tom’s blog

If you want to use a higher resolution on your linux console, you have to add the specific option while loading the kernel.
i.e: kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.25 root=/dev/sda3 resume=/dev/sda2 vga=0×0325

Problem: The settings differ depending on your graphics card.
But: There is an easy way: hwinfo

[ sudo ] hwinfo −−framebuffer

Example output:
Mode 0×0307: 1280×1024 (+1280), 8 bits
Mode 0×031a: 1280×1024 (+2560), 16 bits
Mode 0×031b: 1280×1024 (+5120), 24 bits
Mode 0×0305: 1024×768 (+1024), 8 bits
Mode 0×0317: 1024×768 (+2048), 16 bits
Mode 0×0318: 1024×768 (+4096), 24 bits
Mode 0×0312: 640×480 (+2560), 24 bits
Mode 0×0314: 800×600 (+1600), 16 bits
Mode 0×0315: 800×600 (+3200), 24 bits
Mode 0×0301: 640×480 (+640), 8 bits
Mode 0×0303: 800×600 (+832), 8 bits
Mode 0×0311: 640×480 (+1280), 16 bits

Thanks to Gerd [de] for the hint.

SUSE Linux 10.1 has reached End of Life : /

 
Quote from the opensuse-security-announce mailing list:

With the release of an mysql security fix on August 13 we have released
the last update for SUSE Linux 10.1. (Actually 10.1 was discontinued on
May 31st, but the queue took a bit longer to flush from all updates.)

 
See: http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2008-08/msg00004.html

OS: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP1 (x86_64) [64 bit]

VMware Server [1.06] depends on some 32 bit software:
+ xorg-x11-libs-32bit-6.9.x (should automatically add the other packages, too)
  - expat-32bit-2.0.x
  - fontconfig-32bit-2.3.x
  - freetype2-32bit-2.1.x
  - glibc-32bit-2.x
  - ncurses-32bit-5.x
  - zlib-32bit-1.2.x

Additionally gcc, make, kernel headers, etc. should be installed to run vmware-config-tools.pl properly.

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Today, I bought a new scanner - of course without checking linux compatibility : /
hp - a well known brand. Description says “Works with Max OS X, Win Vista, XP, 2000″.
Linux wasn’t mentioned, but that’s not unusual at all.

The default xsane backend package (<- v.1.0.19 [delivered with Ubuntu Hardy])
didn’t find a device, so I tried installing the beta release of the hp3900 sane backends (drivers).
This version is still beta status, but got my new scanner up and running : )

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I’m absolutely fascinated by the new Ubuntu release (18 October 2007).

New features, that I like:

• Repositories are very easy to add
• Hardware detection is great
• Improved Gui, nice desktop effects
• Support for WEP, WPA, PPTP, etc. out of the box
• …

I just installed the system and it was never easier to set up wireless lan or a vpn connection in a linux distribution… Keep up the good work!

Screenshots of my desktop:




(click to enlarge)

With awstats you can create great statistics and graphs about the access of your website. If you want to use more than one logfile in a configuration file, you can use logresolvemerge.pl which is included in the awstats package.

i.e.:
LogFile="/path2/awstats/tools/logresolvemerge.pl /var/log/apache/access_log /var/log/apache/another_log |"

Test your configuration:
/path2/awstats.pl -config=sitename -update

After installing suPHP a few days ago, I had the first problem with a xt:Commerce installation. That’s what happened on a SuSE 10.0 system:

When trying to access the pages, it stayed blank and there were some wierd errors in the apache logfile:
[Mon Apr 02 16:44:48 2007] [error] [client x.x.x.x] PHP Fatal error: %v%v() [<a href='function.require'>function.require</a>]: Failed opening required ‘DIR_WS_INCLUDESfilenames.php’ (include_path=’/usr/share/php5′) in /path/to/user/html/includes/application_top.php on line 57

Reason was found quite quick: The include path only had the default path and didn’t include the webroots any longer : (

Solution: change config in /etc/php5/cli/php.ini .
From:
include_path = "/usr/share/php5"
To:
include_path = ".:/usr/share/php5"

. = Homedir of webroot
: = next path

suPHP is a nice tool for executing PHP scripts with the permissions of their owners. It’s comparable to suexec (which is for perl scripts). When using this tool, you don’t need SafeMode any longer, etc…

