sxanness's questions

I am hoping that I don't get too many thumbs down for this, I am hoping that someone can point me in the right direction on a project that I am now regretting picking up.

I am a Linux Admin by trade, when I was informed that someone needed a Windows Server for QuickBooks and a VPN set-up I thought "Sure, how hard can this be?". We ordered the Server and a Cisco RVS4400N Router for VPN. I failed at reading the fine print that it doesn't actually do PPTP or L2TP over IPSEC and it isn't a real Cisco VPN router in the sense that I can use the cisco options on an iPad or iPhone so it won't work for my client's needs.

While scrambling to find an option I offered my client one of my spare Linksys routers that I told him I would flash for his needs. The problem is my WRT54G's are Version 8 routers and they don't have enough flash memory to support the version of DD-WRT that can do PPTP VPN.

What I think would be a good idea would be to set up RRAS since we already have the Windows server and it should be simple enough and won't cost my client anything else as far as money. The problem is I am not sure how to go about this. I can find guides online but I have a few questions:

1) Will this even work, if the server has a static IP will the router set for PPTP pass through pass the VPN traffic correctly to the server or will the server need a static IP as well?

2) Is this free with Windows 2008 R2 or do I need to buy another license to make this work?

3) While I can find a guide online is there anyone who knows of a suggested guide?

The game plan is to go down and finish this project on Wednesday. I have to get some sleep now before I go work my Graveyard shift. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I recently copied the logical volume containing an Ubuntu Server install from one Xen server to another. I have done this many times in the past and have not had issues before. However, when I attempt to boot my virtual server I get the following error:

mount: Mounting /root/dev on /dev/.static/dev failed: No such file or directory
mount: Mounting /sys /root/sys failed: Invalid argument
mount: Mounting /proc /root/proc failed: No such file or directory
Target filesystem doesn't have /sbin/init

Several of the possible fixes involve booting with a live CD, which I have downloaded twice now both times getting the following error:

BusyBox v1.15.3 (Ubuntu 1:1.15.3-1ubunty5) built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

{initramfs) mount: mounting /dev/loop0 on //filesystem.squashfs failed: Input/output error
Can no mount /dev/loop0 (/cdrom/casper/filesystem.sqyashfs) on //filesystem.squashfs

I am trying to avoid having to re build this entire server so I am hoping I can figure something out. Any thoughts on what might be causing my issues or better ways to migrate the virtual machine would be helpful.

Thank You In Advance.

I asked this question over on some Juniper Forums but they seem to be pretty dead as in over a week it hasn't had that many hits and no one has had any advice. I figure if I can find someone familiar with Juniper routers they can direct me into the right direction and perhaps I can get this working.

I have three Juniper routers in Production. Two of them are SSG-5's one is an SSG-140. I am running ScreenOS 6.3.0r2.0

My issue probably is pretty simple but I am a bit lost. I set-up an OpenVPN server in Dallas and configured my juniper to pass traffic from the 10.3.21.0 subnet (my OpenVPN subnet) to the Dallas SSG-5. With my configuration I can hop on OpenVPN and access servers in Dallas. I did the same thing on our SSG-5 here in Meridian, Texas and those on the OpenVPN can talk to here and Dallas.

I am trying to do the same thing for our Colorado office, and apparently I am missing something. I know the Juniper VPN between Dallas and Colorado works because I can hop on a server in Dallas and access servers in Colorado but I am unable to access anything across OpenVPN.

I have checked my OpenVPN settings and they seem correct so perhaps I have a routing issue somewhere on the Juniper. I really don't know where to start as I had a consultant help with the Juniper install but we are a non-profit and can't afford going back to the consultant so I was hoping some of you guys could assist.

Thank You very much in advance, please let me know whatever configs I need to post here to help you guys better.

Last night I upgraded a server (Dell 2970) to have four 1TB Hard Drives in RAID 5 which leaves a 3TB block. I tried to partition this but keep getting an error that GPT is not supported so.

I found a site online telling me I need to run the dd command and right random data to /dev/sda. This is great (if it works) but taking forever. I have two more machines to upgrade today and not a chair in sight! Does anyone have advice on how I can avoid this issue beforehand?

Thank You for your advice and support.

I am adding links to my organization's intranet page. I have a SAMBA server that I would like users to be able to access from the intranet page. Seems easy enough. I created a link that works from macs "smb://ip/share" that works just fine. For Windows users I added "file:////ip/share" and this works from Internet Explorer but most of our users on Windows are either on Firefox or Chrome. Is there a way to get Firefox to open "file" links correctly? Or a better way for me to do my linking?

I am attempting to install gnome on a CentOS 5.3 Server install so that I can speed up the process that I am working on. I ran a yum groupinstall for the x window system and gnome but I keep getting the following error.

