xv replacement

Looking for an image editor to replace xv since it does not compile well on ubuntu
Observations:

gimp - poor, but slow and cumbersome, can not serially open one file at a time, does not remember save directory.

krita - bad, only open one file at a time

konqueror-kim - bad, no cropping

digikam - ok, does not remember which directory you are saving in, but otherwise ok

Aug 7, 2007 update
still looking

mirage - no easy cropping
qiv, xzgv, xli - only an image viewer

xv - downloaded and patched, has display problems

yoltia - no cropping,

giving up and going with digikam

ssl certificate

Not sure if this is optimal, but here goes

create CA using CA.pl -newcert
Then use CA.pl -newreq for the certificate itself. In here instead of your name use the host that will be serving the certificate. Unfortunately the software does not give this hint.

Then CA.pl -sign to sign the certificate with the authority

Then use the -rsa option to get a clear text version that will allow the webserver to restart without prompting for the password.

network lab info

The network lab can currently use a gw of 137.142.110.254 and the 110 subnet. This should change soon.

postgresql and openoffice

Configured open office to work with postgresql.
The way it works is to download a package for postgresql (http://dba.openoffice.org/drivers/postgresql/) and then run open office and under tools go to the packagemanager and add the zip file.

Then in the connection manager you choose postgresql and use config options like
dbname=academic host=localhost

I'm not sure if I will use it a lot, but it is something I want to check out.

The other caveat, is that postgres connections can not go through, so I have to tunnel them
through using
ssh -L5432:localhost:5432

more ldap

wrote a script to do the merge, it will probably never be used again, but it appears to work.

I'll find out more in about an hour.

more ldap

I think I am going to create a new ldif file

1. First find all the new users who need home directories, grep the ldif
grep home ~hartdr/cs20060831.ldif | cut -c16- | xargs ls -ald
The error messages indicate new accounts

2. Create their directories

3. Now stop the slapd server and get the current version of the database

4. Now integrate the two, yuck

Oops, after step 2 I stopped the slapd, and su wants to check it.

Off to the lab.

ldap

Trying to figure out how to integrate the new data I got from CMS into the existing ldap entries.
I don't think I can just use slapadd

aptitude

Not sure how to force aptitude to choose configuration options for you.
the -yq option does not work. It is possible that a higher value of q=x might
work, but it is unclear. I'm try running it via ssh from another machine to see
if it recognizes that the input will not work. The next step is to use /dev/null
as the stdin.

It hangs, I can cheat this time I think and use a redirect, but in the future I should probably look into something like cfengine

general setup

Set up new gpg key, and .ssh/authorized_keys file
Used the command line to generate the gpg key because gpa forces you to use a wizard that gives you few choices. Updated mutt to use the new key and published the public key

unix.cs mysql

I had some problems with the root@unix host, but I eventually got it to take root@unix.cs.plattsburgh.edu, set up faculty accounts, contacting faculty to see what priveleges they want their students to have.

unix.cs ldap

Switched unix.cs from using its own ldap server to using server's. Originally I thought that it was receiving updates also, but it didn't. So, I stopped running slapd and changed the files in /etc and /etc/ldap

One odditity is that ldapsearch seems to return me the old database and not the new, but authentication is working...

emacs jdk

Problems compiling from within emacs,

First needed to set JAVA_HOME environment variable to find jdk
Next needed to create a symbolic link for bsh.jar from within /usr/share/emacs21/site-lisp/java/lib
Finally needed to set the classpath to /usr/share/java/jde.jar:.
The first part to compile and the second for it to run.

cron followup

The cron jobs seem happy with explictly setting the path in the perl script.

projector display

I had problems getting the projector display to work. It is a Proxima Ultralight and the display is a Dell 1703FP. Both are driven from a single splitter. I ended up getting it to work by configuring it for the projector with dpkg-reconfigure and then removing the VerticalRefresh field.
Otherwise I could not get both to work at the same time with a good resolution. It still is not optimal, but it is ok.

cron jobs

The cron job failed due to a problem with the path

Made a change to the perl script to explictly set the path there, since each machine has a separate cron. I'm not sure why it was not correct, the defaults in /etc/crontab looked correct.

t -1

Wrote up draft policy on network usage and sent it to John Bradley and Hap Wheeler.

Printed Lab Schedule and out of Service signs

Testing 24b for bad blocks to have additional information on its trouble report.

Need to set up new user directories and entries into ldap...

Need to set up update scripts and install new software on lab machines

Need to prepare for courses.

Need to set up back up scripts

need to explore angel

need to set up mailing lists and get permission for the info to come in from outside

need to set up monitoring on printing and disk usage

more installation

Worked on some more installations, overall it is going ok

The install I did from desktop ubuntu had boot sector problems, so it looks like it is not just a knoppix thing.

The dd I tried on the live system didn't work (file system corruption). I expected that, but wanted to give it a shot since I am cd constrained anyways.

Installations

Yesterday I worked on installations, I am probably a bit over half done. Not too much interesting. I gave knoppix another try and it still messed up the boot partition. And Mandriva just does not seem to work very well at all. Other than that not too much. I have about 8 machines that I am using to transfer the image.

Right now I'm going to do a quick check of how mailcap works and then go back to the installations
I still need to setup a script to make new directories and run the setup program and then get my courses ready.

usb sticks and imaging

Good news,
I got all of the software for Dr. Plaza installed,

Bad news,
Having problems with usb sticks, I'm hoping that I can solve it like the sound issue...

argh
I lost a post because I had an accidental poweroff

the usb problem can be fixed by chmodding pmount and pumount so they are globally executable

the imaging is going ok, but there have been some weird problems

cslab-113 had a bad boot sector/partition I recopied the boot partition and that fixed it
it was giving me a grub error 17

cslab-112 is giving me problems too, so I am going to recopy it again. The problem is that I lost gzip in the first copy, so I am going to wait until I have the desktop version and boot it live and then try copying again

The others are going ok, I have some issues with the network, but I think I have narrowed them to the /etc files iftab hosts hostname and network/interfaces

machine 17 does have a bad cd rom drive, or something, it is a pain in the butt
going to test the cdrom burner again in 11b

I started an installation of mailman, but was having problems with it and haven't had a chance to get back to it.

ftp proxy

there is not any current easy way to do this
after struggling through many package documentations and iptables I've decided to mirror CPAN instead. I got the nat aspect of it working, but the packages did not support caching, so I was unsatisfied with that as a solution. Here is the iptables rules I used

iptables -t nat -A OUTPUT -o eth0 -p tcp -s 137.142.101.21/24 --dport 21 -j DNAT --to-destination 137.142.101.21:2370

sound problems

9:03
arrggh,

It seems that installing all of the kde stuff (probably artsd in particular) has hosed the gnome ability to do sound. The kde capability is still working, but gnome does not see the sound card.

10:28
still messing around with it. I've been editing the /etc/esound/esd.conf file and the /etc/asound.conf file, and tried installing alsa-oss package. I tested it on the live cd and things work there, so if I do no get it working soon, I'm going to start uninstalling packages until it work.

10:46
still no luck, trying to uninstall kubuntu and see if that helps things...
a scarier prospect might be that it stopped working because of one of the updates...

starting a fresh install on another machine to check out the possibility that it was an update

10:59
looks like it a permission problem
tried just changing /dev/dsp and that is not enough though...

11:10
ok, found all of the audio files and chmoded them, I'm reinstalling kubuntu and then will reboot and test again, hopefully it will go well.

If so, then I think I am ready to start imaging and propagating.

svn

I've been looking into using subversion for the csc 121 class, and I don't think I am going to this semester. I am a little unsure about the authentication aspect. I would like to use the webdav, since that seems the most robust/feature full, but with the upcoming conversion to kerberos, I am somewhat leary of spending too much effort on it.