Tested on: SuSE 10.0, openSuSE 10.1
Prerequisites: php5-fastcgi, autoconf, gcc

in openSuSE 10.1, I had to (soft)link some files:
ln -s /usr/include/apr-1/* /usr/include/apache2

configure in openSuSE 10.1:
./configure --with-apxs=/usr/sbin/apxs2 --with-php=/usr/bin/php5 \
--with-logfile=/var/log/apache2/suphp.log --with-min-uid=30 \
--with-min-gid=30 --with-apache-user=wwwrun \
--with-apr=/usr/bin/apr-1-config --with-setid-mode=owner \
--prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc

configure in SuSE 10.0:
./configure --with-apxs=/usr/sbin/apxs2 --with-php=/usr/bin/php5 \
--with-logfile=/var/log/apache2/suphp.log --with-min-uid=30 \
--with-min -gid=30 --with-apache-user=wwwrun \
--with-apr=/usr/bin/apr-config --with-setid-mode=owner \
--prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc

After that, usual way:
make; make install

Check your configuration at /etc/suphp.conf. For me, it looks someway like this:
[global]
logfile=/var/log/apache2/suphp.log
loglevel=info
webserver_user=wwwrun
docroot=/srv/www/htdocs
allow_file_group_writeable=false
allow_file_others_writeable=false
allow_directory_group_writeable=false
allow_directory_others_writeable=false
check_vhost_docroot=false
errors_to_browser=false
env_path=/bin:/usr/bin
umask=0022
min_uid=30
min_gid=30
;
[handlers]
;Handler for php-scripts
x-httpd-php=php:/srv/www/cgi-bin/php5
;Handler for CGI-scripts
x-suphp-cgi=execute:!self

Add suPHP module to your apache config (/etc/sysconfig/apache2):
APACHE_MODULES="access .... php5 suphp"

Create a new file to tell apache to use suPHP:
/etc/apache2/httpd.conf.local
<Directory "/srv/www/htdocs">
php_admin_value engine off
suPHP_Engine on
AddHandler x-httpd-php .php .php3 .php4 .php5
suPHP_AddHandler x-httpd-php
</Directory>

Include that in your apache configuration (/etc/sysconfig/apache2):
APACHE_CONF_INCLUDE_FILES="httpd.conf.local"

After restarting apache, it should be done ; )

I had greylisting running for a while with a little perl script, that only worked with ip-addresses. As spam is growing an growing, I wanted to use the whole triplet (ip/sender/recipient) for the filter.

As I did not want to use a database backend, the decision led to greylistd - an easy configurable daemon. I needed the packages for (open)SuSE, that can be found in openSuSE’s software repository.

After installing it and checking the basics at /etc/greylistd/config, you have to add a little code to your acls in exim.conf, i.e.:

defer message = greylisted $sender_host_address. please try again later
condition = ${readsocket{/var/run/greylistd/socket}\
{--grey $sender_host_address $sender_address $local_part@$domain} {5s}{}{false}}

That was all I had to do to get it working. It’s advisable to add some hosts, that are known for problems with greylisting, not to be checked. Therefor you have to extend your acl:

defer message = greylisted $sender_host_address. please try again later
!hosts = : ${if exists {/etc/greylistd/whitelist-hosts}\
{/etc/greylistd/whitelist-hosts}{}} : \
${if exists {/var/lib/greylistd/whitelist-hosts}\
{/var/lib/greylistd/whitelist-hosts}{}}
condition = ${readsocket{/var/run/greylistd/socket}\
{--grey $sender_host_address $sender_address $local_part@$domain} {5s}{}{false}}

Many thanks for the documentations from Arne Schirmacher and Ben Charlton.

In my default configuration, time was running way too fast in VMware linux guests. After spending hours of searching howto solve the problem, I finally found a few different points that might work as a solution.

Enviroment:
Host: SuSE Linux 10.1
Guest: SuSE Linux 10.1
VMware Server: 1.0.2

• Install the vmware-tools on the guest.
  Don’t forget to install the kernel-sources if you have to recompile some modules.
• Insert clock=pit into the guest’s kernel boot options.
  When you’re using grub, it kinda looks like this:
  kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/sda3 apm=off acpi=off clock=pit
• Set tools.syncTime = “TRUE” in your virtual machine .vmx-file
  (found on the host machine [default in /var/lib/vmware/..])
  Your guest has to be rebooted to activate this setting.
• Finally, I had to change a little thing on the host machine:
  Disable powersaved (or powernowd or whatever applies to you)

From that time on, my guests are perfectly in sync with the host’s time.

Note: Nov, 23th 2007: .. or not … time is still too fast on some virtual machines : (

Next thing I tried right now is to add the following lines in /etc/vmware/config:
host.cpukHz = 2200000
host.noTSC = TRUE
ptsc.noTSC = TRUE
Where 2200000 (2,2 GHz) is the max speed of the host cpu.

+ Updated to VMware Server 1.0.4
^^ At first sight, this works perfectly for me : )

Useful Links:

• VMTN (VMware Technology Network)
• Timekeeping in VMware Virtual Machines
• Uhrzeit läuft im Gastsystem viel zu schnell (de)