Package cyrus-sasl-plain needs cyrus-sasl-lib = 2.1.22-4, this is not available.
Package cyrus-sasl needs cyrus-sasl-lib = 2.1.22-4, this is not available.
Package cyrus-sasl-plain needs cyrus-sasl-lib = 2.1.22-4, this is not available.
Package cyrus-sasl needs cyrus-sasl-lib = 2.1.22-4, this is not available.
Complete!

First thing I checked was what version of the cyrus-sasl-lib I had installed.

Installed Packages
cyrus-sasl-lib.i386                      2.1.22-4               installed       
cyrus-sasl-lib.x86_64                    2.1.22-4               installed       
Available Packages
cyrus-sasl-lib.x86_64                    2.1.22-5.el5           base            
cyrus-sasl-lib.i386                      2.1.22-5.el5           base 

Anyhow know how I can get around this and install the stuff I need so that I can start a GUI on this machine?

Thanks in advance

I have a Linux server hosting our bug tracking software (CentOS 5.2 Kernel 2.6.18-128.4.1.el5) that I have having some strange network problems with. The machine is configured with two NICS, one for the public interface and the other for our server back end network.

The problem is that after doing a service network restart I can ping the public interface and it sends anywhere from 200-500 ICMP packets and then all of a sudden I start getting a request timed out error. Strange but as soon as I connect to the private interface the ping starts working again to the public interface. I clearly have a routing issue somewhere.

I have a Juniper Router with the following configuration.

Interface 0/0 -- Connect subnet to the ISP at our co-location Interface 0/2 -- For our DRAC network Interface 0/3 -- The Server-backend network (plugs directly into a switch that feeds to all the NICs that are on the 10.3.20.x network. Interface 0/4 -- Plugs directly into another switch that feeds our public interfaces, that interface as all the gateways from our public ip rangs as secondary IP addresses.

I hope that someone can ask the right questions that can lead me to check things and figure out what is going on. Has anyone had similar problems and what kind of things should I be checking? Routing issue or something even more complicated?

[root@fogbugz ~]# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
# Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+
DEVICE=eth0
BOOTPROTO=static
IPADDR=72.249.134.98
NETMASK=255.255.255.248
BROADCAST=72.249.134.103
HWADDR=00:16:3E:AA:BB:EE
ONBOOT=yes
[root@fogbugz ~]# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1
# Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+
DEVICE=eth1
BOOTPROTO=static
BROADCAST=10.3.20.255
HWADDR=00:17:3E:AA:BB:EE
IPADDR=10.3.20.25
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
NETWORK=10.3.20.0
ONBOOT=yes

[root@fogbugz ~]# cat /etc/sysconfig/network
NETWORKING=yes
NETWORKING_IPV6=no
HOSTNAME=fogbugz.dfw.hisg-it.net
GATEWAY=72.249.134.97

[root@fogbugz ~]# route -n
Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
72.249.134.96   0.0.0.0         255.255.255.248 U     0      0        0 eth0
10.3.20.0       0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0   U     0      0        0 eth1
169.254.0.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.0.0     U     0      0        0 eth1
10.0.0.0        10.3.20.1       255.0.0.0       UG    0      0        0 eth1
0.0.0.0         72.249.134.97   0.0.0.0         UG    0      0        0 eth0

I have recently installed a new 64-bit install of CentOS 5.3 (Kernel 2.6.18-164.6.1.el5xen). I have created a xen configuration file based on what I have done in the past on other servers. When I do an xm create on the guest host it doesn't give any error, but when I try to connect to the host with VNC to complete my install I just get a black window, it sits there and doesn't do anything. The mode is Blocked mode when I do an "xm list". I am a bit confused as to what I can check next as everything I am doing as worked in the past on other xen servers.

Here is my config:

> [root@sheldon ~]# cat /etc/xen/staticdev1
name = "staticdev1"
vcpus= 4
memory = 512
shadow_memory = 8
builder = "hvm"
kernel = "/usr/lib/xen/boot/hvmloader"
boot = "dc"
#boot = "cd"
pae = 1
#acpi = 1
#apic = 1
#on_poweroff = "destroy"
#on_reboot = "restart"
#on_crash = "restart"
device_model = "/usr/lib64/xen/bin/qemu-dm"
sdl = 0
vnc = 1 
vncdisplay = 2
vncpasswd='there-is-an-actual-password-here-usually'
vnclisten='0.0.0.0'
vncunused = 1
keymap = "en-us"
disk = [ 'phy:/dev/VolGroup01/staticdev1,hda,w', 'file:/var/tmp/CentOS-5.3-x86_64-bin-DVD.iso,hdc:cdrom,r' ]
# replace above when done with ISO
#disk = [ 'phy:/dev/VolGroup01/staticdev1,hda,w' ]
#, 'phy:/dev/hdb,hdc:cdrom,r' ]
vif = [ 'mac=00:16:3e:a9:b9:ee,bridge=xenbr1' ]
#ip = '192.168.1.226'
#netmask = '255.255.255.0'
#gateway = '192.168.1.225'
serial = "pty"
stdvga=0