The main issue with subversion, as with all shared resources is one of permissions....

I need to think about how students will be developing programs...

security tools

Reviewing http://sectools.org top 100 tools to see what I should install. I was thinking about tripwire, when I came across the list.

Installed ntop and noticed that nfs was acting up on the prototype machine. It would not unmount /home and I couldn't see what was still there so I rebooted.

Robotics Lab

Helped install and set up on the network the windows 2000 machines in the lab.

The default graphics drivers were horrible. To fix them required installing SP4, IE6, and the drivers themselves. Also installed Sophos, filezilla and putty, and did updates. Overall a slow process. Set up a local cache of the files on /local/net/windows

Hawkins (cont)

11:00
apt-cacher is speeding up the downloading and installation of the updates. I need to change the sources.list and apt.conf for it to work though. Need to think about a way to speed things up to reduce typing.

11:42
Having a hard time with optional apps...

12:41
Some progress, it seems that the tricky part is managing sources.list
the sources for most of the data appear to be in alternate places...

oh, and I checked earlier, and these are only 32-bit machines...

12:44
tested that the ldap propagation is still happening, it is

need to conifgure lab ldap services

14:05
default alternative for editor set to nano, needs to change to vi

14:30
distracted by trying out kde desktop, then back to ldap

17:13
moved www and installed mat lab and identified machines to be retired
back to ldap

mostly configured
one place that has been useful for installing these optional packages has been
http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Dapper

publishing since there will be an outage soon

apt-cacher

To get apt-cacher to work I needed to remove the line
Acquire::http::Proxy "false"
from /etc/apt/apt.conf

otherwise the string it sent to the cacher was ill-formed

office machine

Working on setting up my office machine as a dual boot

when configuring logical volumes for lvm, it does not seem to like spaces

it has been hanging for a while, I wonder if it is having more network problems,
it was not able to get to security.ubuntu earlier

todo

check that submit works
contact cms about user accounts
install newest java
check desktops for current apps

Incompatible binaries

I just realized that server/unix are 64 bit while the client machines are 32 bit, blah

Hawkins 53b (cont)

12:36
I need to harvest mac addresses for tomorrow's meeting, I'll work on that
next. I've burned an alternate install cd so I can get lvm on the machines.

13:21
d'oh
I was having trouble getting it to install and had forgotten that I have to change the SATA operation back to normal from combination

ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no hartdr@cslab-42.cs.plattsburgh.edu
helps to save some time...

14:28
harvested most of the addresses, just machine 17 is not working at all

apt-cacher

I'm waiting for my desktop machine, so I'm working on the servers...

install apt-cacher onto server.cs

Hawkins 53b

9:32
Starting in Hawkins today.

First thing I need to do is see how they are doing the ldap and then check out the general config.

9:49
Here's something interesting, in nsswitch.conf they use
passwd: files compat ldap
I wonder why the extra compat is there...

I think I'm going to copy etc and maybe some other directories over to www

problems ssh to the machine, I guess I'll just get one working and use the others for reference in the meantime.

Actually, since there are 'too many', maybe I'll leave one configured the old way until after classes start....

9:57
starting test installation
one annoying thing is that I'll have to mess with the bios twice on each machine, once to enable booting from the cd and once to disable it.

I don't think there is any practical way around it though since I want to redo the filesystems also...

9:58
CD is checking itself for defects,
stats from slackware are Jan 20, 2005
896 MB memory (probably more actual)
3GHz pentium 4 processor
These are Optiplex 280
40 GB hard drive
ATAPI 48X DVD-ROM CD-R/RW drive, 2048kB Cache

10:03
still checking, not sure if it is stuck or not,
the progress bar keeps moving, but it hasn't moved from the file it is checking
I'll give it a few more minutes...

10:06
wonderful, google, ubuntu and probably others are down

connectivity is kinda up (and down)
cd finished checking ok, onto the install

10:18
That is different, the regular install disk boots up as a live cd and then you do the install from there.

