Re: bash-update
On Thu, 2014-09-25 at 09:16 +, Werf, C.G. van der (Carel) wrote:
Yesterday a lot of yum-updates ran to update to the latest bash-versions.
Though my /bin/bash was changed last night, and yum.log shows 3.2.33 should
have installed,
# /bin/bash --version still shows 3.2.25
Ofcourse, also # strings /bin/bash shows old version number.
Is this a policy NOT to change version-numbers ?
It's worth pointing out that there has just been a serious (and possibly
remote!) bash vulnerability which this fixes.
A test is:
env X=() { :;} ; echo vulnerable /bin/bash -c echo completed
My systems were echoing vulnerable before the fix but not after.
John
NTP DOS issue?
I've been warned that my SL 5.9 machine is potentially vulnerable to the recently announced DOS attack. As far as I can see both my 5.9 and 6x machines are running vulnerable versions, am I missing something or are we vulnerable? John
Robust local mirroring of SL
Until now there seems to have been no _robust_ way of using a local repository for yum updates. Editing the .repo files, as advised by the HowTo, breaks updates of the repo files themselves, and each of the methods on yum's own web page has a list of disadvantages. Using a local squid proxy has problems with mirroring. But SL6x would finally seem to provide a simple way to do this! From man yum.conf: As of 3.2.28, any file in /etc/yum/vars is turned into a variable named after the filename This means that sl6x.repo can contain baseurl entries such as: baseurl=http://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6x/$basearch/updates/security/ $localrepo/6x/$basearch/updates/security/ http://ftp1.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6x/$basearch/updates/security/ ftp://ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6x/$basearch/updates/security/ and the yum-conf-sl6x rpm could contain the above SL6x.repo plus a file /etc/yum/vars/localrepo consisting of the single line: http://ftp2.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific To use a local repository we just replace the content of /etc/yum/vars/localrepo with the URL of the local repository, eg: file:///somewhere/SL/scientific The change is simple, persistent across upgrades and doesn't break the repo files. This raises the questions: 1. Am I the only one finding using a local repository to be irksome, or is everybody else just smarter than I am? 2. Would the SL maintainers be willing to put something like this into the yum-conf-sl6x RPM? John
Re: LibreOffice Headless
On Sun, 2013-01-27 at 12:17 -0600, Gerald Waugh wrote: Hello, Anyone running LibreOffice on a Server? Appreciate ideas on how to implement some of the MS office features on a Web Server It's a little vague but we use unoconv from our very own Dag Wieers to generate PDFs from a web form and an openoffice file. (Thanks Dag, if you're reading this.) It's worth kicking off libreoffice in server mode and leaving it lying around to connect to. John
Re: mirroring SL5
I know it's a little low tech but FWIW I'm currently just using: rsync -avzH --delete \ --exclude=sites/Fermi --exclude=archive/debuginfo \ --exclude=archive/obsolete \ --include='/5[2-9x]/x86_64' \ --exclude='/*/*' \ rsync://rsync.scientificlinux.org/scientific/ scientific/ to grab just the x86_64 distros. Works for me... John
Hard links and mirroring
I have machines running two or three of the most recent versions of SL and would like to mirror the distros making efficient use of hard links (there seem to be very few RPMs that are in just one version). I'm trying: rsync -avzH --delete \ --exclude=sites/Fermi --exclude=archive/debuginfo \ --exclude=archive/obsolete \ --include='/5[2-9x]/x86_64' \ --exclude='/*/*' \ rsync://rsync.scientificlinux.org/scientific/ scientific/ but I'm finding that the same file in two distributions is coming over as two different files, rather than two hard links to the same file. For example: ls -il 5[45]/x86_64/SL/evolution-2.12.3-19.el5.x86_64.rpm 71805541 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 12388735 Sep 4 2009 54/x86_64/SL/evolution-2.12.3-19.el5.x86_64.rpm 77856909 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 12388735 Sep 4 2009 55/x86_64/SL/evolution-2.12.3-19.el5.x86_64.rpm This leads me to believe that either I'm doing something wrong or that they genuinely are different, but identical, files on the SL server. Any suggestions? Thanks John
SL and audio/video/skype?
Has anybody found SL to be a credible and reliable platform for audio and video, in particular skype or do we need to be thinking of a more consumer-orientated distro such as ubuntu? I ask because a user asked to to install skype. Skype installs fine and the video and audio _appear_ to be supported but... * The video plays on the screen when I test it but skype doesn't seem to recognise it. * Audio output works but I cannot record. * Trying to record on a different machine for testing gives the helpful message: ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:1008:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave aplay: main:583: audio open error: No such file or directory The impression I get from google is that linux audio recording is, shall we say, interesting. I'm hoping that somebody will be able to make it uninteresting by saying if you use this card, this camera and this recipe it will work reliably. Many thanks if you can. John
Re: MAC based server
On Tue, 2010-04-27 at 07:58 +0100, Dr Andrew C Aitchison wrote: [ Don't forget that anyone with admin right on a machine can change the mac address - see eg http://www.topbits.com/how-to-change-a-mac-address.html ] iptables has options to allow packets based on the source mac address but, as I said, if the packet has been through a router since it left the machine you wish to control then the address in the packet will not belong to the machine you are interested in. Another option is to restrict by netmask and to hard-code all the MAC addresses in /etc/ethers, including dummy entires for any unused IP addresses. If you want real security buy a network access control device, $$. John
Windows 7 dual boot?
