Maintenance reference

Reference

Adding a user to the server

su -
passwd #newuser#
mkdir /home/#newuser#
chown #newuser#:users /home/#newuser#

# grant ssh access by adding to "AllowUsers"
em /etc/ssh/sshd_config
/etc/init.d/sshd restart

# grant samba access to home folder
# it's already set up in /etc/samba/smb.conf
# but the user must be manually added to samba
# use same pwd as before to sync them
smbpasswd -a #newuser#
/etc/init.d/samba restart

# YOU PROBABLY HAVE TO RESTART ANY STUPID WINDOWS BOX before it will see things correctly!  crazy
# you can try this in Windows but it didn't work for me:  
#  net use
#  net session \\samba.server.ip.address /delete

Updating mediawiki installation

cd /var/www/localhost/htdocs/mediawiki
emacs LocalSettings_redirector.php (to hardcode each site)
php maintenance/update.php
(repeat for each site)
emacs LocalSettings_redirector.php (to reset dynamic behavior)

Creating a new ssh key pair for no-password access to a remote system

wow I just had serious issues with basic ssh usage, so i'll put a summary on the wiki
   basically most misunderstandings stem from describing these two:
       client: machine that is trying to ssh into the server
       server: machine that the client user wants to get to
   most poor sots are just sitting on the client
   and they create a pair and push their public key to the server
   but in my case, more often, i want to create a pair on the server
   and push the private key to the multiple places i need to connect FROM
   when doing that, you have to push the public key into the server's authorized_keys
   and configure the client to juggle multiple private keys

       create a key pair:
           ssh suser@server
           ssh-keygen
               use defaults
               will create:
                   .ssh/id_rsa (private key)
                   .ssh/id_rsa.pub (public key)

       put the public key in place:
           cd .ssh
           cat id_rsa.pub >>authorized_keys

       put the private key on the client and configure:
           scp id_rsa cuser@client:.ssh/id_rsa_server
           ssh cuser@client
           em .ssh/config
               Host tdm thedigitalmachine.com
                 Hostname thedigitalmachine.com
                 IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa
                 User m
               Host server
                 Hostname server.com
                 IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_server
                 User suser

   all is full of light

Back up a linux system to a second bootable drive
Steps: We want to copy all files from the root drive to a new drive. We also want to update the boot menu to boot off the new drive. We also want to change /etc/fstab on the second drive to use the new root path. These are the steps for backup of the dune box to the /spiceflow/2.0tb-newmovies/ drive. When we're done, we'll boot from that drive to prove we have a working standby system. rsync does an excellent job of copying just what we need. Test it with this: # a (archive mode -rlptgoD) v (verbose) x (don't cross filesystems) h (human-readable) n (dry run) rsync -avxhn --progress / /spiceflow/2.0tb-newmovies/ Do the job with this: rsync -avxh / /spiceflow/2.0tb-newmovies/ sent 28.10G bytes received 8.64M bytes 15.63M bytes/sec total size is 39.57G speedup is 1.41 There was def some old stuff in there worth cleaning up: /home/m/development/svn/mythtv... /var/tmp xbmc log files etc Next we fix /etc/fstab on the new drive to use the drive as root. Original config: /dev/disk/by-label/d-g2-root / ext3 noatime 0 1 /dev/disk/by-label/d-sp-20newmovies /spiceflow/2.0tb-newmovies ext4 noatime 0 2 New config (remember tho, we lose the 2gb drive): /dev/disk/by-label/d-g2-root /root-hot-drive ext3 noatime 0 1 /dev/disk/by-label/d-sp-20newmovies / ext4 noatime 0 2 Note: this never worked out for me due to my system's mix of ext3 and ext4. I'll retry once I migrate everything to ext4. Next, grub: mount /boot em /boot/grub/menu.lst Orig entry: title ----- linux-2.6.34-gentoo-r11_withext4 root (hd0,0) kernel /boot/linux-2.6.34-gentoo-r11_withext4 root=/dev/sda4 Add a new "standby" entry under it - do a "df" to find the root: title ----- ==STANDBY== linux-2.6.34-gentoo-r11_withext4 root (hd0,0) kernel /boot/linux-2.6.34-gentoo-r11_withext4 root=/dev/hda1 Then reboot to standby and see what we have... (no "latest" video library etc., but otherwise the same?)

Maintenance of my Gentoo boxes

Maintenance of my music collection

OS X basics

DOS basics

Update Boost

udev: Assign unique names to your devices

Automatically mount and unmount your devices

udev: Autorun programs when connecting your devices

Add ssh users to internet-facing boxes

Configure Eclipse

Configure Emacs

Configure MythTV

Basic MythTV plugin configuration