10:38
Interesting, the partition manager does not seem to easily/default support lvm, like the other ubuntu installers did

nothing obvious on the web, there is an erase option, which I'm trying.
It does not say it is lvm, but it does not ask, so I'll try it and see what happens.

10:56
base install there, now to see what we got

server install (continued)

0:12
working on updating

0:33
update done

need to work on migrating the data back

0:46

problems with copying and preserving permissions...

6:48

rsync seems stuck on a very deep directory structure...

13:15
/home has just finished synching
check for other things to move

15:33
dial up is slow and annoying

getting a weird error in the /etc/exports file
exportfs: No host name given with /local/admin (rw,sync,wdelay,hide,nocrossmnt,secure,root_squash,no_all_squash,subtree_check,secure_locks,acl,mapping=identity,anonuid=-2,anongid=-2), suggest *(rw,sync,wdelay,hide,nocrossmnt,secure,root_squash,no_all_squash,subtree_check,secure_locks,acl,mapping=identity,anonuid=-2,anongid=-2) to avoid warning

from

/home 137.142.101.0/24(rw,sync)


theoretically the ip address version should work....

15:18
evil whitespace was the culprit, only one space is allowed between the directory and host(subnet)

16:15
ldap and nfs are up and working
I think things are back to where they started.
I'm going to send out an email and then see what happens.

Oh, I want to look up if mysql can authenticate against an ldap server...

21:29
looks like postgresql can be integrated with others and mysql can not

server install

15:31
I've checked the filesystems for changes from yesterday and there were none.
I've backed everything up to www, but I'm still nervous about it

I need to move the monitors around so I can have it on the desk

15:36
time to get started, first the bios
and the jet engine takes off...

this one is set up as raid-5

nothing too surprising here, it actually has the same amount of ram (1GB, that slackware had recognized)

hopefully the raid will work here also...

15:40
trying the rescue a broken system first just to see if that works
so far so good

15:43
seems to be hanging on nic-firmware retrieval...
rebooting and trying to clean the disk

15:46
checking cd for defects....

16:04
I'm not sure if my clock jumped or I zoned, but I lost about 10 minutes
anyways, it failed, I'm going to try the server disc instead and see if that works
otherwise I'll need to burn a new one

worst case I might be able to install from the network, yuck...

16:07
checking this one for defects...

16:08
a quick failure, blech...

one more time...

16:09
fail

going to make a cd, probably be at least a half hour

17:43
Saw Jim in Redcay, talked
could not find image, started downloading, but eta on the download is 23:00 ish
trying to copy from cd...

17:49
going to try a network boot...
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/Netboot

18:22
still working on a network boot

had to go get a router out of the network lab because the arp requests were blocked

or not, the arp requests are still timing out, I'll try installing an arp server...

18:33
not sure if arp is the problem
server is complaining about tftp...

18:44
booting up into slack ware, will check to see if I can get it to work off of a floppy I found...

this site was useful with respect to pxe error codes
http://www.emboot.com/faq-pxe.shtml

19:05
floppy boot failed

going to try pxe boot again, then maybe trying burning new cds, just in case

checking to see if there are any bios upgrades

nothing interesting in the bios stuff

19:30
going to try burning...

19:38
download still a half hour away...
I tried cleaning the disc off again, at this point if this reboot does not work, then I'm calling it a day and trying to get the cd drive repaired.

20:19
I caved and went back to try the other cd
it seems to be working so far

20:21
I'm committed, the filesystem is gone

20:42
still chugging...

