Wednesday, February 7, 2007

Installing VNC in Debian




To install VNC server in Debian :

apt-get install vnc4server

To install VNC viewer / client :

apt-get install xvnc4viewer

After installing the viewer, type
Xvnc4viewer [hostname]

Monday, February 5, 2007

Chat setting for Google Talk for my domain.



From http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?answer=49147

*****

How do I configure Gaim to connect to Google Talk for my domain?

Once you download Gaim, you'll need to configure your client to connect to the Google Talk service. If you're not a Google Apps for Your Domain user, please visit the Google Talk Help Center for instructions.

To configure your account:

1. Open Gaim.
2. Click Accounts at the bottom of the login page.
3. Click Add from the Accounts window.
4. Enter the following information in the Add Account window:

* Protocol: Jabber
* Screen Name: Your Google Talk username (without any @ symbol or domain).
* Server: Enter the portion of your email address after the @ symbol. For example, gordon@example.com will enter example.com as the Server value.
* Password: We suggest leaving this field blank for increased security, but if you'd like to log in automatically, enter your password.
* Alias: Leave this field blank.
* Remember password: Check this box if you'd like Gaim to remember your password (you won't be prompted to enter it each time you log in, if you select this option).
* Auto-login: Check this box if you'd like to connect to the Google Talk service each time you use Gaim.

5. Click the + next to Show more options.
6. Enter the following information in the section that appears:

* Jabber Options: Select Use TLS if available and leave the other boxes unchecked.
* Port: 5222
* Connect server: talk.google.com
* Proxy type: Use Global Proxy Settings

7. Click Save.

Congratulations! You're now ready to connect to the Google Talk service using Gaim.

Have questions about Gaim? Learn from the experts! Check out Gaim's FAQs. The Google Talk Team can only assist you in configuring your client to work with the Talk service.

SquirrelMail with UW-IMAP problem




By default SquirrelMail will have problem when trying to login into UW-IMAP server.

This FAQ @ squirrelmail explain the work around : link

Basically :

- reconfigure uw-imap server to provide imaps :

dpkg-reconfigure uw-imap

- run /usr/sbin/squirrelmail-configure

- Select option D and set to the option to uw

- Return to Main Menu and select option 2. Server Option.


- Select option 4. IMAP Server

- Set 5. IMAP Port to 993, and 7. Secure IMAP (TLS) to true

- Save, and Quit.

This will connect the squirrelmail to uw-imap server.

By design, UW-IMAP server does not allow plain text login for the reason of security. And squirrelmail only support plaintext login because of some limitation from the php ssh module, and some restriction from squirrelmail IMAP implementation. (http://www.squirrelmail.org/docs/admin/admin-10.html)

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

solving stucked debian package


If we tweak alot with our system, apt-get install this apt-get remove that, we might bumped into this error :

No override present.
dpkg: error processing cyrus-common (--remove):
subprocess post-removal script returned error exit status 2
Errors were encountered while processing:
cyrus-common
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
m


I was installing cyrus, and then removing, and then reinstalling again. And then want to remove again, then I bumped into this error.

I can't remove cyrus-common. I tried it with apt-get, dpkg, dselect, aptitude, synaptic, kpackage. It just stucked as installed, but when I tried to remove, it gave me that error.

Googled for a while. Find no paticular solution for my error, but found a tip that I should peek into /var/lib/dpkg/info/
Checked out cyrus-common.postrm file, commented out the first two of dpkg-stateoverride line. Save the postrm file. Run apt-get remove cyrus-common.
The command executed and exited gracefully, and deregister cyrus-common from dpkg list.

This is a quick and dirty solution. Basically I commented out the commands so that postrm will exit gracefully.

Monday, January 29, 2007

Postfix NIS lookup error



If you install postfix in debian (3.1) by using apt-get install postfix, then most likely there will be an NIS lookup error such as :

Jan 30 09:48:01 localhost postfix/smtpd[11719]: warning: dict_nis_init: NIS domain name not set - NIS lookups disabled

To eliminate the error, go to main.cf and erase or comment out any references to nis: such as aliases = nis:alias.name

Postfix postdrop error



I installed Postfix mail server on Debian 3.1. Pretty straight forward installation and run with no problem.

Then I add 10+ user using webmin and "user and group" application from the GUI itself (gnome). Suddenly, somehow, postfix failed.

The error msg was :

Jan 29 17:02:03 localhost postfix/smtpd[2238]: fatal: file /etc/postfix/main.cf: parameter setgid_group: unknown group name: postdrop

Searched the google, but couldn't find a solution for the problem.

I sent a question to the local postfix mailing list, but somehow, the email didn't went thru (the mail server kept rejecting my mail).

Anyway, I dpkg reconfigure the postfix

dpkg-reconfigure postfix

And it fixed the problem!! The error dissapeared and postfix started perfectly.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Adding an alias to an ethernet interface using ifconfig


To add an address to an ethernet interface :

ifconfig ethx:n [ipaddress]

where :
x = ethernet number
n = alias number

example

ifconfig eth0:1 10.0.0.10
will add 10.0.0.10 to eth0 in addition to the existing ip address [eth0]

Link : Setting up IP Aliasing on A Linux Machine Mini-HOWTO