svn: Can't convert string from 'UTF-8' to native encoding:

"svn: Can't convert string from 'UTF-8' to native encoding:"

This usually happens with special characters in the file name, which the client cannot understand.

Just set proper locale in the client to fix this issues,

$ export LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8
// make sure the locale is properly set.
$ locale
LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8

./arun

Fix categories and tags in wordpress custom post_type

By default word press does not look in to custom post_types for categories and tags, even though the category names are visible you get a NOT FOUND page when you click on the category.

A work around found for this issue is :

Edit : functions.php

add_filter('pre_get_posts', 'query_post_type');
function query_post_type($query) {
if(is_category() || is_tag()) {
$post_type = get_query_var('post_type');
if($post_type)
$post_type = $post_type;
else
$post_type = array('post','custom_post_type_name','nav_menu_item'); // replace custom_post_type_name with your post_type, and keep nav_menu_item to display menu in category page.
$query->set('post_type',$post_type);
return $query;
}
}

Reference: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/custom-post-type-tagscategories-archive-page

Thanks to paranoid  for guiding to the fix . ;)

./arun

 

Replace broken hard drive in software RAID1

This scenario assumes that you have two hard disk with RAID1 setup and one of them is broken (say sdb).

To check the status of RAID:

$ cat /proc/mdstat

Personalities : [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [raid10]
md2 : active raid1 sda3[1]
730202368 blocks [2/1] [U_]
md1 : active raid1 sda2[1]
264960 blocks [2/1] [U_]
md0 : active (auto-read-only) raid1 sda1[1]
2102464 blocks [2/1] [U_]

you will see [_U] or [U_] if there is a broken RAID.

If required remove the broken hardrive from RAID from all md devices.

# mdadm --manage /dev/md0 --fail /dev/sdb1

# mdadm --manage /dev/md1 --fail /dev/sdb2

# mdadm --manage /dev/md2 --fail /dev/sdb3

Shutdown the machine and replace the hard drive.

Once the server is booted, you will see the new device (either sda or sdb depends on what drive is broken)

# ls -l /dev/sd*

Now we need to replicate the partition schema on the new drive.

sfdisk -d /dev/sda | sfdisk /dev/sdb

// -d     Dump the partitions of a device

We can add the partition to the RAID now, you could verify the partitions with fdisk -l.

# mdadm --manage /dev/md0 --add /dev/sdb1

# mdadm --manage /dev/md1 --add /dev/sdb2

# mdadm --manage /dev/md2 --add /dev/sdb3

It will start sync the data and will be ready once completed.

You may verify the mdstat

# cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [raid10]
md2 : active raid1 sda3[0] sdb3[1]
7302023 blocks [2/2] [UU]

md1 : active raid1 sda2[0] sdb2[1]
2649 blocks [2/2] [UU]

md0 : active (auto-read-only) raid1 sda1[0] sdb1[1]
21024 blocks [2/2] [UU]

./arun

Enable IPv6 on Direct Admin

It was rather easy to get IPv6 working with DA if you have the IPv6 subnet allocated for your server.

Make sure that you have IPv6 enabled on your DA.

# grep ipv6 /usr/local/directadmin/conf/directadmin.conf
ipv6=1

Add the IPv6 Addresses to your direct admin, through IP Management (This will add IPv6 address to the interface).
Enter the IPv6 Address in IP field and keep the Netmask as 255.255.255.0

Add IPv6 address for your name servers,
go to DNS administration --> Select your name server domain --> Add AAAA records for your Name Servers. Make sure you have added the IPv6 addresses already to DA.

Check your name server is resolving/reachable via IPv6.

Now to add IPv6 Address to hosted domains, select the domain --> Modify user --> select the IPv6 address in "Add Additional IP". If the IPv6 address is not visible, make sure it is added to DA and to the reseller account you are editing the domain.

Add the IPv6 address(AAAA) to the corresponding domains DNS configuration.

Here we go, ping666666

 

./arun

Extending LVM disk space

Add the new disk drive to the system, you need to reboot the machine and configure the hardware RAID if required.

Add the new disk to Volume group

For e.g.: if the disk is HP with Smart array

# pvcreate /dev/cciss/c0d1
# vgextend <volume_group_name> /dev/cciss/c0d1

Extend the Logical volume:
# lvextend -L<+mention_the_size> /dev/<volume_group>/<logical_volume>
eg: # lvextend -L+25G /dev/localhost/var
       # lvextend -L+10G /dev/localhost/home

Resize the file system:
# resizefs <file_system>
eg:
# resizefs /dev/mapper/localhost-var
# resizefs /dev/mapper/localhost-home

./arun

Install and configure rsnapshot for central backup (without root privilege)

Download and install RsnapShot
Download the latest package from: http://rsnapshot.org/downloads.html

# wget http://rsnapshot.org/downloads/rsnapshot-1.3.1-1.noarch.rpm
# rpm -Uvh rsnapshot-1.3.1-1.noarch.rpm

Configure public key authentication

- Enable public key authentication with remote hosts with normal user privilege

local# ssh-keygen -t rsa
local# scp id_rsa.pub ssh-remote-server:id_rsa.pub

remote# useradd -c "Backup user" -d /data/home/backup/ backup
remote# su - backup

remote# vi .ssh/authorized_keys

remote# chmod 600 .ssh/authorized_keys

remote# cat id_rsa.pub >> authorized_keys ; rm id_rsa.pub

Add the command allowed to execute in the authorized_keys

command="/home/backup/validate-rsync.sh"

