augustin's questions

It's been a few days that I am doing my best to properly understand the bind9 official documentation:
http://ftp.isc.org/isc/bind9/cur/9.7/doc/arm/Bv9ARM.html

There are many bind9 tutorials out there. However, I do have many problems reconciling the proposed solutions to any official definition of a SOA RR that I can find.

Among others, I also checked:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_record#DNS_resource_records
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_DNS_record_types
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1035#page-12

And despite all that, I am still very confused about the proper format for a SOA RR.

Many tutorials seem to offer a syntax similar to this one:

example.com. 43200 IN SOA ns1.example.com. other.example.com. (
 2011090302 ;Serial Number
 86400 ;refresh
 7200 ;retry
 1814400 ;expire
 86400 ;minimum
 )

I don't quite explain the presence of the two domains before the opening of the parenthesise. However, without the second one, named-checkzone complained.

However, this site in particular:
http://forums.devshed.com/dns-36/bet-you-want-to-setup-a-dns-server-huh-141940.html
offers a zonefile with a SOA RR like this:

@   SOA ns1 (   ; ns1.basiczone.com is the primary server for basiczone.com
      postmaster  ; contact email for basiczone.com is [email protected]
      2004041700  ; Serial ID in reverse date format
      21600   ; Refresh interval for slave servers
      1800    ; Retry interval for slave servers
      604800    ; Expire limit for cached info on slave servers
      900 )   ; Minimum Cache TTL in zone records

Note the absence of the class IN. Also, only one domain (ns1) is present before the opening parenthesis.

So, the main question is: what is the precise, official, or most recommended grammar for an SOA RR? Where is this grammar most precisely defined?

Finally, when to use a SOA record? My understanding is that I need a SOA record for any domain that I want to host and for which I want to be an authoritative name server.

It's been a couple of days I am pulling my hair trying to get a legacy Perl script working as cgi within an apache2 server. It requires Crypt::OpenSSL::AES. From the Apache error logs:

Can't locate Crypt/OpenSSL/AES.pm in @INC

The easiest would have been if a ubuntu package could install it with me, but I am unable to locate any package with the proper files. The following returns nothing:

apt-file search AES.pm

As a regular user, I have installed cpan and used it to install perl modules, so that Crypt::OpenSSL::AES is installed under my user directory at /home/user/.cpan/build/Crypt-OpenSSL-AES-0.02-H74J64/lib. Unfortunately, whether I manually copy AES.pm to its proper location (/usr/local/lib/perl/5.10.1/... as per @INC) or I add the PERL5LIB env variable within the apache2 configuration files (SetEnv PERL5LIB /home/user/.cpan/build/Crypt-OpenSSL-AES-0.02-H74J64/lib), the error logs now show that there is a missing shared object:

Can't locate loadable object for module Crypt::OpenSSL::AES in @INC 

The error mesage is subtly different from the first one (I didn't notice it at first): now it does find AES.pm, but there is another dependency on an unspecified "loadable object" and I have no clue which one. Openssl is installed on my system.

So:

Generally, what is the proper way (on a Linux-ubuntu system) to install perl modules to work with an apache2 server? (I searched and there are many answers to this question, but it still doesn't work).

Specifically, how can I properly satisfy my cgi perl application's dependency on Crypt::OpenSSL::AES?

The hard drive of my OS died so I had to do a sudden Kubuntu 9.10 to Kubuntu 11.04 upgrade. The OS is actually a fresh install, but the personal data and mysql data were on a different drive, so they were safe.

I am now running the latest mysql 5.1 version of the server. And I look at my mysql data that I still have to import and wonder: where they 5.0 data or 5.1 data? Do I need to do the 5.0 to 5.1 upgrade or not?

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KarmicKoala/ReleaseNotes#MySQL_upgrade
Quoting the above page:

In Ubuntu 9.10 MySQL 5.1 has been promoted as the default MySQL server. MySQL 5.0 is still available from the universe repository though. Performing an upgrade via update-manager will correctly handle the transition from MySQL 5.0 to MySQL 5.1. However using a dist-upgrade will not: mysql-server-5.0 will be upgraded instead of being replaced by mysql-server-5.1. If MySQL 5.0 needs to be kept the mysql-server and mysql-client packages should be removed before the upgrade is started.

I completely forgot how I performed the upgrade to Kubuntu 9.10 from the previous release, so, reading the above, I am not sure whether my data was properly upgraded or not to 5.1.

How can I tell? What's the difference between the two versions (as far as the data is concerned)?

When I read tutorial on how to create /add virtual hosts, the last sentence is always something like:

... now restart apache and you are done!

Now, many (most|all) web hosts have a panel that allow you to create new virtual hosts which are activated almost instantly... and I am sure they didn't restart apache (inconveniencing hundreds of other users) just for my pleasure!

So how to change apache settings / adding virtual hosts, etc. and reloading the new settings without actually restarting the apache server?

It's been a few days that I'm trying to set up fastcgi with apache on a Kubuntu server. Despite searching everywhere, I cannot make it to work. If I try to run the site with the cgi application, apache hangs and after the timeout returns a 500 error.

Here is what I did:

• I made sure that mod_fastcgi is installed and enabled:

  # pwd
  /etc/apache2/mods-enabled
  # ls -l f*
  lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 30 2010-07-22 10:01 fastcgi.conf -> ../mods-available/fastcgi.conf
  lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 30 2010-07-22 10:01 fastcgi.load -> ../mods-available/fastcgi.load
  

• As far as I am aware, fastcgi.conf is properly configured:

  <IfModule mod_fastcgi.c>
    AddHandler fastcgi-script .fcgi
    #FastCgiWrapper /usr/lib/apache2/suexec
     FastCgiIpcDir /var/lib/apache2/fastcgi
  </IfModule>
  

• I am using this very simple sample script to test the set up:

  #include <iostream>
  using namespace std;
  int main()
  {
          cout<<"Content-type: text/plain"<<endl<<endl;
          cout<<"Hello World!"<<endl;
           return 0;
  }
  

• I compiled it. It works fine from the command line.
• I placed it within a folder visible from the web server: http://127.0.0.1/fcgitest/run.fcgi
• At first I get: "Forbidden. You don't have permission to access /fcgitest/run.fcgi on this server.".

• I add a .htaccess file in the folder:

  Options +ExecCGI -Indexes
  

• And now, when I try to access the script address from my web browser, I get the symptom I described at the beggining: the browser first hangs, and after the timeout, I get a 500 Internal Server Error.

• The apache error.log say:

  Content-type: text/plain
  Hello World!
  [Sat Aug 28 09:08:23 2010] [warn] FastCGI: (dynamic) server 
  "/var/www/fcgitest/run.fcgi" (pid 27758) terminated by calling exit with status '0'
  

It seems the output is written to the error logs!! Is there a missing socket configuration, somewhere??