Paul's questions

When my server sends messages generated by cron jobs, the all have the following From: header:

From: [email protected] (Cron Daemon)

Based on answers in this Server Fault question I am concluding this is a legacy format that SHOULD NOT be used based on this note in RFC 5322 3.4.1:

Note: Some legacy implementations used the simple form where the addr-spec appears without the angle brackets, but included the name of the recipient in parentheses as a comment following the addr-spec. Since the meaning of the information in a comment is unspecified, implementations SHOULD use the full name-addr form of the mailbox, instead of the legacy form, to specify the display name associated with a mailbox. Also, because some legacy implementations interpret the comment, comments generally SHOULD NOT be used in address fields to avoid confusing such implementations.

Here are the above referenced specifications:

name-addr       =   [display-name] angle-addr
angle-addr      =   [CFWS] "<" addr-spec ">" [CFWS] /
                    obs-angle-addr
addr-spec       =   local-part "@" domain

Since postfix uses From: headers generated by other system daemons that conform to addr-spec, I am assuming this is some sort of an issue related to cron, but I may be wrong on that, as I am not clear how these are configured, but it is for all messages generated by cron jobs.

Is it possible to change the From: header to conform to the referenced specifications for cron jobs?

Judging by the huge number of unresolved issues plus zero activity or communication from the project maintainers, the youtube-dl project appears to be dead and many of the project's contributors have moved on.

When I use the latest version youtube-dl, I only get a 75 KB/sec download rate, which can take many hours to download a video, and it doesn't support a site that I recently started using.

I'm not interested in hosting local git repositories, compiling code, modifying python files or commands.

What alternatives are there to youtube-dl that are relatively easy to install and are actively supported?

A recent versionupdate to the project by the project's maintainer includes a commit for the resignation of the maintainer which is further evidence that project is abandoned and therefore most likely dead.

I understand that that php packages will receive security updates for the life of 18.04, but will the main repository ever include a newer version than 7.2?

Before I purchase a laptop for testing, I'm trying to figure out if Ubuntu Server can support or if there is a package to support using a laptop as a server with the laptop battery functioning as I'm normally used to with UPS, where the server will shut itself down automatically per the configured tool.

I installed 16.04 Server and I have had a similar message in my logs and this message when I upgrade initramfs packages through normal package upgrade.

...
Setting up initramfs-tools (0.122ubuntu8.3) ...
update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated)
Processing triggers for initramfs-tools (0.122ubuntu8.3) ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-4.4.0-38-generic
W: mdadm: /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf defines no arrays.

Is this normal, or is Ubuntu expecting to find a RAID because of some misconfiguration somewhere?

Here is the contents of /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf:

# mdadm.conf
#
# Please refer to mdadm.conf(5) for information about this file.
#

# by default (built-in), scan all partitions (/proc/partitions) and all
# containers for MD superblocks. alternatively, specify devices to scan, using
# wildcards if desired.
#DEVICE partitions containers

# auto-create devices with Debian standard permissions
CREATE owner=root group=disk mode=0660 auto=yes

# automatically tag new arrays as belonging to the local system
HOMEHOST <system>

# instruct the monitoring daemon where to send mail alerts
MAILADDR root

# definitions of existing MD arrays

What is the default whois server queried when using the whois command?

I use a /etc/whois.conf file to manage servers queried for the whois command. The contents of the file are based on this Super User answer. If I use the server listed in the answer for .com (whois.verisign-grs.com), all queries to domains registered with GoDaddy return an incomplete record.

However, if I comment out the entry in the file for .com, then the full whois record for a GoDaddy registered domain will be returned.

So I want to figure out what server is being queried when whois is using the default lookup settings.

I have a FreeBSD drive that I want to retrieve a file from with Ubuntu 14.04 desktop.

I installed ubuntu-zfs from this PPA and have been through several tutorials, all of which have covered installing Ubuntu to ZFS or establishing a ZFS RAID, but all I want to do is mount a drive and retrieve a file.

I seem to be stuck on step one, where I can't even get Ubuntu to see a zpool, much less mount the drive.

More info:

# dmesg | egrep "\<sd[a-g]|SPL|ZFS"
[    1.525674] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] 15465744 512-byte logical blocks: (7.91 GB/7.37 GiB)
[    1.525747] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
[    1.525751] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
[    1.525782] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[    1.526605] sd 2:0:1:0: [sdb] 293046768 512-byte logical blocks: (150 GB/139 GiB)
[    1.526885]  sda: sda1
[    1.526885]  sda1: <bsd:bad subpartition - ignored
[    1.526885]  sda5 >
[    1.526937] sd 2:0:1:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[    1.526942] sd 2:0:1:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
[    1.526968] sd 2:0:1:0: [sdb] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[    1.527275] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk
[    1.536835]  sdb: sdb1 sdb2 < sdb5 >
[    1.537272] sd 2:0:1:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
[   29.183853] SPL: Loaded module v0.6.5.3-1~trusty
[   29.383056] ZFS: Loaded module v0.6.5.3-1~trusty, ZFS pool version 5000, ZFS filesystem version 5
[   37.384244] EXT4-fs (sdb1): mounting ext2 file system using the ext4 subsystem
[   37.414432] EXT4-fs (sdb1): mounted filesystem without journal. Opts: (null)

I have a VisionTek Radeon HD 4650 PCIex16 video card installed. I can't run anything other than the built-in display at 1024x768.

