Jamie's questions

I'm looking at some init.d scripts, and a number of them use this what is essentially this command in their "stop)" target:

kill $(pidof ${DAEMON_NAME})

The pidof ${DAEMON_NAME} is actually a script function that checks the status code and calls exit if necessary, nonetheless, How is the above any different than this:

killall ${DAEMON_NAME}

A lot of init.d script simplification would be had if they are.

EDIT: I should add these "processes" aren't daemons and don't actually record their PID in the FS anywhere ...

I have a cgi script that is resending an email on a failed attempt 5-10 minutes after a user accesses a page. My thought was to do this using the at command from a python call (os.system("at now + 5 minutes <<< ' python resend.py data'")). Testing revealed:

$ sudo su www-data
$ at now
You do not have permission to use at.
$

What sort of grief am I exposing myself to if I remove user 'www-data' from the /etc/at.deny file?

This is a follow-on to How can I grow a 3Ware 9650SE RAID1 under ESXi 5.0?

I've successively replaced 1TB drives in my RAID1 with 2TB drives hoping that I can grow the datastore I've got in ESXi 5.0. After replacing the drives, and letting the rebuild finish, I can boot into ESXi (the RAID is also the boot partition) but partition tools (both the ESXi maintenance partedUtil and a gParted boot disk) show the RAID being the original sub ~1TB size.

What do I need to do to allow OSs, particularly ESXi, see the unused portions of the drives?

EDIT As MDMarra suggested below, I had tried the CLI KB article but confusing results. I think my question still stands. Worded differently: Why are partition tools unable to read the full size of the drives in a raid, and how can enable them too?

/dev/disks # partedUtil getptbl /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.600050e0f7f321007eb30000401b0000
gpt
121575 255 63 1953103872
1 64 8191 C12A7328F81F11D2BA4B00A0C93EC93B systemPartition 128
5 8224 520191 EBD0A0A2B9E5443387C068B6B72699C7 linuxNative 0
6 520224 1032191 EBD0A0A2B9E5443387C068B6B72699C7 linuxNative 0
7 1032224 1257471 9D27538040AD11DBBF97000C2911D1B8 vmkDiagnostic 0
8 1257504 1843199 EBD0A0A2B9E5443387C068B6B72699C7 linuxNative 0
2 1843200 10229759 EBD0A0A2B9E5443387C068B6B72699C7 linuxNative 0
3 10229760 1953103838 AA31E02A400F11DB9590000C2911D1B8 vmfs 0

Looking at the line 121575 255 63 1953103872 the last number is supposed to be the LBA size of the disk (in 512 byte units), in this case just under 1TB. Forging ahead anyway ...

~ # vmkfstools --growfs "/vmfs/devices/disks/naa.600050e0f7f321007eb30000401b0000:3" "/vmfs/devices/disks/naa.600050e0f7f321007eb30000401b0000:3"
Underlying device has no free space
Error: No space left on device

SO I'm left thinking I need to do something to allow the OS to see the true size of RAID array.

EDIT 2 Output of tw_cli

~ # /tmp/tw_cli /c0
Error: (CLI:003) Specified controller does not exist.
~ # /tmp/tw_cli show

Ctl   Model        (V)Ports  Drives   Units   NotOpt  RRate   VRate  BBU
------------------------------------------------------------------------
c6    9650SE-4LPML 4         2        1       0       1       1      -

~ # /tmp/tw_cli /c6 show

Unit  UnitType  Status         %RCmpl  %V/I/M  Stripe  Size(GB)  Cache  AVrfy
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
u0    RAID-1    OK             -       -       -       931.312   RiW    ON

Port   Status           Unit   Size        Blocks        Serial
---------------------------------------------------------------
p0     OK               u0     1.82 TB     3907029168    WD-WCAY00283502
p1     OK               u0     1.82 TB     3907029168    WD-WCAY00286752
p2     NOT-PRESENT      -      -           -             -
p3     NOT-PRESENT      -      -           -             -

~ #

I'm using Ubuntu 10.04 and have the /home directory setup as a BTRFS RAID 1 with two 2TB drives.

I'd like to make the /home directory just a single drive; how do I safely go about doing this?

In recent weeks, login times on my Ubuntu server have started timing out; both through SSH and the local command line console. Examination of the /var/log/auth.log files yields nothing interesting.

How can I diagnose long log in times on my Ubuntu server?

I should mention, also, that no updates have been performed since the problem has started, and that the /, /boot/ and /usr/ file systems are mounted as readonly.

[Edit] This is a stand alone machine, so it doesn't authenticate with Active Directory, LDAP etc. Also, the login prompt is responsive, as is the password prompt. Upon typing the password then CR, I'll timeout. After four a five tries, I will be able to login, although I'm worried this will start taking longer.

This is related to an effort to shutdown a seldom used server if there are no SSH connections or open files.

How can I determine in a shell script (cron job on a Linux box) if any of the current samba shares have any open files?

I have a server that I use infrequently, so I'd like to cron a job to shutdown daily if no users are logged in via SSH and SAMBA shares.

How can I determine how many active SSH connections there are, and how many active SAMBA connections there are?

If both of these values are zero, the cron script will shutdown the server.

First, let me state, this was an IT goof up. They deleted an account, went "oops" and created a new account with the same credentials. I can't fathom why.

Regardless, I've got a Linux (Ubuntu Server 10.04) box authenticating against an active directory server, and users logging in have local home directories and such.

I'm stuck with one user name having a new UID (or SID in AD jargon). Over and above chowning his home directory, what other interventions should I do?

I'm using a fairly vanilla Ubuntu 10.04 server installation, and I'm experimenting with BTRFS.

How can I create a BTRFS RAID1 mount?

I've got two (2) 1Gig drives that I popped in the server and after running the following commands, it appears I've got a 2 Gig partition, not 1 Gig as I would expect.

$ sudo mkfs.btrfs -m raid1 -d raid1 /dev/sdb /dev/sdc

WARNING! - Btrfs Btrfs v0.19 IS EXPERIMENTAL
WARNING! - see http://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org before using

failed to open /dev/btrfs-control skipping device registration
adding device /dev/sdc id 2
failed to open /dev/btrfs-control skipping device registration
fs created label (null) on /dev/sdb
        nodesize 4096 leafsize 4096 sectorsize 4096 size 1.82TB
Btrfs Btrfs v0.19

Okay ... errors. But if I plow ahead, I can mount this, and when I do a df, I see 2 Gigs free:

$ mkdir btrfs && sudo mount -t btrfs /dev/sdc $(pwd)/btrfs
$ cd btrfs && df . -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdc              1.9T   28K  1.9T   1% /home/jamie/btrfs

I'd expected to see only one.

I've configured my router to accept a public key SSH session with a passphrase. They key pair was generated using the PuTTY tools on windows.

I can open the session from both Windows and Linux using the Putty tools, but I can't do so with ssh on Linux.

When prompted by ssh for the keyfile's passphrase, it fails. Ex:

~$ ssh [email protected] -p 123 -i ./key-ddwrt.ppk
DD-WRT v24-sp2 micro (c) 2010 NewMedia-NET GmbH
Release: 06/09/10 (SVN revision: 14583)
Enter passphrase for key './key-ddwrt.ppk':  <*******>
Enter passphrase for key './key-ddwrt.ppk':  <*******>
Enter passphrase for key './key-ddwrt.ppk':  <*******>

But using plink works:

~$ plink -P 48884 -ssh -l root -i ./key-ddwrt.ppk my.domain.com
Using username "root".
DD-WRT v24-sp2 micro (c) 2010 NewMedia-NET GmbH
Release: 06/09/10 (SVN revision: 14583)
Passphrase for key "Hint phrase to jog my memory":  <*******>

Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

root@DD-WRT:~#

Why?

My active directory password changed, now I can't log into Redmine (0.9.4) via LDAP. I haven't installed plugins, so what gives?

I'm putting together an file server which will have a very limited number of users (less than 5) and offer the following services:

• GIT Hosting
• Subversion Hosting
• CIFS (SAMBA)
• NFS

Data reliability is the most important issue; power comes next, and I could care less about speed.

For the data hardware I've chosen a 3WARE 9650SE-4LPML which will be hosting two (2) TLES enabled WD RE4-GP drives running RAID-1.

The decision I'm facing now is what file system should I use? My preference is for something Linux based, and a file system that attempts not only file system integrity but data inegrity as well.

