John McAleely's questions

I wish to maintain a local fork of a debian package. I need to patch a bug which will eventually be fixed in the official package, but not for some time.

How do I create a .deb package, and how do I use it, to get my bug fix used locally?

The package in question contains some script files.

I have several servers running applications on debian. Each has the packages it requires for the application, and no more.

Currently, none have mail sending capability. However, I would like the output of tools like cron to be mailed to me.

The servers are hosted at an ISP site that provides a 'smart relay' server I should use for all outbound mail.

How should I configure my debian servers:

• To permit local tools like cron to send mail, as something like [email protected] (I specifically do not want 'root@machinename')
• Not provide any inbound mail services
• Use the ISP's provided 'smart relay' for outbound mail

What package is good for such a 'minimal' mail service?

I have a set of remote servers, assigned to a small IP address pool. I would like to control access to some services on some servers via ip address, rather than login/password.

However, I would like to access these services from wifi hotspots, etc, so I would like to create a VPN which I would log in to (via a username/password), which would be assigned one of the IP addresses in the server's pool.

I would like to use built in clients on Windows and Mac OS X to access the VPN, which I believe rules out the commonly advocated ssh solutions.

What packages should I look into and configure on debian/linux to achieve this setup?

I run a service on a debian/linux machine which runs at boot with a 'screen' session I can always attach to.

I would like to create a username which I can run this service as. At the moment I use a 'regular' login account. I would like the added security of a username dedicated to this sevrice (similar to the way 'nobody' or 'web' are used with apache).

Requirements:

• No ability to login, locally or remotely (so no password to manage)
• Ability for approved users to gain access to the screen session, and interact with the service.

I imagine the solution will have creative use of su/sudo and the details of how to create the account.

I manage a server that currently runs Debian/Etch, and Xen 3.0. Each virtual machine is also running Debian/Etch.

Lenny is the next release of Debian, and includes Xen 3.2. Unfortunately, I believe there is no automatic upgrade path (via dist-upgrade) between Xen 3.0 and Xen 3.2. (Xen 3.0 is listed as an obsolete package in the lenny release notes).

What steps should I follow to end up with the server running lenny/xen3.2 and the virtual machines running lenny?