Software

231 posts in Software

Powerdns no answer on A records and others

· errors, linux, networking, software

Observed:

mother ~ # dig mother.titify.com

; <<>> DiG 9.8.4-rpz2+rl005.12-P1 <<>> mother.titify.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 12227
;; flags: qr aa rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; WARNING: recursion requested but not available

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;mother.titify.com. IN A

;; Query time: 1 msec
;; SERVER: 127.0.0.1#53(127.0.0.1)
;; WHEN: Sat Sep 28 18:08:19 2013
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 35

As you can see, there is a QUESTION section, but no ANSWER. This is an example with a CNAME:

Hint of the day: run-parts and not executing files

· errors, linux, software, virtualisation

If you have a rc.local looking like this:

/bin/run-parts /etc/rc.local.d

and files in /etc/rc.local.d looking like this

hostname.sh sshkeys.sh firstboot.sh

it’s not going to work.

Why, you ask, after cursing and shouting for the past hour?

because run-parts ignores files with dots (".") and/or .sh files.

Yes. True story.

rename all the files to:

hostname sshkeys firstboot

and your problem will be solved (and of course chmod +x them).

Hint of the day: @digitalocean and not mounting sshfs at boot

· linux, networking, software, virtualisation

In /etc/fstab, be sure to add the option:

_netdev

As it will attempt to start the network mounted sshfs before networking has been started.

The entire line looks like this:

user@host:/some/dir /local/path fuse.sshfs defaults,idmap=user,_netdev  0 0

From the man pages:

_netdev

The filesystem resides on a device that requires network access (used to prevent the system from attempting to mount these filesystems until the network has been enabled on the system).

GCHQ hacks Belgacom

· misc, networking, software

And thus, we can assume, they had (have?) access to a lot of European instances and personnel, both residing here in Belgium and roaming using BGC’s network.

And not a single fuck was giving. Not one. Please remain calm and keep on hypnotoad.

If GCHQ was indeed the agency concerned then this investigation is unlikely to go anywhere and the most that can be expected is some sort of diplomatic complaint from Belgium to the UK, its EU and Nato partner.

Raspberry Pi + ad blocking + nginx

· linux, networking, software, www

There’s this howto that explains how to set up the RPi as ad blocker.

I’ve two RPi’s acting a router and was already running dnsmasq. I decided to give it a try. Note that this howto can actually be used on any DNS serving Linux server.

First of all, don’t go with the pixelserv as it crashes after a few minutes.

Apache is an option that worked fine. A general hint: if you’re already running Apache or whatever on port 80, just add a 2nd static IP and make Apache listen to that.

Munin + Raspberry Pi + temperature

· hardware, linux, software

Quick hack to get Munin to graph the cpu temperature.

temp-day

First of all, install Munin and make sure it’s working.

Then follow these steps:

  1. We’ll use cron to write the current temp to a log file. We do this because I wasn’t able to get Munin to directly execute the command (error: temp.value VCHI initialization failed)

Execute crontab -e and add this line (this has to be on one line):

Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder.

· apple, errors, linux, networking, software

5 or so days ago, this error suddenly popped up:

Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder.

I have a Raspberry Pi, acting as TimeMachine (using afp/Bonjour/Netatalk).

There are several things I tried to solve this, including messing in the sparebundle from Linux (chowning) and deleting my TM .plist. This probably messed up my backup a bit.

But what seemed to ‘solve’ it for me was: