Author name: Dan Langille

sshd: error: key_read: uudecode failed

1 Comment / Open Source, ssh / By /

I started seeing this error: Jun 10 19:12:38 nyi sshd[92208]: error: key_read: uudecode AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABJQAAAIBdX/USEtxnO91Vpujney8gwkq2sRrcU9R6nKAoGv1eNMWrMD9a93kZMjR4fFMAH87g+zyHBftxCsyE0wJX2A0UFgIQsiuOOINkTJMyk\n failed I couldn’t figure it out. Then I searched ~/.ssh/authorized_keys for that string. I found it in there. But the line was incomplete. It looked like I’d deleted the last part of the line. It should end with something like this: … onsnJNGeljjf9i8U3aorbSZj3jiEuTYMoTi9XK2dvGh5bbEQggw47jQg= dan@bigtimes.example.org Solution: I deleted that line. Then I copy/pasted the public key back into the file […]

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Converting from cvs to svn

Leave a Comment / Open Source, subversion / By /

I started playing with cvs2svn, a tool for migrating a CVS repository to Subversion. cvs2svn does more than just Subversion. It also handles git and Bazaar. Why am I moving from cvs? I couldn’t get my existing cvsupd server to run on a new server. Attempts to start cvsupd gave: $ sudo /usr/local/etc/rc.d/cvsupd onestart Starting cvsupd. 2013.06.10 15:35:22 UTC [35995]: CVSup server started 2013.06.10 15:35:22 UTC [35995]: Software version: SNAP_16_1h 2013.06.10 15:35:22 UTC

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Using compression with PostgreSQL’s pg_dump

4 Comments / databases, Open Source, PostgreSQL / By / /

I attended a few of the talks at PGCon 2013 last month. One talk, for which I took several notes and made a few choice tweets. The main one I’m following up on is using the -Fc option on pg_dump. It was during Magnus Haganders’ talk on PostgreSQL Backup Strategies that I posted that tweet. In the two weeks since that talk, I managed to do some testing. Let’s have a look at

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Bacula – AfterJob: Host key verification failed

Leave a Comment / Backups, Bacula, Open Source / By /

I’ve been moving services from one server to another. Manually. My Bacula server is now running in a FreeBSD jail. I just got ready to copy backups from disk to tape. But one aspect was failing: updating my statistics. After each tape job, I collect statistics on that tape, with respect to tape errors. That is done via SSH. The job error was: 05-Jun 13:52 bacula-dir JobId 132208: shell command: run AfterJob “/home/dan/bin/dlt-stats-kraken”

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nagios – check_ping CRITICAL – You need more args!!! Could not open pipe:

2 Comments / Jails, Nagios / By /

I’ve been moving some services around lately. A server is dying and I need to move stuff off it. Today I managed to move Bacula and Nagios onto a new server. After a short bit of struggle, I had just one service check that was failing: check_ping. Here’s the example: $ /usr/local/libexec/nagios/check_ping -H bast.example.org -w 3000.0,80% -c 5000.0,100% -p 1 CRITICAL – You need more args!!! Could not open pipe: Google searches did

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ezjail – renaming, moving, and renumbering

1 Comment / Jails, Open Source / By /

ezjail is my tool of choice for managing jails. I’ve been using it since 2008. Today, I want to do something which ezjail won’t do for me, but will allow me to do. I created a bunch of jails for a Bacula tutorial at BSDCan. Now that I have that server safely home again, I need to add more services to this jail server. My main development machine is acting up. It is

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smartctl: FAILING_NOW

Leave a Comment / Disks, hardware / By /

I noticed this in my logs today: May 22 14:04:39 bast smartd[1577]: Device: /dev/ad0, Failed SMART usage Attribute: 9 Power_On_Hours. Oh. Really? I looked at the output of smartctl and found: This HDD is part of a gmirror: $ gmirror status Name Status Components mirror/gm0 COMPLETE ad0 ad2 How’s ad2 doing? That seems OK. Regardless of the status, I can do nothing for a week. I’m out of town. I do have several

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Setting up the Planex MZK-RP150N to act as a wireless ethernet adaptor

Leave a Comment / Networks, Wireless / By /

I have a Planex MZK-RP150N. Sometimes (always), I forget how to change the SSID it connects to. This documents it so I can do this faster next time. Wireless LAN Basic Settings Site Survey select the SSID click on Connect Enter the password OK Apply (saves settings) Apply (again; this time it restarts the unit) Done.

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Restricting IP addresses to specific databases

1 Comment / Open Source, PostgreSQL / By / /

Sometimes, you don’t want just anyone talking to your database. In fact, sometimes, you don’t want anyone accessing your database except very specific applications. In this case, I am setting up about 20 databases, each one dedicated to a specific use, and to be accessed only from one IP address each. In this post, I’ll talk about how I first set this up with pg_hba.conf, and then how I altered it to be

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The Bacula Tutorial jail server

Leave a Comment / Backups, Bacula, BSDCan, Conventions, DHCP, Disks, File Systems, FreeBSD, Jails, NAT, Operating Systems, pf, PostgreSQL, ssh, ZFS / By /

One of the challenges of providing hands-on demonstrations is giving everyone their own sandbox to play in. I don’t want people to spend time on installing software. I want people to learn about the software in question, specifically Bacula. With this in mind, I’ve been building up a solution based on FreeBSD 9.1, ZFS, and jails. My solution is pretty nifty, but I don’t think it’s anything special. The key is simplicity. The

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