Tag: debian

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Debian http_proxy setting

Need to set a HTTP proxy within a Debian system ?

Assuming your proxy server is on 192.168.0.1 and listening on port 3128, then the below may help …

( If you need authentication you can use username:password@ like you would in an old style web browser – e.g. http://username:password@192.168.0.1:3128. )

/etc/profile.d/proxy.sh

Add /etc/profile.d/proxy.sh containing

export http_proxy=http://192.168.0.1:3128

/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99HttpProxy

Add /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99HttpProxy containing

Acquire::http::Proxy "http://192.168.0.1:3128";

/etc/wgetrc

Edit /etc/wgetrc and add

http_proxy = http://192.168.0.1:3128

(some system commands rely on wget, and may not otherwise use an environment variable, e.g. debootstrap; the http_proxy setting should be present by default but commented out).

(This is all, in a round about way, relayed to the http proxy security vulnerability announced in July 2016 – see httpoxy.org for more info)

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Installing Debian (Jessie) on an Intel NUC D54250WYK

Product – D54250WYK / boxd54250wykh3 – via e.g. Ballicom or eBuyer

It’s an Intel i5 4250U processor (dual core, laptop processor). Supports up to 16gb of RAM and the Intel 5000 graphics thing in it.

The box itself is really small – and silent. A laptop size hard disk can fit into it (2.5″ hdd).

Issues :

  1. BIOS needs updating before it can be installed (apparently); See Intel’s website – currently here – it’s just a case of downloading the .BIO file and sticking it on a USB stick and pressing F7 on boot and following through the prompts.
  2. Most Linux distros do not yet support the network card (Intel 559/I218-V) – I had to netboot a Debian unstable netboot iso image (from here )

Good things –

  1. BTRFS root filesystem + booting etc just worked with Jessie.
  2. X configuration just works – even though it’s quite a new graphics chipset.
  3. Boot time is VERY fast – currently <5 seconds.
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Script to fix NFS (Debian Squeeze + Backports bits)

I have a NFS server running Debian Squeeze. Additionally it’s using the 3.2.x kernel from backports, and the nfs-kernel-server from backports too.

Sometimes NFS breaks, and gives helpful messages like :

mount.nfs: connection timed out

or just:

Stale NFS handle on clients.

 

While I’m confident that my /etc/exports and other configuration files are correct, it still insists on misbehaving.

Below is a random shell script I seem to have created to fix the NFS server –

#!/bin/bash
set -e
/etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server stop
/etc/init.d/nfs-common stop
/etc/init.d/rpcbind stop

rm -Rf /var/lib/nfs
mkdir /var/lib/nfs
mkdir /var/lib/nfs/v4recovery /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs

for f in /var/lib/nfs/etab \
/var/lib/nfs/rmtab \
/var/lib/nfs/xtab; do
[ -e $f ] || touch $f
done

/etc/init.d/rpcbind start
sleep 2
/etc/init.d/nfs-common start
sleep 2
/etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server start

echo "NFS may now work"

exportfs -f

Yes… “NFS may now work” … that sums it up about right.

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Virtualbox 4.2 VM autostart on Debian Squeeze & Wheezy

One new feature of VirtualBox 4.2 is that it has support for auto-starting vm’s on bootup of the host server (via init etc). This means I can remove my hackish ‘su – vbox -c “VBoxHeadless –startvm VMName &”‘ additions in /etc/rc.local, and the VM’s will also hopefully be terminated gracefully on shutdown.

The docs/guides online which I could find were a bit cryptic, or incomplete, so here’s what I ended up doing :

Continue reading “Virtualbox 4.2 VM autostart on Debian Squeeze & Wheezy”

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Migrating an ext3 filesystem to ext4 (Debian Squeeze)

Interestingly (well, perhaps not really) this is very easy.

In my case, I’m hoping that the migration will lead to faster fsck times (currently it’s taking about an hour, which is somewhat excessive, each time the server crashes for whatever reason).

In my case, the filesystem is /dev/md0 and mounted at /home – change the bits below as appropriate.
Continue reading “Migrating an ext3 filesystem to ext4 (Debian Squeeze)”

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fsck -y (or fsck yes…)

Tip for the day:

Edit /etc/default/rcS on Debian/Ubuntu servers, and set FSCKFIX=yes (default of no) so next time your server runs fsck at startup, and spends hours doing it to only moan when it finds an error, and tells you to waste more time by running fsck with ‘-y’ (to fix it).

Quite why fsck even asks me to say ‘yes’ to it’s “do you want to fix…?” questions is another matter. It really annoys me – it’s not like I have enough information to make any sort of informed choice – it’s not like I know the structure that’s present on the disk, in order to say “No! You’re wrong FSCK, inode xxxxx should be blahblahblah”. I can only say ‘yes’.

If only FSCKFIX=yes was the default setting….. I can’t imagine Windows or OSX ever asking someone to answer such questions.