Tech Blog » admin

Auto start Sphinx searchd after reboot on Linux

frank — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 22:09:07 +0000

By default, after you install and configure Sphinx, you will find that once your OS restarts, search will not be working. That is because searchd is not setup to auto start. The following will solve that problem.

Create file /etc/init.d/searchd.
sudo vi /etc/init.d/searchd

Copy the following into searchd.
#!/bin/bash

case "${1:-''}" in
'start')
/usr/local/bin/searchd
;;
'stop')
/usr/local/bin/searchd --stop
;;
'restart')
/usr/local/bin/searchd --stop && /usr/local/bin/searchd
;;
*)
echo "Usage: $SELF start|stop|restart"
exit 1
;;
esac

Add execute to the file
sudo chmod -x /etc/init.d/searchd

Scaling down from MS to open source

frank — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 00:37:31 +0000

We just moved a service that was running on the Microsoft stack (Windows Server 2008, .NET, MSSql Server, IIS) to an open source stack (Ubuntu Server, php, Codeigniter framework, apache2, postgres).

We now run the service on a cloud server with dual cpu and 256MB ram (Yes, that's megabytes).

The old server ran on dual core with 2GB of ram.

A four letter word can ruin your day

frank — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 21:48:24 +0000

halt + Amazon EC2 + Instance Store = A bad day

I did a stupid thing while on vacation. Decided to clone an EC2 server and executed halt from commandline without checking to see if the server was using Instance Store. Whoops, Amazon showed the server as terminating...terminated... ahhhhh.

After having to rebuild the server while on vacation, I have learned a valuable lesson.

sendmail[2525]: My unqualified host name (servername) unknown

frank — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 22:53:22 +0000

If you see these messages in your syslog, your sendmail is not configured correctly with the domain name. If you are sending from a fully qualified domain, add it to the local-host-names file. In Ubuntu, it would be /etc/mail/local-host-names. Make sure it reads something like this.

localhost
[domain.com]
[server name]

Now in the /etc/hosts, make sure it reads the following.

127.0.0.1 [domain.com] [server name] localhost
...

Then

sudo /etc/init.d/sendmail restart

and the error should not continue filling the syslog.

Fail2ban does not start after reboot

frank — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 08:10:39 +0000

This problem was identified with the following configuration:
Ubuntu 8.04
fail2ban

Problem: After fail2ban install, everything works fine, but after reboot fail2ban does not start. Manual /etc/init.d/fail2ban restart fails also.

Cause: Fail2ban looks for fail2ban.sock in
/var/run/fail2ban/
During reboot, that directory is removed. Fail2ban assumes it is there and fails on restart.

Solution: Make sure the directory exists during start of fail2ban. Edit the init.d for fail2ban to fix this.
sudo vi /etc/init.d/fail2ban
Find the do_start option.
do_start() { # Return # 0 if daemon has been started # 1 if daemon was already running # 2 if daemon could not be started do_status && return 1


        if [ -e "$SOCKFILE" ]; then

                log_failure_msg "Socket file $SOCKFILE is present"

                [ "$1" = "force-start" ] \

                        && log_success_msg "Starting anyway as requested" \

                        || return 2

                DAEMON_ARGS="$DAEMON_ARGS -x"

        fi
        start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --chuid root --exec $DAEMON -- \

                $DAEMON_ARGS start > /dev/null\

                || return 2

return 0 }
Add the following after the if statement.


        # Assure that /var/run/fail2ban exists

        [ -d /var/run/fail2ban ] || mkdir -p /var/run/fail2ban

Finally, it should look like this
do_start() { # Return # 0 if daemon has been started # 1 if daemon was already running # 2 if daemon could not be started do_status && return 1


        if [ -e "$SOCKFILE" ]; then

                log_failure_msg "Socket file $SOCKFILE is present"

                [ "$1" = "force-start" ] \

                        && log_success_msg "Starting anyway as requested" \

                        || return 2

                DAEMON_ARGS="$DAEMON_ARGS -x"

        fi
        # Assure that /var/run/fail2ban exists

        [ -d /var/run/fail2ban ] || mkdir -p /var/run/fail2ban
        start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --chuid root --exec $DAEMON -- \

