jrdioko's questions

I am in the exact same situation as the person who posted another question, I am trying to tunnel ssh connections through a gateway server instead of having to ssh into the gateway and manually ssh again to the destination server from there. I am trying to set up the solution given in the accepted answer there, a ~/.ssh/config that includes:

host foo
  User webby
  ProxyCommand ssh a nc -w 3 %h %p

host a
  User johndoe

However, when I try to ssh foo, my connection stays alive for 3 seconds and then dies with a Write failed: Broken pipe error. Removing the -w 3 option solves the problem. What is the purpose of that -w 3 in the original solution, and why is it causing a Broken pipe error when I use it? What is the harm in omitting it?

I am using rsync to sync a directory to a USB-mounted device. That device automounts with myuser:root ownership. When I rsync my directory (that has myuser:myuser ownership) with -a, I get many of the following errors:

rsync: chgrp "filename" failed: Operation not permitted (1)

I tried adding --no-g after the -a option (since in this case I don't care about setting the group), but the errors persist. What do I need to do to stop rsync from trying to chgrp everything?

I manage a Debian Squeeze server that uses Exim as the MTA and runs several mailing lists using Mailman. I'd like to set up ClamAV to block viruses that may get posted to a list. I'm having trouble finding documentation online for how to integrate ClamAV with Exim and Mailman (and what configuration is done automatically by the Debian install scripts).

What needs to be done besides installing the appropriate packages to get ClamAV to work with Exim and Mailman lists?

I'm using curl to request a URL that redirects to a different URL using a Location: line like:

Location:/path/to/resource#name

As I understand it, that line in the redirect response is invalid per the HTTP specifications, so the overall curl call understandably fails (in this case, with a 400 response code). However, requesting the URL with wget or a web browser successfully renders the page (I assume through heuristics that fill in the absolute path or remove the anchor tag before the redirect).

Is there anything I can do to make curl do the same (do what is necessary to successfully follow the redirect, even if it is "officially" malformed)?

Edit: Some more details. The final response code is 400 (not 404 or something else). When I do a HEAD request (with curl -I -L), I get a 302 Found (with Location: /Error) that redirects to a 500 Server Error. However, if I do a regular request (without the -I option but with the -L option), I get a http_code (in curl's --write-out) of 400. So it seems like HEAD requests in this case function differently than standard GETs.

I'd like to use curl to send a HTTP HEAD request to a URL to verify that it is working correctly (server is up and sends a successful response). At the end, I need the final HTTP response code returned and URL (after following any redirects). Finally, I need to set a hard timeout (a period of time after which the call will fail, regardless of where in the request curl is).

Does curl support all this? What options do I need to use to accomplish this?

I have MediaWiki running on one server, and need to migrate it to another. What steps need to be taken to cleanly move it to another host? Minimal downtime is acceptable.

I have the most recent version of Bugzilla running on one server, and need to migrate it to another. What steps need to be taken to cleanly move Bugzilla to another host? Minimal downtime is acceptable.

I'm running a piece of software on a Windows server that sends email notifications via a remote SMTP server. It has very few configuration options, and only supports basic SMTP authentication without SSL/TLS. I have exim4 running on a Debian server that will be the SMTP server for this Windows program. It is set up with default configuration, plus allowing AUTH PLAIN and AUTH LOGIN unencrypted connections. I have successfully sent an email over telnet:

telnet servername 25
ehlo test
250-AUTH PLAIN LOGIN
...
auth plain XXX
235 Authentication succeeded
mail from: ...
...

However, the program I want to connect to this server fails to connect. To see why, I ran a packet sniffer during the connection, and see the following session:

C: HELO hostname
S: 250 Hello hostname
C: AUTH LOGIN XXX | XXX
S: 503 AUTH command used when not advertised | 500 unrecognized command
C: QUIT
S: 221 closing connection

I'm not familiar enough with the SMTP protocol to understand what's going on here. What do I need to change on my exim4 SMTP server to allow for this connection to be made?

I have a program on Windows that sends email via a remote SMTP server, and it is failing with an ambiguous "cannot connect" error message with no log or other information as to why it is failing. I have tested the SMTP server and confirmed it is working with the same credentials.

The program uses plaintext login to the server, as it doesn't support SSL/TLS, so the SMTP connection should be transmitted in the clear. Is there an easy way to use a packet sniffer to monitor the attempted connection, to see exactly what is being sent (in an effort to discover why the connection is failing)?

I'd like to add a CustomLog directive to my apache configuration to log the full URL requested (or at least the host portion of the URL). I have several domains being handled by the same instance of apache, and would like to be able to distinguish the domains in the logs (as now all I see is "GET /"). I see in the documentation on LogFormat it lists %U to print the path portion of the URL, but I'm looking for the host.

Without giving all the details, I'm trying to set up (via apache) two web applications that will be served from the same (internal development) server. Currently I have two VirtualHost directives and the two applications running on different ports. Instead, I'd like to have the URL determine which application is used, so, for example, myapp.domain.com will forward to one application and any other .domain.com will go to the other. Setting up the internal DNS to take care of that piece isn't a problem. But I'm not very familiar with apache, what's the best way to accomplish this?