Somebody brought me their Windows 7 laptop (Toshiba Satellite) on which to install SL. All seemed fine but now it won't boot. At first it hung at Grub stage 1.5 .A CD rescue boot and grub setup didn't really help. I tried removing all the grub1_5 files and rerunning grub and now it hangs at stage 2. Technically, I suppose this must count as progress... Any suggestions most welcome. Thanks John
Re: Any 'best' hard drives and incremental backup approaches to home systems?
My experience is that the reputable brands have always been pretty good in terms of how their drives behave when they go out of the door. The problem comes when there's a problem that doesn't show up for six months or a year, or some firmware interaction. IBM, Seagate, WD have all had problems in this way. IBM sold to Hitachi soon after their Deathstar problems. Sorry ;-( John
Re: RAID configuration problem
Nov 4 10:36:31 terra kernel: sd 5:0:0:1: SCSI error: return code = 0x000b Nov 4 10:36:31 terra kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev sdq, sector 5858973568 Nov 4 10:36:31 terra kernel: printk: 16 messages suppressed. Nov 4 10:36:31 terra kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdq, logical block 732371696 Nov 4 10:36:31 terra kernel: sd 5:0:0:1: SCSI error: return code = 0x000b Nov 4 10:36:31 terra kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev sdq, sector 5858973568 Nov 4 10:36:31 terra kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdq, logical block 732371696 Nov 4 10:36:32 terra kernel: sd 5:0:0:1: SCSI error: return code = 0x000b Nov 4 10:36:32 terra kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev sdq, sector 5858973688 ... Nov 4 10:36:33 terra kernel: sd 5:0:0:1: SCSI error: return code = 0x000b Nov 4 10:36:33 terra kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev sdq, sector 5858973688 Nov 4 10:36:33 terra kernel: sd 5:0:0:1: SCSI error: return code = 0x000b Nov 4 10:36:33 terra kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev sdq, sector 5858973688 Nov 4 10:36:33 terra kernel: sd 5:0:0:1: SCSI error: return code = 0x000b Nov 4 10:36:33 terra kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev sdq, sector 5858973568 It's looking horribly like a disk error: have you checked it? Try badblocks. John
Re: RAID configuration problem
On Wed, 2009-11-04 at 11:01 +, Mark Whidby wrote: John Rowe wrote: Nov 4 10:36:31 terra kernel: sd 5:0:0:1: SCSI error: return code = 0x000b Nov 4 10:36:31 terra kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev sdq, sector 5858973568 Nov 4 10:36:31 terra kernel: printk: 16 messages suppressed. Nov 4 10:36:31 terra kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdq, logical block 732371696 Nov 4 10:36:31 terra kernel: sd 5:0:0:1: SCSI error: return code = 0x000b Nov 4 10:36:31 terra kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev sdq, sector 5858973568 Nov 4 10:36:31 terra kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdq, logical block 732371696 Nov 4 10:36:32 terra kernel: sd 5:0:0:1: SCSI error: return code = 0x000b Nov 4 10:36:32 terra kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev sdq, sector 5858973688 ... Nov 4 10:36:33 terra kernel: sd 5:0:0:1: SCSI error: return code = 0x000b Nov 4 10:36:33 terra kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev sdq, sector 5858973688 Nov 4 10:36:33 terra kernel: sd 5:0:0:1: SCSI error: return code = 0x000b Nov 4 10:36:33 terra kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev sdq, sector 5858973688 Nov 4 10:36:33 terra kernel: sd 5:0:0:1: SCSI error: return code = 0x000b Nov 4 10:36:33 terra kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev sdq, sector 5858973568 It's looking horribly like a disk error: have you checked it? Try badblocks. That's what I thought originally but no matter which combination of 4 disks I try to configure I always get these errors. Unless the box has been populated with a whole batch of bad disks, I suppose. I thought that might be too easy, but it was worth a try. Does it follow any particular disk controller? Cable? John
Re: opening links
On Mon, 2009-04-20 at 08:37 -0700, Tom Rosmond wrote: I recently did a YUM upgrade to my SL 5.2 (32bit) system and now my Evolution mail client (ver 2.12.3-8.el5_2.2) will not open http links embedded in messages, either when I click on them or from the dropdown menu. I can copy and paste links, but that is a nuisance. Any other reports of this problem? Have you tried going to the preferences page of your browser and checking to see if it's still the default browser? In firefox it's in the Advanced - General pane. John
VPN client?
Our University operates a PPTP VPN. I have installed pptp but its configuration and startup are opaque to say the least! Does anybody else have experience of connecting an SL client to a PPTP VPN? Thanks John
Re: tripplite support in gnome power manager?
If it helps, I use Network UPS Tools. Seems to do the job. John
Re: The vacation command
On Tue, 2008-04-29 at 14:27 +0100, Eva Myers wrote: On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 09:14:53AM -0400, Brent L. Bates wrote: The `vacation' command is part of sendmail, at least it is part of the original sendmail.org sources. TUV may not compile it as part of their distribution and therefore does not get into the SL distributions. Actually I have uninstalled sendmail because I prefer exim, so that is probably the problem. I will try reinstalling sendmail and see whether it includes the vacation command. Eva. procmail has documentation for a recipe to do a similar thing with enough smarts not to reply to mailing lists, etc. Just google for it. John
