Archive for the ‘Operating Systems’ Category

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FTP error 500 OOPS: vsf_sysutil_recv_peek

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 by The BCM Team

If your vsftpd server running CentOS 5 (on a small ec2 instance) is giving you a “ftp error 500 OOPS: vsf_sysutil_recv_peek” error, try loading capability mode woth the following command:


modprobe capability

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Categories: Operating Systems, Software
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PHP 5.2 in CentOS 5 and “Could not find update match for php” error

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 by The BCM Team

If you are here then you probably already know how to install PHP 5.2 on your CentOS 5.2. One of the ways would be to use a third-party repository like Remi. Here is a good article about how to use it.

If after trying to use a third-party repository to install PHP 5.2 you get a “Could not find update match for php” error then there is a big chance you have a priorities package installed in your CentOS distribution and some repos are not properly configured priorities wise: basically your third-party repo does not have a chance to look for PHP 5.2 binaries because other (default CentOS) repositories get priority.

The easiest way to fix the problem is to temporarily disable the priorities package.

Edit the priorities file:

sudo vi /etc/yum/pluginconf.d/priorities.conf

and set “enabled” equal to 0

To check if the priorities package is installed on your system run:

rpm -q yum-priorities

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Categories: Operating Systems, Software
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Setting up Symfony to use Exim instead of Sendmail

Sunday, February 1st, 2009 by The BCM Team

By default Symfony uses Sendmail mail transfer agent to prepare emails to be sent out by the system. If you want to use Exim instead,you need to:

  1. Install Exim to your system – please see my Exim on CentOs 4/5
  2. Configure Symfony to use Exim instead of SendmailEdit (or create if it does not exists) /apps/--app name--/config/mailer.yml and add the following to it: 
    
dev:
  deliver: on
  hostname: mail.yourmailhost.com
  port: 25
all:
  mailer: exim

    Here we are setting Exim to be the default mail agent for all environments plus defining SMTP host name and port for the dev environment.

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Categories: Operating Systems, Web Development
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Useful Linux (CentOS) commands

Monday, January 19th, 2009 by The BCM Team

Show directories by size: du -sk * | sort +0nr

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Categories: Operating Systems
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Your GNOME desktop suddenly reverted to TWM in CentOS 5

Wednesday, January 14th, 2009 by The BCM Team

Has your GNOME desktop suddenly reverted to TWM upon a regular restart? If so, you are’nt alone.

Here is what you need to do to restore your GNOME desktop:

  1. Check if you can just get away with switching back to GNOME: 
    
yum install switchdesk
switchdesk gnome

    If that tells you that gnome is not installed then proceed to step 2, otherwise you should have gotten your GNOME back.

  2. We are going to reinstall GNOME. To do that we need to install one package manually (because of the bug in “nautilus-sendto” package which is a part of GNOME. It requires “libgaim.so.0″ library which is a part of gaim (that was replaced by Pidgin in the latest CentOS distribution). Therefore, this dependancy will fail when running yum. Download nautilus-sendto and install it: 
    
rpm -Uvh --nodeps nautilus-sendto-0.7-5.fc6.i386.rpm

    We can now install GNOME by running:

    
yum groupinstall "GNOME Desktop Environment"

    Now run the command to switch desktops:

    
switchdesk gnome

    and you should be good getting your GNOME back upon next restart of your xwindow session (Ctrl+Alt+Bcksp).

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Categories: Operating Systems
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Hello VPS

Wednesday, December 24th, 2008 by The BCM Team

ServersI have decided to say goodbye to the shared hosting once and for all and finally moved all of my personal sites and blog to a virtual private server (VPS) running CentOS 5.2 and Plesk.

I didn’t do this because I was unhappy with my former shared hosting provider as they had good up-time and the support was fast and helpful. I did it because I needed greater access to my hosting then shared hosting can provide; e.g. tweaking the server, installing custom software and controlling the versions of software installed on the server (e.g. symfony and subversion).

The switching process took a little more than a week. A little slow I know, but it wasn’t a full time gig. But at last I can announce that my switchover to a VPS set-up is complete.

Now here’s hoping my new host does not upset me with frequent downtime :)

Just in case you were curious, my shared hosting was with A2hosting and I highly recommend them if you are after shared hosting. They also offer VPS hosting but I have not tried their offering yet.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/philschatz/312633642

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Categories: Hosting & Infrastructure, Operating Systems
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Ubuntu 8.10 Has Been Released

Thursday, October 30th, 2008 by The BCM Team

Ubuntu LogoWell, ladies and gentlemen, if you’re into Web Development, and just in case you haven’t heard yet, Ubuntu 8.10 has just been released.

