Sheridan West

2.80 -> 2.8.4 September 6, 2009

Posted by admin in : 2.8.0, 2.8.4, wordpress , comments closed

update

Wordpress 2.8 June 16, 2009

Posted by admin in : 2.7.1, 2.8.0, Wordpress.org , comments closed

This blog now uses version 2.8

Phorm advisory April 19, 2009

Posted by sjwest in : Uncategorized , comments closed

say no to website abuse.

This site has requested that its details be omitted from the phorm deep packet inspection that certain isps would like to use.

We object to this on a number of levels and if you see British Telecom inserting adverts into this sites html please tell us about it.

I would recommend that all domain owners remove there domains from phorm – visiting nodpi.org will start you off.

Clients of British Telecom should be aware that alternative providers also exist

Debian Lenny on ancient (1997) hardwear March 26, 2009

Posted by sjwest in : IT, Linux , comments closed

Works, you apparently need more than disk 1 on cd to install, so we had use the repository’s as well. Apart from the usual number of restarts not a hassle if you don’t had a box with a large amount of services hanging off it.

Doable.

Debian: how not to go from etch to lenny. March 25, 2009

Posted by sjwest in : IT, Linux, clueless , comments closed

not that Steinbeck 'Lenny'

Right a disclaimer to start with: This post is in no means a criticism of Debian got that ? ok now lets begin.

We have a number of debian pc’s running Etch (version 4), with lots of services hanging off it im likely to see some issues with the upgrade the Lenny (release 5).

First pc (a test box) we upgraded we did via the network upgrade. Not too bad but i ran out disk space on a 60gb unit, the process here involved a lot of restarts, even when not running x.

Binary Blobs and Wifi – your affected

Readers to Debian planet will note the distaste of binary blobs, we use edimax rt73 usb wifi adaptors [no need for ndiswrapper support as like with most usb network adaptors] we had an issue with wireless as the rt73 driver is now a blob (used to be code for that that you could compile), mind you the rt73 blob is bit faster picking up dhcp leases

a new command ./update_rt73_firmware

Does the business. Undocumented.

Lenny is lot faster than Etch and worth the the update if your pc uses some basic desktop stuff. More advanced stuff is likely to give you a headache or too.

Bouyed up that the test box worked pretty well during and after, we moved onto our test server box.

dvd install – some ‘issues’, then disaster.

Instead of network upgrade we used a dvd (release one), less restarts than a network upgrade, some unsigned packages (capplets) but the disaster struck make the disk pretty useless. Unlike etch, the lenny dvd (disk 1 release 1) will not be spending long in your dvd drive and you nmove to network updates for all packages.

Disaster struck our test server that runs everything as /usr/lib ran out of space (plenty of space left when we started). So the update failed. It was time to reformat the machine that we had backed up.

Unable to recover the upgrade we all said a few choice words and moved on.

We installed Lenny as new os, it worked, so then we reformated the disk back to Etch and upgraded that to Lenny. this left postfix, www, and everything else to reconfigure.

email, dkim and spam

Postfix in Lenny needs its queues updating, and isnt a nice upgrade (oho), the dkimproxy .deb package lacks much and we compiled our own version from sourceforge, it lacks perl modules, and the lack of working scripts (we used dkimproxy in etch) means this package wont be used by people.

Compiling dkimproxy means you can sign both dkim, and domainkeys at the same time, nothing wrong the program just the packing of the .deb. run perl’s shell for the missing dependencies – or use webmin.

Multiple postfix configs require

(wotks in Etch) needs an extra variable data_directory = /var/lib/postfix’xx’ or you get lock errors

Altermime

works mostly one instance of ours does not – probably us

Amavis moves from smtp to lmtp in the postfix configuration files although smtp is ok with the appropriate extra ports, feel free to ignore the amavis readme doc on lmtp.

Clamav works better than in etch (no backport required). group memberships (see later on) need manual tweaking as like in etch

FuzzyOcr and Spamassasin

/etc/spamassassin is the new home not /etc/mail/spamassassin as in etch, FuzzyOcr is nice to have in the junk email armoury should the fashion to use that technique comes back.

pamthreshold and the other image tools need compiling from scratch as with etch

Users and Groups, and Networking gui’s

Networking no issues only with the gui for, same goes for users and groups the gui tools suck, use command line tools, or edit the file, and network manager HATES virtual ip addresses eg eth0 ok but an eth0:1 instance (both valid) it is sod off. This part of Lenny is crap.

Cyrus imap

upgrading from etch to lenny ok (message stores), but reset the file in the readme file or Cyrus Imap won’t work (no mention of this in upgrade guide). The script and package file need extra directories (mkdir) of the lenny .debs wont load.

Apache2

memcache issues (htcache) mean you might need some extra apache2 modules loaded, starting apache2 is a lot different than in Etch, existings config files do work

up to date Php and stuff like that

If you need really upto date php then the debian lenny stuff is not for you. Not hard to solve.

Mysql and Postgresql

We use both (pgsql longer) Debians package sucked in Etch Lenny does not vacumming does not mean you need to reload data via a cron job anymore, mysql is used for this. However some sql select statements needed less operators (eg ::text)
in php.

Security to avoid

Steer clear of Bastille [system hardening] in Lenny /usr/lib/Bastile/API.pm needs a ,”DB5.0′, grep for db4.0 in that directory – eg it is ok for Etch not for Lenny without a bit of adjusting. Eats disk space like nobodies business

If cleaning up – check that the log files in /etc/syslog are commented out

Avoid like the plague

Silly stuff

KDE: games cannot be uninstalled without removing kde, not an issue with gnome. Xmms becomes audacious if you like music, undocumented. Hplip (printer support) is a horrible experience with newer hp printers.

Observations in running Lenny

Bare bones Lenny is fast and lean. Add services and then the changes bite you. It would have been nice for a note or two about Cyrus imap. No idea why /usr/lib got full, but /var/cache can get large very fast.

dvd writing ok with quality dvd-rw disks, I have some own brand [whsmith] dvd-rw disks that have gone bad so avoid those, cd writing worked with our separate hardware for cd-r writing

Remember this is Debian lenny in action, not criticism of it but this is how it was for us, and the many undocumented features that the upgrade leaves out. Its not a whine about the euro symbol or using open office (non issues) but the more you do the more quirks you find.

Wordpress 2.7.1 February 12, 2009

Posted by admin in : 2.7.0, 2.7.1, Wordpress.org, wordpress , comments closed

Updated to 2.7.1 from 2.7.0

Wordpress update December 12, 2008

Posted by admin in : 2.6.6, 2.7.0, Wordpress.org , comments closed

running 2.7.0

Dear John Buckman of Magatune.com December 8, 2008

Posted by sjwest in : IT, clueless, email, fix, rant, spf , comments closed

I fully approve of non mafiaa music cartels unlike the bpi/riaa and ifpi and I also cannot stand most of the shit they put out, in copyright or stuff 300 years out of copyright.

Magnatune.com tries to be much fairer than those riaa associated scum to all and you have some music on there i really like. Being that as it is coming up on the new year i was asked if i wanted anything as a gift – your name came up.

I like a distributor who claims ‘not to be evil’ and while making a profit is not bad the antics of cartels do concern me. However it would be nice if your email box had spf records for email.

By all means do things your way but please don’t make half the anti-spam countermeasures available on your better than average email box reject your emails.

Spf is old and tells mail servers that the email is designated to come from that place or not. Its a good idea.