INSTALL ICINGA 1.6 ON UBUNTU

Icinga 1.6 has been released and yes, you can still use my script to install it. One caveat is that you must specify the version as 1.6.0 when running the script, or the download links will fail. Enjoy ;)

Go here to get started.

UBUNTU 11.04 BOOTS TO CURSOR

On Natty and Oneiric non-Server command-line only systems (which can be installed from the Alternate and Minimal CD's), grub2 hands off to blank tty7. As a consequence, a blank black (or purple) terminal is shown, and the system does not appear to be functional.

Switching to an active virtual console (for example, by pressing Alt+F1) yields a login screen and makes it possible to use the machine.

There is an easy permanent fix by editing the 10_linux file
sudo nano /etc/grub.d/10_linux

change this line:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="$GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT vt.handoff=7"
to
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="$GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT"

Save the changes and then run:
sudo update-grub2

Next reboot will boot straight to the login prompt.

WINDOWS FIREWALL BLOCKS ORACLE CONNECTION

If you've been battling with Windows Firewall to enable a client connection to an Oracle database then I feel your pain. You've probably figured out that you need to enable port 1521 (the default connection port) but it still doesn't seem to do anything. However after I read this post it all became very clear.

Basically when a client makes its initial connection to the listener (via port 1521), the listener spawns a new user process that uses a random port to handle the client's request. If it's a random port then we can't define it in a firewall rule, however we can add the programs themselves.

Click Add Program... and create a rule for both oracle.exe and tnslsnr.exe located in <your_oracle_directory>/bin

INSTALL GITORIOUS ON UBUNTU

Another install script, this time to automate the install of Gitorious on Ubuntu 11.04 Server. This is based on the instructions at coding-journal, if it wasn't for Lucas I'd be completely lost with this installation.

As always, this should be run on a bare-bones install of Ubuntu 11.04. There's not a lot of error catching here, and it will require some interaction on your part -so read through the script to make sure you understand what's happening before you continue. You should really do this with any script you haven't written yourself anyway.

It's best to install the server, then ssh in and run the script because there's a couple of steps
that'll be much easier if you can copy/paste.

Running this script as root (sudo sh <scriptname>) against a base 11.04 server install should
have you up and running without any additional fiddling around. Let me know if you see a better way
to do this, or find any glaring errors.

#!/bin/bash

# gitorious Ubuntu 11.04 Server Post-install Script
# Ezra Bowden
# blog.kyodium.net
# Sept 14, 2011


# Starts with a base 11.04 server installation, no packages/groups added during OS installation.
# It's best to install the server, then ssh in and run the script because there's a couple of steps
# that'll be much easier if you can copy/paste.

# Running this script as root (sudo sh <scriptname>) against a base 11.04 server install should
# have you up and running without any additional fiddling around. Let me know if you see a better way
# to do this, or find any glaring errors.

# VARIABLES:
PARAMETERS="[-d|--debug] [-h|--help] [-u|--git-db-user <user>] [-p|--git-db-password <password>]"
SPHINX_URL="http://sphinxsearch.com/files/sphinx-0.9.9.tar.gz"
GITORIOUS_REPO="git://gitorious.org/gitorious/mainline.git"

APTCMD="aptitude install -y"
PACKAGES="build-essential zlib1g-dev tcl-dev libexpat-dev \
    libcurl4-openssl-dev postfix apache2 mysql-server mysql-client \
    apg geoip-bin libgeoip1 libgeoip-dev sqlite3 libsqlite3-dev \
    imagemagick libpcre3 libpcre3-dev zlib1g zlib1g-dev libyaml-dev \
    libmysqlclient15-dev apache2-dev libonig-dev ruby-dev rubygems \
    libopenssl-ruby libdbd-mysql-ruby libmysql-ruby \
    libmagick++-dev zip unzip memcached git-core git-svn git-doc \
    git-cvs irb"

HOSTNAME=`hostname --fqdn`
GIT_DB_PASS="gitorious"
GIT_DB_USER="gitorious"


# PARAMETER CHECK
while [ $# -gt 0 ]; do    # Until you run out of parameters ...
  case "$1" in
     	-d|--debug)
          	# "-d" or "--debug" parameter?
          	DEBUG=1
		APTCMD=`echo "$APTCMD" | sed '/.*/ s/[ ]-y//'`
          	;;
	-u|--git-db-user)
	      	shift
		GIT_DB_USER="$1"
              	;;
	-p|--git-db-password)
		shift
		GIT_DB_PASS="$1"
		;;
	*)	
		echo "\n"
	      	echo "Usage: `basename $0` $PARAMETERS"
		echo "\n"
		echo "Running this script as root (sudo sh `basename $0`) against a base 10.10 server install should"
		echo "have you up and running without any additional fiddling around. Let me know if you see a better way"
		echo "to do this, or any glaring errors."
		echo "\n"
		exit 0
	      	;;
  esac
  shift       # Check next set of parameters.
done


