqladmin.1.gz from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386
  file /usr/share/man/man1/mysqldump.1.gz from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386
  file /usr/share/man/man1/mysqlshow.1.gz from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386
  file /usr/share/mysql/charsets/Index.xml from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386
  file /usr/share/mysql/charsets/cp1250.xml from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386
  file /usr/share/mysql/czech/errmsg.sys from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386
  file /usr/share/mysql/danish/errmsg.sys from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386
  file /usr/share/mysql/dutch/errmsg.sys from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386
  file /usr/share/mysql/english/errmsg.sys from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386
  file /usr/share/mysql/estonian/errmsg.sys from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386
  file /usr/share/mysql/french/errmsg.sys from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386
  file /usr/share/mysql/german/errmsg.sys from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386
  file /usr/share/mysql/greek/errmsg.sys from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386
  file /usr/share/mysql/hungarian/errmsg.sys from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386
  file /usr/share/mysql/italian/errmsg.sys from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386
  file /usr/share/mysql/japanese/errmsg.sys from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386
  file /usr/share/mysql/korean/errmsg.sys from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386
  file /usr/share/mysql/norwegian-ny/errmsg.sys from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386
  file /usr/share/mysql/norwegian/errmsg.sys from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386
  file /usr/share/mysql/polish/errmsg.sys from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386
  file /usr/share/mysql/portuguese/errmsg.sys from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386
  file /usr/share/mysql/romanian/errmsg.sys from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386
  file /usr/share/mysql/russian/errmsg.sys from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386
  file /usr/share/mysql/serbian/errmsg.sys from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386
  file /usr/share/mysql/slovak/errmsg.sys from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386
  file /usr/share/mysql/spanish/errmsg.sys from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386
  file /usr/share/mysql/swedish/errmsg.sys from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386
  file /usr/share/mysql/ukrainian/errmsg.sys from install of mysql-5.1.50-jason.1.x86_64 conflicts with file from package mysql-5.0.77-4.el5_5.3.i386

I can go through and install any package that doesn't require updating mysql.

I've tried yum clean all

I must admit I know only enough to get in trouble when it comes to Linux, but it seems to me yum is trying to update mysql to 5.1.x but can't.

Any help greatly appreciated!

I keep getting the same error, any ideas?

1. I have generated a key without a password using ssh-keygen
2. I set permissions on the keys to 600
3. I have successfully logged in using ssh -i /root/.ssh/id_rsa 1**.**.*8.128
4. I have tried changing hostname to localhost and 127.0.0.1

The server is running CentOS 5.4.

On previous projects I have relied upon the data centre to handle my DNS.

However recently we have been moving more projects to various "cloud" solutions.

1. Is it a good idea to run a DNS server on a VPS in the cloud?
2. If so is there any good web-based DNS management software?
3. What the minimum spec needed?

When trying to start sendmail or send a mail using a wordpress plugin, this error shows up in the maillog:

"My unqualified host name (foo.bar) unknown; sleeping for retry"

After Googling the best advice was, "add foo.bar to the /etc/hosts file", but it already is:

127.0.0.1     localhost localhost.localdomain
127.0.0.1     foo.bar

I recently moved about 6 sites from a dedicated server to "the cloud". This being a virtualized CentOS with limited RAM and HD space.

These sties are mostly static, but some are Wordpress based. All the sites get very minimal traffic < 100 page views / per day each.

The server has only 512MB of RAM, as you can see from the screen-shot usage is low.

We don't expect any of the sites to "explode" with traffic, several may get 1000+ page views per day when they release new products, but this will only last for 2-3 days at most.

• Do you think I can get away with this minimum set up?
• Should I run some bench marking tools to determine the limits? If so, any suggestions?

NB: This cloud hosting solution is an order of magnitude cheaper than the dedicated (and managed) server. (Admittedly at an expensive hosting provider)

After a power cut VMWare Fusion (under Mac OS X 10.5.7) shows that a CentOS 5 .vmx is locked.

