Emerge clone for Debian-based distributions like Ubuntu, or: Compile your own, dude!

Sunday, 15th Jun 2008 at 17:41 (administration, linux, open source)
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There is a nice overview about apt-build, the package I’m talking about here. So I will not say much. Only so far as what to do to try it out. On my system gnomes system manager is fairly slow. So I gave it a try:

  1. install the bundle: 
    sudo aptitude --reinstall install apt-build
  2. configure your processor (dpkg-configure asks you about it)
  3. add deb-src to sources.list if you haven’t already
  4. run it on gnome-system-manager: 
    sudo apt-build install gnome-system-manager

And there you have it. You might want to copy the list of packages that apt-build installs via apt-get build-dep so you can mark them as auto installed using aptitude when done:

sudo aptitude markauto list_of_packages_you_copied_before

or, even easier, use apt-builds –remove-builddep option.

It really does make a difference!

If you’re really keen or you happen to have an older system just wasting away try this:

sudo apt-build world

and see what happens 😉

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Looking for Webmin in Debian Stable/Testing?

Tuesday, 8th May 2007 at 11:29 (administration, linux, technical stuff)
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Have you ever wandered why you cannot find a webmin package via apt-cache search webmin any longer like I did? Or is it just the question that came up why webmin has gone since Debian Etch and is only available in oldstable, aka Sarge? I have never really used it myself more than the obligatory try-out but was going to test it a little more these days. But I was surprised not to find anything. After a little googling Debians’ own wiki gave a hint to bug #343897. Well, the answer is as simple as this: The package former maintainer, Jaldhar H. Vyas, seams to have always ended up doing all the work on his own and finally couldn’t motivate himself any longer. Sad, but I guess that’s how life goes! If it’s worth it for someone package support will be reintroduced to Debian. Right in terms of “survival of the fittest”.

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Installing TYPO3 Version 4 on Debian

Friday, 20th Apr 2007 at 20:53 (administration, linux)
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Just a quick walk through the steps necessary to get typo3 up and running. I had serendipity running for some time on apache2.2 with php5. So that worked prior to installing typo3. Than do

  1. sudo aptitude install typo3 php5-curl unrtf (php5-curl and unrft are only suggestions I splashed out on)
  2. zless /usr/share/doc/typo3/README.Debian.gz which lists what else to do
  3. sudo ln -s /etc/typo3-dummy/apache.conf /etc/apache2/sites-available/typo3 to make the typo3 directory (and underlying php stuff) available to apache2
  4. sudo rm -f /etc/apache2/conf.d/typo3-dummy.conf which is placed here by the debian package (maybe it is better placed here because it’s not really a site but some basic server config… I’ll delete it anyway)
  5. sudo a2ensite typo3 to enable the “site”. Bear in mind that this config grants access from anywhere (Order allow,deny \ Allow from all)
  6. sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload or alternatively do apache2ctl restart which, as the command suggests, restarts the whole server.
  7. Since PHP save mode is used the file and directory permissions on file system level have to be set to WWWUSER/WWWGROUP (www-data/www-data) for /var/lib/typo3-dummy. It’s done by the package allready.
  8. Log in to phpmyadmin and create a table (search for “Create new database”) named “typo3-dummy” (don’t use “typo3-dummy” unless you can enter the escape sequence "\`" for characters like “-“). An alternative method is to use the command line mysqladmin -u root -p create typo3dummy (see the typo3 wiki and mysql manual)
  9. Use the command line mysql -u root -p typo3dummy to log in to the new database (note the command is not mysqladmin) and grant permissions with mysql> GRANT ALL ON typo3dummy.* TO '<username>'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '<password>';
     where everything in <> has to be individually replaced (without the <>).
  10. Now the hot stuff begins: Point the browser at http://servername/typo3/ which will start the 1-2-3 install tool. Login with your root user and password for mysql server and follow the steps. That’s it, folks! Enjoy.

Looking for a quick starter, some test page to try out typo3 on? Have a look at a german tutorial by Dawn or go directly to the suggested url to download the .t3d and instructions. Another place to go and grab some it the YAML for typo3 page. One might need to increase the memory size available to php via the apache config file /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini and search for memory_limit. Don’t forget to reload the apache2 configs afterwards.

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Exim4: Test and Administer

Friday, 16th Mar 2007 at 21:42 (linux, technical stuff)
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exim -bV tests the configuration, shows some summery

exim -bt <address> simulates the processing of the given address

exim -v <address> gives the option to directly pass a message to exim (mo MTA). -v is to see everything exim is doing on the stderr. Headers go per line, eg. From: me@here.org

The following adds a SPAM tag to the subject line:[1]

headers_add "New-Subject: SPAM: $h_subject:"headers_remove subjectneaders_add "Subject: $h_new-subject:"
headers_remove new-subject

To summerize the unsend messages from the mailq use exim -bpu | exiqsumm (-bp to show all)

Remove all frozen/unsent messages in one line: exim -bp | awk '/^ *[0-9]+[mhd]/{print "exim -Mrm"; $3}' | sh. There should be a shorter one using exiqgrep, but I cannot figure it out right now. [1]

Testing the rewrite (-brw <address>) or retry rules (-brt <address [short | long]>|<domain>)

To test whether exim4 is configured properly (or any other mail server) abuse.net gives a relay test page. Also to decide how the confiuration will basically be done, a good starting point is delivered with the exim package: /usr/share/doc/exim4-config/README.Debian.gz (what a surprise 😉 )

Also, the wiki of exim.org seams a good securing resource. But that has to wait a few more hours because of humanly wants at this hour.

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