# Install packages:
$APTCMD $PACKAGES


# Install ruby gems:
REALLY_GEM_UPDATE_SYSTEM=1 gem update --system

gem install --no-ri --no-rdoc -v 0.8.7 rake && \
    gem install --no-ri --no-rdoc -v 1.1.0 daemons && \
    gem install -b --no-ri --no-rdoc \
        rmagick stompserver passenger bundler


# Install sphinx search server:
cd /usr/src
FILE=`echo "$SPHINX_URL" | sed 's/^\(.*\)\/\(.*\)\(\.tar\.gz\)/\2\3/'`
if [ -e $FILE ]; then 
	echo "Local copy of $FILE exists, Skipping download."
else
	wget "$SPHINX_URL"
fi
echo "Extracting $FILE..."
tar -xzvf $FILE
cd `echo "$FILE" | sed 's/^\(.*\)\(\.tar\.gz\)/\1/'` && \
	./configure --prefix=/usr && \
	make all install


# Install gitorious:
git clone $GITORIOUS_REPO /var/www/gitorious
ln -s /var/www/gitorious/script/gitorious /usr/bin


# Configure services:
cd /var/www/gitorious/doc/templates/ubuntu/ && \
    cp git-daemon git-poller git-ultrasphinx stomp /etc/init.d/ && \
    cd /etc/init.d/ && \
    chmod 755 git-daemon git-poller git-ultrasphinx stomp

update-rc.d git-daemon defaults && \
    update-rc.d git-poller defaults && \
    update-rc.d git-ultrasphinx defaults && \
    update-rc.d stomp defaults

ln -s /usr/ /opt/ruby-enterprise


# Configure Apache for Passenger:
echo "\a\a"
$(gem contents passenger | grep passenger-install-apache2-module)

echo "\a\a"
echo "\n\nWe are going to enter the 3 lines from the above prompt: \"The Apache 2 module was successfully installed.\""
echo "into passenger.load. Scroll up and copy the lines then press enter to continue."
echo "They should look similar to this:\n"
echo "   LoadModule passenger_module /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-3.0.9/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so"
echo "   PassengerRoot /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-3.0.9"
echo "   PassengerRuby /usr/bin/ruby1.8"
echo "\n"
read -p "[Press Enter to continue]" null
nano /etc/apache2/mods-available/passenger.load


# Enable modules:
a2enmod passenger && \
    a2enmod rewrite && \
    a2enmod ssl


# Create gitorious sites:
FILE="/etc/apache2/sites-available/gitorious"
echo "<VirtualHost *:80>" >> $FILE
echo "   ServerName your.server.com" >> $FILE
echo "   DocumentRoot /var/www/gitorious/public" >> $FILE
echo "</VirtualHost>" >> $FILE

FILE="/etc/apache2/sites-available/gitorious-ssl"
echo "<IfModule mod_ssl.c>" >> $FILE
echo "    <VirtualHost _default_:443>" >> $FILE
echo "        DocumentRoot /var/www/gitorious/public" >> $FILE
echo "        SSLEngine on" >> $FILE
echo "        SSLCertificateFile    /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem" >> $FILE
echo "        SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key" >> $FILE
echo "        BrowserMatch ".*MSIE.*" nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0" >> $FILE
echo "    </VirtualHost>" >> $FILE
echo "</IfModule>" >> $FILE


# Disable default site and enable gitorious sites:
a2dissite default && \
    a2dissite default-ssl && \
    a2ensite gitorious && \
    a2ensite gitorious-ssl


# Create mysql user:
start mysql
echo "\a\a"
echo "!!!!!!!!!!     The next password prompt is for the MySQL root password you set previously.     !!!!!!!!!!"
echo "\n"
mysql -u root -p <<HERE
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO '$GIT_DB_USER'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '$GIT_DB_PASS' WITH GRANT OPTION;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
quit
HERE