20:48
got ssh installed, going home, will get the copies started from there

Unix reinstall (cont)

13:25
I'm back, taking a look at the slapd.conf I wonder if it has to do with the password format string...
or because I'm using Pam now ...

nothing obvious

13:35
reviewing the open ldap documentation

13:44
found some info on pam,
but I'm first trying to address an error message, it is saying that it is trying to connect as null and getting denied

Aug 5 13:26:20 unix sudo: (pam_unix) authentication failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty=tty2 ruser= rhost= user=del
Aug 5 13:26:36 unix sudo: del : TTY=tty2 ; PWD=/home/del ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/bin/tcsh
Aug 5 13:26:36 unix sudo: nss_ldap: could not connect to any LDAP server as (null) - Can't contact LDAP server


13:48
progress, I think, adding use_sasl off to /etc/ldap/ldap.conf handled the null error,
now I'm getting

Aug 5 13:51:17 unix slapd[5921]: OTP unavailable because can't read/write key database /etc/opiekeys: No such file or directory
Aug 5 13:51:17 unix ldapsearch: DIGEST-MD5 client step 2
Aug 5 13:51:21 unix ldapsearch: DIGEST-MD5 client step 2
Aug 5 13:51:51 unix sshd[5977]: Failed password for hartdr from 137.142.110.1 port 46133 ssh2

I'm not sure why it is using DIGEST-MD5, it should be using crypt, since that is what they are using upstream, first I'll look into opiekeys

13:53
installing opie keys

now I'm down to
Aug 5 13:58:48 unix sshd[6071]: Failed password for hartdr from 137.142.110.1 port 43325 ssh2

wow, I just noticed that www is on a different sublan, 110 instead of 101

14:08
reading up on pam...

http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/libs/pam/Linux-PAM-html/sag-overview.html

14:25
found that it was missing libpam-ldap

this like nss was missing from most of the mirrors, I hope that is not a bad sign

still at
Aug 5 14:49:12 unix sshd[6215]: Failed password for hartdr from 137.142.110.1 port 46629 ssh2

let me see if I can discover some more info

15:00
changed the common-auth so that the unix login was not required, just sufficient

Need to change it later to prevent ldap password from being accepted for su

onto the filesystem, and then restoring the data, not that there was much, but I'll check

15:07
Moved local account to /local/home and changed my shells to tcsh
nfs is not working out of the box, might need to check the portmapper

15:16
unclear what the problem is, but I'm thinking it would just be better to worry about it after the reinstall

15:30
moving onto server for now

Unix reinstall

21:46
Got everything copied to www. Not sure if I'll be able to keep the data in place.

This is unbelievable, unix has 2GB of memory. Slackware was only recognizing 896MB!!!

21:49
ok, trying to boot off the cd...
ubuntu amd64 server disk
it is a xeon processor, which use the amd64 type

booting...
dual processor, looking for stuff...

21:51
trying the memory test for fun

Here is some of the data it shows:
L1 Cache 16k 22322MB/s
L2 Cache 1024K 19583MB/s
Memory 2047M 2078MB/s

this is slow though, goint to skip it, it is going to be a long night as it is

One of the options was to install a lamp server, which is kinda neat

21:55
looking at disk configuration stuff

going to try pretending it is a broken system

21:57
taking a long time to load the kernel

21:58
too long, reboot and run a check on the disk

22:00
apprarently hung again, going to try the alternate cd

22:02
alternate seems to work, yeah!

22:06
this is what I suspected and seems right, there are two disks in the machine and there is hardware mirroring happening, and only 1 disk shows up to the operating system.

This is ok, it saves me from having to do raid myself.

22:10
Looks like I will be reinstalling the operating system with LVM.

I have mixed feelings about hardware raid, I don't trust hardware too much...

Found a page describing the machine:
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/pe1850/en/UG/p1295c10.htm

22:11
installing

22:14
fairly easy

only 18GB on the disks, yuck, kinda small, too bad because it seems like a decent server otherwise

22:20
installing.... I'm reading more on ldap

stupid black pen leaked on me

22:31
easy part is done, now to see what we got

22:34
eeek, it froze on me, I logged in clicked on updates and it froze....
wow, it looks like it was a hardware error since the amber light was flashing....

rebooting...