Create the /home/backup/validate-rsync.sh script with following contents

#!/bin/sh
case "$SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND" in
  *\&*)
    echo "Rejected 1"
    ;;
  *\;*)
    echo "Rejected 2"
    ;;
    rsync*)
    $SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND
    ;;
  *true*)
    echo $SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND
    ;;
  *)
    echo "Rejected 3"
    ;;
esac

$ chmod 700 validate-rsync.sh

Create the rsync wrapper script

$ cat  > /usr/local/bin/rsync_wrapper.sh

#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/sudo /usr/bin/rsync "$@";

# chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/rsync_wrapper.sh

This steps will basically force the ssh connection to execute the rsync as sudo

Grant user to execute rsync as root

backup    ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/rsync

Configure Rsnapshot

master# cp /etc/rsnapshot.conf.default /etc/rsnapshot.conf

Configure path for cp, rsync, ssh, logger, du etc

set link_dest = 1

change rsync_long_args like

rsync_long_args --rsync-path=rsync_wrapper.sh --delete --numeric-ids --relative --delete-excluded

If you require daily backup for a week,

interval daily 7

More details are on the how to section for rsnapshot website
http://rsnapshot.org/howto/1.2/rsnapshot-HOWTO.en.html

Configure the hosts and file system to backup

backup      backup@remotehost:/etc/     remotehost/

./arun

 

 

 

 

Upgrading php to 5.2 or 5.3 in Redhat EL 5

Unfortunately RHEL 5 does not have php.5.2 package, which is required by most of the applications including latest wordpress and drupal.

First thought of compiling php from source, but hard to keep it uptodate. So decided to make the life easier with EPEL/IUS repositories.

Remove all existing php related packages:

# rpm -e php php-mysql php-cli php-pdo php-common

Download and install the EPEL/IUS RPMs

# wget http://dl.iuscommunity.org/pub/ius/stable/Redhat/5/i386/epel-release-1-1.ius.el5.noarch.rpm

# wget http://dl.iuscommunity.org/pub/ius/stable/Redhat/5/i386/ius-release-1.0-8.ius.el5.noarch.rpm

incase if the list not working just browse and find the rpm.

Install the RPMs

# rpm -Uvh *-release-*.rpm

Now you can install php 5.2 or 5.3 like:

# yum install php52 php52-mysql

./arun

 

svn over ssh tunnel

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is very often required that you need to commit/update to the svn repository which is only indirectly accessible through a gateway (user can ssh to gateway and gateway can ssh to internal svn server)

Suppose you have a working copy (locally on your machine)  setup with the real svn url (eg : svn+ssh://svn.example.com)

- Make ssh connection with local port forwarding to the gateway server

# sudo ssh gateway.example.com -L 22:svn.example.com:22

Change the repository url to localhost, since the local host connection forward to remote svn server through the gateway.

#cd <local_svn_path>

# svn switch --relocate svn+ssh://svn.example.com/trunk svn+ssh://localhost/trunk

Now you should be able to update, commit, etc to/from your repository.

You can switch it back to the original url when you have direct access to repository.

./arun

 

Install directadmin on Debian 6

Install the basic debian server without any server components

Install the dependency packages:

# sudo apt-get install gcc g++ make flex bison openssl libssl-dev perl perl-base perl-modules libperl-dev libaio1 libaio-dev bind9

Purchase and register the server ip at directadmin.com

Once the license is activated, login to the server:

$ wget http://www.directadmin.com/setup.sh

$ chmod 755 setup.sh

# sudo ./setup.sh

// enter the client id, license id, FQDN etc, and follow the instructions.

Once the installation completed the direct admin interface will be accessible at https://< server_ip >: 2222/

./arun

 

 

Racktable, Apache+LDAP authentication

Login to the Rack tables as admin:

Add the following line under configuration--> permission

allow {$tab_default}

* This is for read only account, assign extra permissions if required

Configure Apache + LDAP

< Directory /var/www/racktables >
Options +Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
DirectoryIndex index.php
AuthName "Rack Tables"
AuthType Basic
AuthBasicProvider ldap
AuthzLDAPAuthoritative on
AuthLDAPURL "ldaps://ldaphost.com/dc=company,dc=com?uid?sub?(objectClass=< depends_on_ldap >)"



# Bind if required
AuthLDAPBindDN "uid=userid,ou=people,dc=company,dc=com"
AuthLDAPBindPassword "xxxxxx"
AuthLDAPGroupAttribute uniqueMember
AuthLDAPGroupAttributeIsDN on
require ldap-group cn=group_name,dc=company,dc=com
require ldap-attribute cn=group-name-allowed
< /Directory >

* Most of LDAP configs based on your setup

Configure Rack Tables:

Edit the inc/secret.php

Set :

$user_auth_src = 'httpd';
$require_local_account = FALSE;

NOTE: to get the logout working properly make sure the Apache AuthName matches with the one configured for Rack tables authentication.

Referene : http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/racktables/index.php?title=RackTablesAdminGuide

Reference

./arun