# Configure gitorious:
cd /var/www/gitorious/ && \
    bundle install

adduser --system --home /var/www/gitorious/ --no-create-home --group --shell /bin/bash git && \
    chown -R git:git /var/www/gitorious

su - git -c "mkdir .ssh && \
    touch .ssh/authorized_keys && \
    chmod 700 .ssh && \
    chmod 600 .ssh/authorized_keys && \
    mkdir tmp/pids && \
    mkdir repositories && \
    mkdir tarballs"


# Create gitorious configuration:
su - git -c "cp config/database.sample.yml config/database.yml && \
    cp config/gitorious.sample.yml config/gitorious.yml && \
    cp config/broker.yml.example config/broker.yml"


# Edit database user in database.yml
FILE="/var/www/gitorious/config/database.yml"
sed -i -n '1h;1!H;${;g;s/\(production:.*\)\(\n[ \t]*username:\).*\n\([ \t]*password:\).*\n\([ \t]*host:\)/\1\2 '$GIT_DB_USER'\n\3 '$GIT_DB_PASS'\n\4/g;p;}' $FILE


# Edit gitorious configuration:
FILE="config/gitorious.yml"

su - git -c "sed -i 's/^production:/&\n\
  repository_base_path: \/var\/www\/gitorious\/repositories\n\
  gitorious_client_host: localhost\n\
  gitorious_client_port: 80\n\
  gitorious_host: $HOSTNAME\n\
  archive_cache_dir: \/var\/www\/gitorious\/tarballs\n\
  archive_work_dir: \/tmp\/tarballs-work\n\
  hide_http_clone_urls: true\n\
  is_gitorious_dot_org: false/' $FILE"

echo "\a\a"
echo "You will need a secret key for verifying cookie session data."
echo "If you change this key, all old sessions will become invalid."
read -p "Enter a key of 30 random characters or more: " SECRET_KEY
FILE="config/environment.rb"

su - git -c "sed -i 's/^[ \t]*#[ \t]*no regular words .*/&\n  config.action_controller.session = { :key => \"_myapp_session\", :secret => \"$SECRET_KEY\" }/' $FILE"
su - git -c "sed -i '/config.action_controller.session_store/ s/^\([ \t]*\)#/\1/' $FILE"


# Create gitorious database:
su - git -c "mv config/boot.rb config/boot.bak"
su - git -c "echo \"require 'thread'\" >> config/boot.rb"
su - git -c "cat config/boot.bak >> config/boot.rb"

su - git -c "export RAILS_ENV=production && \
   bundle exec rake db:create && \
   bundle exec rake db:migrate && \
   bundle exec rake ultrasphinx:bootstrap"


# Create sphinx cronjob:
echo "\a\a"
echo "Copy the line below and paste into crontab when it opens:\n"
echo "* * * * * cd /var/www/gitorious && /usr/bin/bundle exec rake ultrasphinx:index RAILS_ENV=production\n"
read -p "[Press Enter to continue]" null
su - git -c "crontab -e"

su - git -c "env RAILS_ENV=production ruby1.8 script/create_admin"

# Finished!
echo "\a\a"
echo "Gitorious installed successfully."
echo "System will now reboot.\n"
read -p "[Press Enter to continue]" null
reboot

WINDOWS 8 SERVER: NETWORK DEDUP

I was just looking over Mark Minasi's rundown of Windows 8 Server (thanks Mark for teaching me Win2k3, in the early days your book saved my ass on more than one occasion) and one tiny paragraph jumped out at me:

"Finally, de-duping applies not only to disk space but to networking.  If I'm copying a huge bunch of files from a Windows 8 system to another Windows 8 system, the network stack does de-duping as well.  Grab a bunch of VHDs and copy them across the network and it only takes a bit longer than copying just one of them would."

This. is. cool. I don't know if this functionality exists in other OS's but I've certainly never heard of it. Now I'm actually excited about Windows 8!

WINDOWS: DISPLAY DRIVE LETTERS BEFORE NAMES

Open RegEdit and navigate to the key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer

New: DWORD (32-bit) Value
Name: ShowDriveLettersFirst
Value: One of the numbers below:

0 – Default. Drive letters are displayed after the drive description.
1 – Show local drive letters after description and network drive letters before the drive name.
2 – Display no drive letter at all
4 – Show all drive letters before the drive names

WIN2K3 ENABLE SHUTDOWN AT LOGIN SCREEN

Enable the shutdown button on the login screen in Windows 2003:

Click Start - Run (or Windows Key - R) and type gpedit.msc

In the window that opens navigate to: Computer Configuration - Windows Settings - Security Settings - Local Policies - Security Options

Open the item Shutdown: Allow system to be shut down without having to log on 

and set to Enabled