If you install the amanda-client package on Debian, some things need to be configured before you can actually use the service. By default, the server will not be able to connect to the client. The common error is: “selfcheck request failed: timeout waiting for ACK”. Read the post for the solution.

Here’s the fix for the common error with ScpOnly when using the Jail SFTP option. The error message for WinSCP clients is “WinSCP: this is end-of-file:0 failed with invalid output” when trying to connect to a SFTP server. View the post to see the fix for WinSCP.

I recently installed Mailman with Exim4, which was a challenge considering all the manual configuration you have to do. I found a few guides on the install, but they didn’t seem to be “complete” enough to get the system working. Turns out, the biggest challenge was Exim4. The configuration files are confusing, especially since there are two sets of configuration files.

One thing I’ve encountered with Awstats is adding in old apache log files. This is useful if you are migrating data from servers. By default, Awstats will ignore ALL past dates in the log that occur before the most recent log entry date. In order to avoid Awstats from finding the “recent log entry date”, you will need move all Awstats cached files into a separate folder.

I recently implemented a way to limit access by IP range on specific blogs on WordPress MU. As you know, WordPress MU uses Apache Rewrite engine to rewrite URLs. For instance, you have a blog on WordPress MU called “intranet”. Apache Rewrite takes the “intranet” string in the URL and automatically rewrites it as a value in the PHP script. A side effect to Apache Rewrite is that “Directory” .htaccess parameters don’t work. So, if you wanted only your company IPs to access an internal blog, you will need to use Apache Rewrite parameters instead. For the solution, read on…

Recently, there was a Mailman upgrade that seems to break Mailman if you don’t have a list called “mailman” on your server. Symptoms of this error include:

/var/log/mailman/error
mailmanctl(2801): PID unreadable in: /var/run/mailman/mailman.pid
mailmanctl(2801): [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/var/run/mailman/mailman.pid'
mailmanctl(2801): Is qrunner even running?


If you try to restart mailman
/etc/rc2.d/S20mailman restart
and get the same error, then you need to check whether you have a “mailman” list on your server.

To install mailman list, follow this resource:
http://www.askdavetaylor.com/why_is_mailman_complaining_site_list_is_missing_mailman.html

After installing the mailman list, you can try restarting the mailman qrunner service to see if it works.
/etc/rc2.d/S20mailman start

If you get a GPG error when doing an apt-get update, here’s the quickest way to fix it.The error message looks similar to:

W: GPG error: http://security.debian.org etch/updates Release:
The following signatures couldn’t be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY XXXXXXXXXXX: There is no public key available for the following key IDs: W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems

By default, it says “You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems”. The problem is, apt-get update doesn’t fix the keys automagically. To fix, you will need to update the debian keyring by …

Why install VMWARE Tools?
Improved display support with SVGA driver
Cut and paste from host onto the VMWare guest
Automation of guest operating system commands
Sync time
Shrinking disk space
Startup and shutdown scripts

In order to install VMWARE tools on Debian, you will need to make sure you have the package “linux-headers-[kernel version]” installed.

If not, you will get a prompt during the configuration asking for the path of the C header files.

To find the version of your kernel, type in:
uname -a

It should say something like Linux infomine 2.6.26-2-amd64 (with your current CPU architecture at the end)

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NOTE: Do this at your own risk. If you put the …

Ever change the Network MAC address setting in VMWARE and you can’t get the network to work?

Here’s a quick how-to on changing the MAC address on a Linux VM. This is useful if you want to clone an existing machine and want to have both machines running with network at the same time. I am using VMWARE Server 2.0. (free version)

I’ve done multiple Debain upgrades from Etch to Lenny and have noticed there are some issues with grub breaking. The upgrade somehow puts the wrong hard drive information in the default grub file. Here’s some recommendations on how to perform the Lenny upgrade