Clicking on the "padlock" brings up a dialogue with this message.

This virtual machine appears to be in use.

If this virtual machine is already in use, press the "Cancel" button to avoid damaging it. If this virtual machine is not in use, press the "Take Ownership" button to obtain ownership of it.

Configuration file: /Users/rjstelling/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/CentOS 5 64-bit - Development.vmwarevm/CentOS 5 64-bit.vmx

Clicking on "Take Ownership" fails, showing this message:

The virtual machine is in use by an application on your host computer.

Configuration file: /Users/rjstelling/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/CentOS 5 64-bit - Development.vmwarevm/CentOS 5 64-bit.vmx

I have no other VM software running. How can "unlock" this file and restart the VM?

I recently purchased 4 GB of RAM (2 x 2 GB modules) for a Mac Pro (8-core, early 2008), that runs 3 or 4 OS (Win, Linux and OS X) in out dev environment.

NB: I used the base OS X install to verify memory.

I initially installed the 2 new modules in Riser A/DIMM 2 and Riser B/DIMM 2, then new memory did not show up, total system memory 2 GB.

Then, I swapped the original 2 x 1 GB modules with the 2 GB modules, giving:

Riser A/DIMM 1: 2 GB
Riser B/DIMM 1: 2 GB
Riser A/DIMM 2: 1 GB
Riser B/DIMM 2: 1 GB

This gave me, 4 GB RAM in total.

So, I moved the 1 GB modules to DIMM 3, like this:

Riser A/DIMM 1: 2 GB
Riser B/DIMM 1: 2 GB
Riser A/DIMM 3: 1 GB
Riser B/DIMM 3: 1 GB

Bingo, 6 GB RAM.

Are the DIMM 2 sockets bad? Or am I missing something?

Below is the current System Profiler output, showing 6 GB of RAM:

Memory Slots:

  ECC:  Enabled

DIMM Riser B/DIMM 1:

  Size: 2 GB
  Type: DDR2 FB-DIMM
  Speed:    800 MHz
  Status:   OK
  Manufacturer: 0x802C
  Part Number:  0x3138484632353637324A4438304545314434
  Serial Number:    0xE04920F9

DIMM Riser B/DIMM 2:

  Size: Empty
  Type: Empty
  Speed:    Empty
  Status:   Empty
  Manufacturer: Empty
  Part Number:  Empty
  Serial Number:    Empty

DIMM Riser A/DIMM 1:

  Size: 2 GB
  Type: DDR2 FB-DIMM
  Speed:    800 MHz
  Status:   OK
  Manufacturer: 0x802C
  Part Number:  0x3138484632353637324A4438304545314434
  Serial Number:    0xE04921EE

DIMM Riser A/DIMM 2:

  Size: Empty
  Type: Empty
  Speed:    Empty
  Status:   Empty
  Manufacturer: Empty
  Part Number:  Empty
  Serial Number:    Empty

DIMM Riser B/DIMM 3:

  Size: 1 GB
  Type: DDR2 FB-DIMM
  Speed:    800 MHz
  Status:   OK
  Manufacturer: 0x80AD
  Part Number:  0x48594D5035313241373243503844332D5335
  Serial Number:    0x05049101

DIMM Riser B/DIMM 4:

  Size: Empty
  Type: Empty
  Speed:    Empty
  Status:   Empty
  Manufacturer: Empty
  Part Number:  Empty
  Serial Number:    Empty

DIMM Riser A/DIMM 3:

  Size: 1 GB
  Type: DDR2 FB-DIMM
  Speed:    800 MHz
  Status:   OK
  Manufacturer: 0x80AD
  Part Number:  0x48594D5035313241373243503844332D5335
  Serial Number:    0x05049201

DIMM Riser A/DIMM 4:

  Size: Empty
  Type: Empty
  Speed:    Empty
  Status:   Empty
  Manufacturer: Empty
  Part Number:  Empty
  Serial Number:    Empty