We use Ubuntu as the OS for our development servers and work-horse desktops. We have been pretty happy with it – as it’s friendly, powerful and has a large and dedicated user-base.  What’s more it is based on Debian, meaning apt is the package manager (and that is something we certainly love).

I won’t go into to much detail about the release here, but I will say:

  • We were really impressed with the updated theme in this release. I know, I know, it’s just the look, but looks matter too, and it really does look great.
  • The new wireless and mobile networking manager is impressive and works well out-of-the-box.
  • 8.10 is not a release that will be supported in the long-term. This release will only be officially supported until 2010, whereas Ubuntu 8.04, will be supported until 2011.

If you are even the slightest bit interested in using a Linux OS, you should definitely take a look at Ubuntu. We did, and haven’t looked back – we’ve already updated our workstations to 8.10.

By the way, if you are already using the 8.10 Release Candidate, there is no need to download the final ISO. Just update to the final version as you normally would: either through command line “sudo apt-get … ” or the GUI’s Update Manager.

For more information, check out Ubuntu’s site

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Categories: Operating Systems
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Useful SVN commands

Sunday, October 12th, 2008 by The BCM Team

Here is a list of the svn commands we find pretty useful:

  • Mark as “deleted” all files thats in the svn repo but missing on the disk: 
    
svn rm $( svn status | sed -e '/^!/!d' -e 's/^!//' )
  • Mark as “added” all files thats not in the svn repo but are on the disk: 
    
svn st|grep ^?|sed s/?//|xargs svn add $1

PS: You might want to consider adding commands above as aliases to save time typing or copy & pasting.

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Categories: Operating Systems
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Configuring Exim under CentOS to send emails through an ISP’s SMTP server

Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 by The BCM Team

Edit your /etc/exim/exim.conf file

Add to Routers section


send_to_gateway:
driver = manualroute
transport = remote_smtp
route_list = * mail.optusnet.com.au
If your SMTP server requires authentication you also need to do this:

Add to Authentication section

  • Enable authentication for hosts host1.example.com, host2.example.net and host3.example.org (you have to list all smarthosts where Exim may authenticate users): 
    
remote_smtp:
  debug_print     = "T: remote_smtp for $local_part@$domain"
  driver = smtp
  hosts_try_auth  = host1.example.com:host2.example.net:host3.example.org
  • SMTP-Auth with the name “usera” and the password “secrect” (cram_md5 encrypted): 
    
cram_md5:
     driver = cram_md5
     public_name = CRAM-MD5
     client_name = usera
     client_secret = secrect
  • SMTP-Auth with the name “usera” and the password “secrect” (plaintext): 
    
plain:
     driver = plaintext
     public_name = PLAIN
     client_send = ^usera^secrect
  • Or get name, password and send method automatically from my config-file: 
    
cram_md5:
     driver = cram_md5
     public_name = CRAM-MD5
     client_name = "${extract{auth_name}{${lookup{$sender_address}lsearch{/etc/exim/smtp_users}{$value}fail}}}"
     client_secret = "${extract{auth_pass}{${lookup{$sender_address}lsearch{/etc/exim/smtp_users}{$value}fail}}}"
plain:
     driver = plaintext
     public_name = PLAIN
     client_send = "${extract{auth_plain}{${lookup{$sender_address}lsearch{/etc/exim/smtp_users}{$value}fail}}}"

Add to Transports section


remote_smtp:
  debug_print     = "T: remote_smtp for $local_part@$domain"
  driver = smtp
  hosts_try_auth  = your.smtp.server.com

More information on this topic can be found at http://www.tgunkel.de/docs/exim_smarthosts.en

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Categories: Operating Systems, Web Development
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Exim on CentOs 4/5

Monday, September 29th, 2008 by The BCM Team

This is a quick guide (by jervis) on how to do an install and basic setup of exim on CentOS. This is not meant as a fully inclusive guide but it will get you on the way. Following this you should get a working exim install.

I will assume you have built a CentOS 4 / 5 Server, have yum working and have logged in as root.


yum update

Install exim and mail switching tools


yum install exim
yum install system-switch-mail

Switch your MTA & set exim to start on boot
system-switch-mail
service sendmail stop
service exim start
chkconfig exim on
chkconfig sendmail off

Add a root alias, eg:  “root: me@example.com”
vi /etc/aliases

You may also wish to add some config to your routers section like this, if you want to relay through a smart host.


vi /etc/exim/exim.conf

Then add this before the “dnslookup:” section.


to_smart_host:
driver = manualroute
domains = ! +local_domains
transport = remote_smtp
route_list = “* mail1.example.com:mail2.example.com;”



Restart exim
service exim restart

To test, send an email


echo “test” |mail -s “$HOSTNAME” me@example.com

Then you can flush the Exim Que and watch the log like this


exim -qff ; tail -f /var/log/exim/main.log

Good luck!

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