OpenSUSE 11.0 is gold

Get your copy on http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.0/iso/
Thanks and congratulations to everyone who made this release possible.

June 19th, 2008 - Posted in opensuse | | 0 Comments

Decent DSrepair on Linux

(If you don’t use Novell eDirectory just skip this post)

When people migrate or move their eDirectory from Netware to Linux they’ll notice that they loose a great tool to manage eDirectory (dsrepair), well in theory they don’t really loose it but on Linux this easy-to-use netware tool is replaced with a command line tool to do the same tasks. (ndsrepair)

This is not a problem for basic stuff but as soon as you want to do more advanced stuff (managing replicas, partitions,…) this command line stuff really lacks a good interface.

BUT (have no fear)…!

A while ago we found a cool solutions article from a guy who wrote a wrapper script for ndsrepair which provides a similar interface like the traditional dsrepair on Netware. A must have for everyone who maintains and manages eDirectory instances.

I packaged the script which is called dsrmenu. You can get if from here or just via http://software.opensuse.org/search

June 13th, 2008 - Posted in edirectory | | 0 Comments

Register a Linux host in a windows DNS server

This post is intended for Linux hosts that don’t have samba running but do want to register themselves on a windows DNS server (2003) that is allowing secure dns updates.
From what I heard does the DNS server by default only allows secure updates. You can also disable this on the DNS server.

1. Make sure you have the following software (packages) and their dependencies installed on your Linux machine.

perl-GSSAPI
perl-Net-DNS
Kerberos5
nsupdate-gss
perl-Authen-Krb5

(Packages for OpenSuSE and SLE are available from the OpenSUSE Build service, you can find them via http://software.opensuse.org/search).

2. Configure your kerberos configuration file for your (windows)domain. This configuration file is /etc/krb5.conf
The content of this file should look like this:

[libdefaults]
default_realm = mylan.BE
default_tgs_enctypes = des3-hmac-sha1 des-cbc-crc des-cbc-md5
default_tkt_enctypes = des3-hmac-sha1 des-cbc-crc des-cbc-md5

[realms]
mylan.BE = {
kdc = hn038
admin_server = hn038
}

[logging]
kdc = FILE:/var/log/krb5/krb5kdc.log
admin_server = FILE:/var/log/krb5/kadmind.log
default = SYSLOG:NOTICE:DAEMON

The most important settings are the realm which is your domain, it’s important that you specify DOMAIN.TLD, the kdc and admin_server should point to your Windows2003 server (Active Directory). You don’t need to specify the default_realm but it will make typing your username shorter because it’s automatically appended.

3. Obtain a Kerberos ticket with kinit, you need your windows login & password (e.g u0101011)

kinit u0101011

If your password is correct you’ll receive a ticket that is stored under /tmp/krb5cc_

4. As soon as you have your ticket you can update the DNS for your machine, therefore you first need to know your ip address and hostname.

/bin/ip address show dev eth0
/bin/hostname -s

Use this information in the nsupdate-gss command

5. Update the entry

nsupdate-gss hostname DOMAIN your_ip TTL nameserver
e.g nsupdate-gss camper mylan 10.1.10.113 3800 10.8.91.2

You’ll see some output (maybe some warnings/errors) but as long as the last line says something like “Update gave rcode NOERROR” everything should be ok.

6. Verify if your changes are working correctly with the host or dig command

You could put all this stuff in a NetworkManager dispatcher script to perform all this stuff automatically.

(Kudos to dag for making the existing script a little bit more user friendly)

May 17th, 2008 - Posted in linux, opensuse | | 0 Comments

Consultants Federation?

Dear Lazyweb,

Is there something like a ‘Federation for (independent) consultants’ ?

I noticed a lot of these federations but I was wondering if such a thing exists for consultants.

For instance: Construction workers have one, Web developers have one, Car industry has one, …

Tell me

April 24th, 2008 - Posted in personal | | 2 Comments

First chironFS release

I received an email from Luis this week about the first release of Chironfs
It is a Fuse based filesystem. It’s main purpose is to guarantee filesystem availability using replication. But it isn’t a RAID implementation. RAID replicates DEVICES not FILESYSTEMS.

I updated my packages already. Get them from my OBS repository

April 9th, 2008 - Posted in linux, obs, opensuse, rpm, storage | | 0 Comments

Installing the Novell Client on OpenSUSE 10.3

These are the steps and dirty hacks I used to install the Novell Client on a OpenSUSE 10.3 machine.
Remember that this is not supported by Novell. I just took the binaries that were released for SLED10.