22:37
logged in via text and things look ok
going to try graphical again

the lack of built in su is annoying,

wow, it looks like graphics is bad, it did not even log all the way in,
no amber light yet, but the blue is flashing...

let's see what google says

22:54
in the mean time let's try updating everything
155 packages, 200MB

23:09
finished apt-get dist-upgrade
ran dpkg-recofigure xserver-xorg
restarted x

....

logged in, died

reboot
going to skip using x for now

23:17
installed ssh
logged in from my laptop
kill X when it froze, much faster than rebooting

23:18
moving on, I don't need to get this done and it is probably just a waste of time

onto ldap

23:33

still unclear how they were using ldap...

skipping to just try and do it on my own

0:32
ldap is running, but not authenticating correctly

0:53
slowing down, getting tired....
ldap search is asking for a password where as it didn't in the old config, so I wonder if it is a change in implementation, or if there is a file somewhere...

1:08
need to use -x arg to specify simple authentication

1:50
ARRGGH, I think I figured it out.
Instead of unix connecting to a central server, the central server pushes update to unix,
which is completely different from how I would have thought it would be done.
blech

now I'll see if I can dump the current database on server and use it to bootstrap unix

2:03
well maybe, the database is the old version

looking to update

found some python scripts

install gcc
g++
python-dev
lynx

crash... of the script

2:26
difficult to find upgrade utility for db4...

sleepy cat does not seem to use the mime types...

compiling from scratch

installing make

2:42
gave up on db, version mismatch problems

tried slapcat and slapadd, the data moved but it is not showing up in ldapsearch or in login attempt

3:20
checking into if nss is working

3:28
found a libnss-ldap package, but it was not on all of the mirrors....strange
rebooting now, too tired to think if I could get around rebooting
this definitely has been an experience so far.

I'm close to just setting up yellowpages for the department

3:32
I'm tired and need to think about whether this is how things should be set up
I'll come back tomorrow or Sunday

Hawkins 53b 11B has a bad cd writer

Tried writing two iso images and both failed.

Optiplex machines

The slackware version seems slow, even the terminal.

The ubuntu live cd takes a while to boot, but seems more responsive.

Update: Need to change SATA operation to normal mode from combination to allow Ubuntu to see the hard drive.

Hawkins 53B lab info

Dell optiplex GX280
SATA 40GB
HL-DT-ST RW/DVD GCC-4481B
1 GB, 2 512MB dimms
pentium 4 3 GHz

linux 2.4.29 Jan 20, 2005 - slackware

40 machines

1 hp laserjet 4200n

Wishlist

Uninteruptable power supply for the servers.

Phone for the real time lab.

Hard drives for backup space.

Server Notes

unix: Dell Poweredge 1850, Xeon processor, 1GB ram, ~15 GB hard drive, Megaraid. Running slackware with a 2.4 kernel. Missing many common utilities.

file: Dell Poweredge 2800, Xeon processor, 1GB ram, ~130 GB hard drive, Megaraid. Running slackware with a 2.6 kernel.

Concern: Slackware has weak package management.

Possible solution: Suse Enterprise Linux is supported for these machines. Unclear if openSuse can handle it. Other linux solutions have mixed reports about getting the raid working.

Question: How useful is the hardware raid?

Server Migration

Started Tuesday morning, Shawn, Symen, and Joe showed up.

Moved the case from Hawkins 53B to 36A, need to decide what to do with former (unknown servers) that were in the case.

Moved servers to new case, servers are too deep for the case. Removed back door of case to allow them to fit there. Probably need to find a longer term solution.

The machines are somewhat loud, so it is better not to have them in the main teaching lab.

Contacted networking support to turn on the ports.

Networking issues were resolved Wednesday morning.

Some minor nfs problem. The server seemed confused about who it was exporting to. Needs further investigation.

Ubuntu Installation

In the redcay lab tried to install ubuntu on E24 and E23. They both hung on hdc problems.

Update 1: Tried booting laptop and home machine using the disk and they worked fine.

Update 2: Talked to Jim Owens, he indicated that he had experienced problems on machines that had less than 256 MB of memory.