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Ubuntu 6.10 /etc/motd

Up to and including Ubuntu 6.06, /etc/motd was managed similarly to FreeBSD’s: replace one line to note some information about the kernel, leave the rest of the contents alone. That way, an administrator can edit the motd anytime he likes and users will see the new version the very next time they log in.

Ubuntu 6.10 takes a different approach: /etc/motd is a symlink to /var/run/motd, which is at boottime generated from uname output+/etc/motd.tail. Upside: /etc can now be a readonly mount (I’m assuming this is their rationale). Downside: updating the motd without rebooting means applying the same edit to two different files equally. Bah. The manual pages do not mention this at all, too.

At least FreeBSD has /etc/rc.d/motd which you can run; in Ubuntu the motd magic is hidden in the middle of /etc/init.d/bootmisc.sh which also does things like backup your dmesg. Not very flexible.

Ubuntu workaround: remove the symlink; tough luck for the uname gnomes.

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Ubuntu 6.10 on Dell SC1435

boot installer with acpi=off; then do the same in your /boot/grub/menu.lst

It still notices all 4 cores here so I’m happy now. FreeBSD runs without any trouble too, on these boxes.

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Ubuntu 6.06 LTS on Dell 2950

Use a 6.06 server iso, not a 6.06.1 iso; the .1 sees your physical drives alongside your PERC5 virtual drives and it’s hella confusing (and a bit scary). The newer kernel apt-get will give you later on is fine too.

Before rebooting (or, as I did, after rebooting, finding stuff was broken, then booting the serverCD into chrooted rescuemode), add to /etc/mkinitramfs/modules within the right chroot:

megaraid_sas
bnx2 disable_msi=1

then run mkinitramfs -o /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-28-server 2.6.15-28-server (putting in the right kernel version). After that, everything should work like a charm!

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Firefox 2 – we fear change

browser.tabs.closeButtons = 3
browser.tabs.selectOwnerOnClose = false

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Windows GNU/Vista

Spotted in Rotterdam: Windows GNU/Vista

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Alpha Version Launched

The alpha release of OpenPanel is now available for people who want to test it out. We’re trying to keep this first test run somewhat controlled, so you have to sign up to join the party. The beta release will be completely public, but if you can’t wait to take a look go to the site and sign yourself up.

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State of the System

This month has been a really energetic one and we’re almost ready for a limited seed of the alpha release of OpenPanel to our testers. Now’s a good time to take a closer look at what it is that we’re shipping.

OpenPanel is not a monolithic product. Yes, you’re getting a complete control panel, but its architecture makes it extremely adaptable to more specific circumstances. Put into perspective, the project has the following components:

  • The opencore configuration daemon.
  • The authd privilege manager
  • The opencli command line shell
  • The openpanel AJAX-based web interface
  • A large number of opencore modules for configuring specific services
  • A software distribution for some necessary components

The flexible design means we will be able to adapt the OpenPanel system to new demands from the market easily. The open-ended architecture also allows this market to extend beyond the purposes for OpenPanel that we happen to find interesting; Users are free (and actually encouraged) to create their own modules.

The alpha release carries the following modules:

  • Apache2 virtual hosts
  • BIND9 DNS zones
  • Postfix and Courier-IMAP hosted mail domains
  • PureFTPd chrooted ftp-accounts
  • MySQL databases and user accounts
  • IPTables firewall configuration
  • Software updates through apt or yum
  • Amavis and SpamAssassin for mail protection
  • AWStats website statistics

Some more modules will make the mark before the public beta release.

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Saturday Morning Dancing Bear Blogging

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/8qtyHOxNqg4" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

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PowerEdge 1950 Xen Hate

We’re trying to get Xen running on our new, fresh, Dell PowerEdge 1950 servers. The install itself was pretty uneventful. Plenty of distros offer pretty decent support for the Xen Hypervisor from their default install (we’re currently testing it with FC6). A major bummer, though, was that the networking part of Xen just plain wouldn’t start in Dom0. The network bridge just plainly didn’t want to receive back packets coming to the interface, so stuff like ARP just didn’t work at all.

It turns out the problem lies with the built-in management firmware that Dell puts on these broadcoms. You can look here for a solution. Beware, the solution involves Windows to unpack the file and MSDOS to change the IPMI settings.

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g++, my nemesis

dbmanager.cpp:626: error: request for member 'ival' in '*((+(unsigned int)(+ res)->string::operator bool()) + ((const char*)"insertid"))', which is of non-class type 'const char'

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