First we start with installing the Novell Client kernel module, this is available from the OpenSUSE 10.3 standard repository

- zypper in novfs-kmp-default

Next step is to install all the actual client packages

- Grab the iso file with the rpm packages from http://download.novell.com (Select Novell Client as the product and Novell Client for SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 SP1 as the version)
- Once you’ve downloaded the iso file you need to mount it: mount -o loop novell-client-2.0-sle10sp1-i386.iso /mnt/loop
- Don’t use the ncl_install script (it will fail because of missing dependencies
- cd /mnt/loop
- rpm -Uvh suse/i586/novell-nmasclient-3.4.0-17.i586.rpm
- ln -s /usr/lib/libbfd-2.17.50.20070726-14.so /usr/lib/libbfd-2.16.91.0.5.so (this is in the binutils package)
- rpm –nodeps -Uvh suse/i586/novell-xtier-base-3.1.5-46.i586.rpm
- rpm -Uvh suse/i586/novell-xtier-core-3.1.5-46.i586.rpm
- rpm -Uvh suse/i586/novell-xtier-xplat-3.1.5-46.i586.rpm
- rpm -Uvh suse/i586/novell-novfsd-2.0.0-29.i586.rpm
- rpm -Uvh suse/i586/novell-novfs-2.0.0-35.i586.rpm
- rpm -Uvh suse/i586/novell-xplatlib-1.0.3-31.i586.rpm
- zypper in kdelibs3 (if these are not yet installed)
- rpm -Uvh suse/i586/novell-ui-base-2.0.0-4.i586.rpm
- rpm -Uvh suse/i586/novell-qtgui-2.0.0-9.i586.rpm
- rpm -Uvh suse/i586/novell-client-script-2.0.0-24.i586.rpm
- rpm -Uvh suse/i586/yast2-novell-client-2.0.0-14.i586.rpm
- rpm -Uvh suse/i586/novell-client-2.0.0-11.i586.rpm

I also installed the (optional) novell-nautilus-plugin-2.0.0-3.i586.rpm package which provides nautilus integration but this does not seem to work (did not try the novell-konqueror-plugin-2.0.0-3.i586.rpm package)

After you installed all the packages you can perform your initial configuration via
- yast2 novell-client

After doing this configuration it will ask you to restart your machine, if everything goes well you should have a little red N added to your tray after the reboot which will allow you to login to your Novell environment.

Again: THIS IS NOT SUPPORTED

March 26th, 2008 - Posted in Novell, opensuse | | 0 Comments

Simple eDirectory backup

It’s so simple and can save you a lot of time…
Here is a simple script I use from time to time.
Just throw it in /etc/cron.daily and make sure it is executable

#!/bin/sh

# Simple eDirectory backup script
# See also TID 10072014

# will make sure we have a rotating backup (1,2,3…7)
SEQ=$(date +%u)

# user DN to bind to eDirectory
USER_DN=”cn=admin.o=company”

# execute the backup command
/usr/bin/ndsbackup cvf /backup/edirectory/nds-full-backup.$SEQ -a $USER_DN -p mypassword “Full Directory Backup”

March 25th, 2008 - Posted in Novell, edirectory | | 0 Comments

Brainshare 08 is over

And it was great…

- Saw a lot of interesting (technical) talks
- My presentation went good
- Met a lot of old friends
- Met a lot of experts on Thursday
- Didn’t won the ATV
- Received a lot of gifts and gadgets
- Got to see an NBA match between the Jazz and the LA Lakers (too bad the Jazz didn’t won)
- Laughed with Frank Caliendo, this guy is really funny!

Looking forward to the 09 version.

Only thing that made me angry on this trip: TSA !! with all their stupid security checks…

March 24th, 2008 - Posted in Novell | | 0 Comments

LinuxWorldExpo 2008 - Countdown…

Still 16 days until LinuxWorldExpo in Brussels.
If you are interested to provide a few helping hands during the expo drop us an email at linuxworld at elug dot be

March 3rd, 2008 - Posted in linux | | 0 Comments

Halleluja! Thanks Novell for hearing my p2v praise!

I’ve read some very good news today: Novell is buying platespin

February 25th, 2008 - Posted in Novell, xen | | 0 Comments