Please comment on which file systems, OS distributions and for that matter hardware chosen that you think may best fit my requirements.

I'm testing a backup to a bare metal restore. The new hardware doesn't have PS2 Mice/Keyboard and needs USB drivers: I can't log into any of the Safe Modes.

I can however, put the original SBS2003 install disks in the machine and jump into Recovery Console.

How do I go about installing board Chip Set drivers and USB drivers? Is it a simple copy? If so, what to where?

I was installing Server2003 Std and Server2008 Std on hardware recently. When joining the servers to the domain during the install, I was asked for credentials.

I answered with the the DC's Admin user and password.

What minimum level of credentials are normally required to join a member server to a domain?

I'm using Ubuntu 10.04 Server.

I've configured pam_mount.so to automagically mount a cifs share when users login; the problem is if a user logs into multiple times simultaneously, the mount command is repeated multiple times.

This so far isn't a problem but it's messy when you look at the output of a mount command.

# mount
/dev/sda1 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
none on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
none on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)
none on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620)
none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
none on /var/run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
none on /var/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
none on /lib/init/rw type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
//srv1/UserShares/jrisk on /home/jrisk type cifs (rw,mand)
//srv1/UserShares/jrisk on /home/jrisk type cifs (rw,mand)
//srv1/UserShares/jrisk on /home/jrisk type cifs (rw,mand)

I'm assuming I need to fiddle with either the pam.d/common-auth file or pam_mount.conf.xml to accomplish this.

How can I instruct pam_mount.so to avoid duplicate mountings?

[Edit]

The contents of my pam_mount.conf.xml file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE pam_mount SYSTEM "pam_mount.conf.xml.dtd">
<pam_mount>
  <debug enable="1" />
  <volume user="*" server="srv1" path="UserShares" mountpoint="home" fstype="cifs" />
  <cifsmount>mount -t cifs //%(SERVER)/%(VOLUME)/%(USER) %(MNTPT)/%(USER) -o "user=%(USER),uid=%(USERUID),gid=%(USERGID)%(before=\",\" OPTIONS)"</cifsmount>
  <umount>umount %(MNTPT)/%(USER)</umount>
  <mntoptions allow="nosuid,nodev,loop,encryption,fsck,nonempty,allow_root,allow_other" />
  <mntoptions require="nosuid,nodev" />
  <path>/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin</path>
  <logout wait="0" hup="0" term="0" kill="0" />
  <mkmountpoint enable="1" remove="true" />
</pam_mount>

I've managed to get my Ubuntu (server 10.04 beta 2) box to accept logins from users with Active Directory credentials, now I'd like those users to access their permissible windows shares on a W2003 R2 server.

The Windows share ("\srv\Users\") has subdirectories named according to the domain account users and permissions are set accordingly. I would like to preserve these permissions, but don't know how to go about it.

• Would I mount as an AD administrator or have each user mount with there own AD credentials?
• How do determine between using mount.smbfs or mount.cifs?

After sucessfully configuring Kerberos, this is what I've found in /etc/pam.d/common-auth file:

auth    [success=2 default=ignore]      pam_unix.so nullok_secure
auth    [success=1 default=ignore]      pam_winbind.so krb5_auth krb5_ccache_type=FILE cached_login try_first_pass
auth    requisite                       pam_deny.so
auth    required                        pam_permit.so

Does the success=2 control value mean that if the pam_unix.so fails, the authentication skips to the auth requisite pam_deny.so line or to the last line?

How do I test the changes to the pam.d configuration files:

• Do I need to restart the PAM service to test the changes?
• Should I go through every service listed in the /etc/pam.d/ directory?

I'm about to make changes to the pam.d/common-* files in an effort to put an Ubuntu box into an active directory controlled network.

I'm just learning what to do, so I'm preparing the configuration in a VM, which I plan to deploy in metal in the coming week.

It is a clean install of Ubuntu 10.04 Beta 2 server, so other than SSH daemon, all other services are stock.

I've been tinkering/testing with Ubuntu Server 10.04 Beta LAMP stack in a VM and now I've come to the Redmine install. I found a package for it, and issued:

sudo tasksel install lamp-server
sudo apt-get install redmine

Which (I think almost) worked, but I've no idea how to test it, or even know if it's configured.

How do I test it? I'm using 10.04 server so I don't have a local GUI.