                $DAEMON_ARGS start > /dev/null\

                || return 2

return 0 }
Now restart and it should work.
sudo /etc/init.d/fail2ban restart
Just for kicks, see how /var/run has the newly created fail2ban directory.
sudo ls /var/run

VMware Server must be reconfigured when there is a kernel upgrade

frank — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 16:42:09 +0000

If the linux kernel is upgraded, vmware will not load http://localhost:8222. It requires a reconfigure when this happens. Do the following.

sudo /usr/bin/vmware-config.pl

Forget your mysql root password?

frank — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 05:33:59 +0000

This following line saved my butt when something happened and my root password was no longer working.

sudo dpkg-reconfigure mysql-server-5.0

It will allow you to reset your root password without messing with the data or any other configuration in my.cnf.

Ubuntu apache2 virtualhost setup problems

frank — Tue, 05 May 2009 05:44:35 +0000

If you are getting error messages when starting apache2 like

"Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1 for ServerName"
or
"[warn] _default_ VirtualHost overlap on port 80, the first has precedence"

you need to make sure a couple of lines are in your /etc/apache2/httpd.confÂ file.

ServerName localhost

VMware bridged network Ubuntu and Windows

frank — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:28:35 +0000

Setting up a Windows guest to serve to the LAN that the host Ubuntu is on is simple but a few gotchas to look out for.

My Setup:
1. Host VM Ubuntu withd 2 NICs
2. Guest VM XP Pro serving http through IIS
3. Lan with DHCP exist at Host VM level
4. Host VM uses eth0
5. VMware Server

Getting it to work:

For the Network Adapter config for the guest VM select the Bridged Network created during install of VMware server (eth1 in my case since eth0 is assigned to host VM)
On host VM Ubuntu, goto System>Preferences>Network Connections
Edit eth1
Uncheck Available to all users
Goto IPv4 Settings tab
Change method to Link-Local Only
Apply and close
Refresh NICs
Make sure ifconfig does not show an IP address from the subnet of your LAN on eth1
Since guest VM XP is to serve http, it should have a static IP
Goto guest VM
Set TCP/IP for the Local Area Connection to a static IP within the subnet of the LAN
Run ipconfig /refresh in command line
Make sure ipconfig shows the correct IP info just set
Make sure it can connect to internet
Make sure Windows Firewall is not blocking http or port 80 (obvious step but it threw me for a loop for a little while)
Now just check from host VM to see if a test webpage shows up

Ubuntu 9.04 Vmware Arrow Keys Problem

frank — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 04:45:53 +0000

I finally found how to get all those keys working on my newly installed Ubuntu 9.04 with my XP VM. The issue is that all the arrow keys and delete key don't work. There are others too but not listed. So a bit of googling, I found that you have to map the keys in a vmware config file to solve the problem. So this is what needs to be done.

1. Edit /usr/lib/vmware/config
2. Add the following to the end.
xkeymap.keycode.108 = 0x138 # Alt_R xkeymap.keycode.106 = 0x135 # KP_Divide xkeymap.keycode.104 = 0x11c # KP_Enter xkeymap.keycode.111 = 0x148 # Up xkeymap.keycode.116 = 0x150 # Down xkeymap.keycode.113 = 0x14b # Left xkeymap.keycode.114 = 0x14d # Right xkeymap.keycode.105 = 0x11d # Control_R xkeymap.keycode.118 = 0x152 # Insert xkeymap.keycode.119 = 0x153 # Delete xkeymap.keycode.110 = 0x147 # Home xkeymap.keycode.115 = 0x14f # End xkeymap.keycode.112 = 0x149 # Prior xkeymap.keycode.117 = 0x151 # Next xkeymap.keycode.78 = 0x46 # Scroll_Lock xkeymap.keycode.127 = 0x100 # Pause xkeymap.keycode.133 = 0x15b # Meta_L xkeymap.keycode.134 = 0x15c # Meta_R xkeymap.keycode.135 = 0x15d # Menu
3. Save it
4. Restart vmware

Thank goodness. What a pain this was to use with a whole bunch of keys not working.