I get the following:

$ dmesg | egrep 'drm|radeon'
[    5.527134] [drm] Initialized drm 1.1.0 20060810
[    5.591796] [drm] radeon kernel modesetting enabled.
[    5.591874] fb: conflicting fb hw usage radeondrmfb vs VESA VGA - removing generic driver
[    5.592565] [drm] initializing kernel modesetting (RV730 0x1002:0x9498 0x1545:0x4330).
[    5.592593] [drm] register mmio base: 0xFE9F0000
[    5.592596] [drm] register mmio size: 65536
[    5.592752] radeon 0000:01:00.0: VRAM: 512M 0x0000000000000000 - 0x000000001FFFFFFF (512M used)
[    5.592757] radeon 0000:01:00.0: GTT: 1024M 0x0000000020000000 - 0x000000005FFFFFFF
[    5.592760] [drm] Detected VRAM RAM=512M, BAR=256M
[    5.592763] [drm] RAM width 128bits DDR
[    5.593295] [drm] radeon: 512M of VRAM memory ready
[    5.593298] [drm] radeon: 1024M of GTT memory ready.
[    5.593313] [drm] Loading RV730 Microcode
[    5.593338] radeon 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load failed with error -2
[    5.593342] radeon 0000:01:00.0: Falling back to user helper
[    5.608499] r600_cp: Failed to load firmware "radeon/RV730_pfp.bin"
[    5.608505] [drm:rv770_init] *ERROR* Failed to load firmware!
[    5.608511] radeon 0000:01:00.0: Fatal error during GPU init
[    5.608517] [drm] radeon: finishing device.
[    5.630462] [drm] radeon: ttm finalized
[    5.630857] radeon: probe of 0000:01:00.0 failed with error -2

I've used reboot for quite a few years to reboot Ubuntu Server, but now the command just puts Ubuntu into some low level, unresponsive state and I have to use the reset button to reboot. I don't have a monitor connected to the server. How can I troubleshoot this?

It began after the last HWE update, where at first it was spurious, but now it's every time I try to reboot.

According to 1204_HWE-EOL, there should be an option to upgrade to 12.04.5 HWE, however, I do not receive any such instructions from hwe-support-status.

# uname -r
3.11.0-24-generic
# hwe-support-status --verbose

Your current Hardware Enablement Stack (HWE) is going out of support
on 08/07/2014.  After this date security updates for critical parts (kernel
and graphics stack) of your system will no longer be available.

For more information, please see:
http://wiki.ubuntu.com/1204_HWE_EOL

To upgrade to a supported (or longer supported) configuration:

* Upgrade from Ubuntu 12.04 LTS to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS by running:
sudo do-release-upgrade -p

OR

* Install a newer HWE version by running:
sudo apt-get install

and reboot your system.

On a different server, I get the same message as above, except it actually states the packages to install:

* Install a newer HWE version by running:
sudo apt-get install linux-generic-lts-trusty linux-image-generic-lts-trusty

I'm not sure if this is how to update all HWEs or if the packages change based on different hardware.

This appears to be the same as Bug #1341320.

What is the difference between the mail-server^ task and the mail-stack-delivery package?

I have several servers that have the same prefix in their name: mail.servername. When I have several sessions open (I use PuTTY from Windows 7), it is a minor PITA to figure out which one is which since PuTTY names the windows user@mail and the command line displays user@mail:~$ for all of them.

Is there a way to have the full server name displayed? I don't have the option of changing the servers' names.

When I'm doing something that requires root be typed in dozens of times in a row, I prefer to switch my session to a root session. In the various tutorials and instructions I have used on the Internet, I see sudo su, sudo su -, sudo -i and sudo /bin/bash being used to open a root session, but I'm not clear on the difference between these and when or if that difference matters.

Can someone clear this up for me?

2 packages available for Ubuntu Server 12.04 that I've come across are horribly out of date: Nginx and phpMyAdmin. I use PPAs to manage these, but I've often wondered why these packages are so out of date while others are not (PHP5, MySQL, for example).

Occasionally Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit on my Panasonic CF-51 laptop will freeze up. The mouse cursor can still be moved, but I cannot access anything and no shortcut keys seem to work. Is there any way to access the terminal when this happens?

I have Ubuntu Desktop 12.04 64-bit installed on my Panasonic CF-51 laptop (GPU: Intel 945GM). When I recover from suspend mode, artifacts appear in the text. These artifacts look random. This occurred even with a fresh install, fully updated, with no other programs installed.