Moving Filesystems

Just some commands to remind me how to move non-raid filesystems to mdadm raid1 Use fdisk to create two identical partitions of type fd – raid autodetect Create the new array mdadm –create –verbose /dev/md0 –level raid1 –raid-disks 2 /dev/hda1 /dev/hdb2 Mount the new filesystem mkdir /mnt/newdisk mount /dev/md0 /mnt/newdisk Copy a filesystem to it… Continue reading Moving Filesystems

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Encrypted Filesystems

My efforts to load an encrypted filesystem under Debian Sarge using a 2.6 kernel

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Backing up with RSync

Whilst I use Duplicity to perform my mass backups on a nightly basis, it’s comforting to have some components backed up on a much more regular basis and stored in an instantly recoverable format. RSync solves this problem very well for me. The hardest part of getting RSync working for me is always getting the… Continue reading Backing up with RSync

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ROT13

ROT13 is a very simple encryption algorithm that rotates the alphabet by 13 places. In other words, A becomes N and M becomes Z. Obviously it’s pretty useless as a secure cipher, but it’s great for covering up something in a posting that a reader might not want to see, such as the murderers name… Continue reading ROT13

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INN – News Server

I’ve been using INN for long enough now to appreciate some of its quirks and features. Because of this, I don’t really want to install it from a package, but much prefer to build it from the source. One of the primary reasons for this is that INN gets big, even with just the small… Continue reading INN – News Server

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Postfix Config

Debian’s Postfix configuration is pretty much as Fedora, the only differences I’ve noticed are the aliases are in /etc instead of /etc/postfix, and the origin parameter is read from a file /etc/mailname. The later of these two caused me endless problems during testing as mails were getting bouced to the wrong domain when I sent… Continue reading Postfix Config

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Apache2 SSL on Debian

How to configure Apache2 on Debain with support for SSL. In other words, how to serve https.

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Network Time

Score one for Debian! Installing ntp and its recommended + suggested packages works very well; no editing of config files required. Time Admin is listed under the Debian menu in Gnome. Glad I learnt to do this manually by editing ntp.conf etc. But it’s great having a simple, quick alternative.

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Upgrading

Using apt-get to upgrade Debian went fine to begin with, but I’m getting issues with dependancies. Documentation suggests that packages won’t be upgraded if doing so would involve installing new packages. However, there must be more to it than this as I’m finding 100’s of “held back” packages that only seem to depend on newer… Continue reading Upgrading

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Configuring VIM

By default, the Debian vim is configured not to do intelligent colours. I like colors! To turn it on, edit /etc/vim/vimrc: Uncomment: syntax on Also, by default autoindent is switched on. I prefer to do this on a per file basis as it seriously screws up Cut and Paste. Switch off with: Comment: set autoindent

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Bash Profile

Bash profile consists of two files: /etc/skel/.bash_profile /etc/skel/.bashrc For some reason, all the entries in .bash_profile are commented out by default; not sure why. When doing a useradd, a -m needs to be used in order to get these files copied to the users homedir. This switch will also create the homedir if it doesn’t… Continue reading Bash Profile

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