vsftpd : Allowing access to folders outside home when “chroot_local_user=YES”
With ‘chroot_local_users=YES’ vsftpd locks a user to his/her home directory, but every now and then you have a few users who need access to more that one user’s home for some reason or other
Getting around chroot
For the record “ls -s /home/user1 /home/user2″ does not work. chroot will not allow you to get out
Starting for kernel 2.4.Something a filesystem could be mounted on multiple mount points using the –bind option. hence:
$sudo mount --bind /home/user1/ /home/user2/user1
That’s it, log in as user2 and you should be able to see user1’s home. Add it to rc.local so that its mounted on reboot
Set display name of outgoing Emails send by phpBB311
phpBB3 [version 3.0.3] by default cannot set the display name in the headers of outgoing emails. You could try all you want from the administration control panel but a look under the hood in the source code will tell you its almost impossible.
Fixing it is pretty easy.
open file phpBB3_root_path/includes/functions_messenger.php find: $headers[] = 'From: ' . $this->;from; replace with: $headers[] = 'From: Display Name ' . $this->;from; find: $headers[] = 'Reply-To: ' . $this->;replyto; replace with: headers[] = 'Reply-To: Display Name ' . $this->;replyto; find: $headers[] = 'Return-Path: <' . $config['board_email'] . '>;'; replace with: $headers[] = 'Return-Path: Display Name <' . $config['board_email'] . '>;'; find: $headers[] = 'Sender: <' . $config['board_email'] . '>;'; replace with: $headers[] = 'Sender: Display Name <' . $config['board_email'] . '>;';
That should do the trick. Did it work for you ?
CHIP.in gets a forum update
The week that went by saw a lot of activity on the CHIP forum. It was high time we updated forum. After a talk over “chai” with the new one point of contact for web development I got to work. Migration of the database was the concern. Fortunately there is a tried and tested way that comes bundled along with the new installation of pphBB3 that converts the underlining database schema. Coming to think of it, an installation of phpBB3 would be incomplete without the database conversation scripts
Migration hung midway complaining “duplicate usernames in the user table”. A quick, crude, home brewed php script looked up the user table for duplicate username entries and deleted them. Migration was in business again trashing the database with insert queries. At the end of day one [monday] we had a vanilla installation of phpBB3 serving migrated data. Released it to the mods/admins for alpha testing
Over the next two days it was time to play with CSS to make it look and feel like CHIP.
Thursday dawned and it was time to go live. The forum went offline at 10am. Work work work, some serious typing on the keyboard and nine hours later, as scheduled we were online at 7pm. By the time I wrapped up for the day it was 12:45am Friday. With Electron Blue blaring loud I walked out of the office. It felt like I was on cloud #9. Its getting obvious that this is what I live for
Been fixing minor bugs over the weekend
Search engine optimization and mods are on the table this week. Coupled with server administration, this is going to be another long fun week
printf(“Hello Monday”);
UPDATE: 5th December
Awwwww, that is so sweet Brian and thank you for the first run copy
#End of Update
ip_conntrack: table full, dropping packet
Looking at syslog from my load balancing server that runs Linux LVS I noticed something that I had never seen before:
server2 kernel: [43206369.830000] ip_conntrack: table full, dropping packet.
It appears that my server has hit the maximum number of concurrent connections that can be tracked
Increasing the table size
The maximum number of connections tracked can be found by:
$sudo cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/netfilter/ip_conntrack_max 65536
Time to double to number of connections that the table can track:
$sudo nano /etc/sysctl.conf
and add the line
net.ipv4.netfilter.ip_conntrack_max = 131072
reload the sysctl.conf
$sudo sysctl -p
Further Reading:
A weekend with ASUS eeePc and Debian GNU+Linux
Its been an incredible weekend! I installed Debian Lenny on the eeePc. Its fast and stable running GNOME, using only 149 of 512 MB RAM available on the device. I love this little notebook now. It just the way I like it
Why ?
For academic purposed a.k.a just for the kicks. Jokes apart, because:
- The original OS is based on debian
- There is a debian installer available for the eeepc
- I am a GNOME person
- I am comfortable with debian
- Having full fledged debian is just neat !
I can’t get enough of this little thing. The little piece of hardware can do almost everything I can do on my desktop. IMHO this is a perfect companion for road warriors who are always on the move and need access to a browser, mail and a productivity suite
How to connect PyS60 Bluetooth console and Ubuntu 8.04
There appears to be a bug in Ubuntu 8.04’s bluetooth packages, because of which when someone trying to connect to the serial port of the computer from the mobile phone running Python receives an error message saying “No Serial ports found”. This article provides a quick fix for connecting Python Bluetooth console to a computer running Ubuntu
Diving in
The bug only exist in Ubuntu 8.04’s bluetooth packages. Two packages (bluez-utils and libbluetooth2) have to be updated from debian sid’s repository
- Download and Install:
- bluez-utils from http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/bluez-utils for your architecture
- libbluetooth2 from http://packages.debian.org/sid/libbluetooth2 for your architecture
- Connecting to the console [source: Pys60 wiki]:
In a terminal as normal user:
- Reset the HCI device:
$ hciconfig reset
- Check that the device exists:
$ hcitool dev
- Register a serial port (use channel 2. For some reason, channel 1 and channel 3 might not let the connection through)
$ sdptool add --channel=2 SP
- Now listen to the channel:
$ rfcomm listen rfcomm2 2
In your phone, make sure bluetooth is on, then go to the Python application and then select the Bluetooth Console. Select from the list of available devices your computer’s bluetooth adapter (you might need to select search even if you think you have already defined the pairing). If the operation is successful, you should see something similar to the following on your computer’s shell:
Waiting for connection on channel 2 Connection from 00:1D:FD:EE:86:38 to /dev/rfcomm2 Press CTRL-C for hangup
Now open a new shell terminal and execute:
$ cu -l /dev/rfcomm2
You’re now in control of your mobile’s python console.
Happy hacking !
Airtel officially announces the price of the iPhone 3G in India
The moment that we all have been waiting for has arrived. Airtel h
as officially announced the price of the Apple iPhone in India
Fingers crossed
The iPhone 3G will be available in two options :
- 8 GB (Black) for Rs 31000
- 16GB (White & Black) for Rs 36100
Red Carpet
To celebrate the launch of the iPhone 3G in India, Airtel will be opening three new stores, one each in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore at the stroke of midnight 12.00am (Friday Morning) on August 22nd
Would you be getting one ? Leave a reply and voice your comment
More on this at the Airtel iPhone3g website