The current gentoo ebuild has some issues with the latest version of smb_ldap tools which means that the config files (there was one; now there are two) are now installed in a different location (they have moved from the previous version that gentoo installed).

For more information, have a look at this bug.

This basically means that if you are upgrading you should expect to redo your configuration. As some basic hints the following may be useful:

• the majority of paramteres in /usr/share/samba/scripts/smbldap_conf.pm are now in /etc/smbldap-tools/smbldap.conf
• the authentication details that were in /usr/share/samba/scripts/smbldap_conf.pm are now in /etc/smbldap-tools/smbldap_bind.conf
• the parameters no longer have ‘$’s in front of them (so be careful if you are cutting and pasting)
• the scripts no longer have .pl extensions. For example: smbldap-useradd.pl is now smbldap-useradd so remember to change your smb.conf to this effect.

Good luck!

Web Developer (Broken link http://chrispederick.myacen.com/work/firefox/webdeveloper/index.php) is a rather neat toolbar component for Firefox or Moz.

I’ve been using LaunchBar for sometime now, but since the panther upgrade it never quite seemed the same. Now I discover Quicksilver (Broken link http://blacktree.com/apps/index.html?quicksilver/index.html) from BlackTree Apps (Broken link http://blacktree.com/apps/) which does the same job, but somehow feels nicer to use.

Stripes posted this (Broken link http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/osx/tools.html) nice site full of usefull OS X specific command line tools

Right. We were having massive problems with DCOM authentication time outs and odd, occasional, browsing issues on the domain. Upgrading to Samba 3.0.2_rc2 (and I would hope 3.0.2 which was released today) fixed them all.

I occasionally get rpm commands hanging, they are only killable with a -9. This Redhat bugzilla entry offers a solution:

rm -f /var/lib/rpm/__db*.

Which seems to work…

Steve sent along this (Broken link http://homepage.mac.com/aamann/) useful collection of Mail and Eudora scripts

Windows update tells proxy servers not to cache its downloads. To get round this in squid, add the following to your acls:

acl windowsupdate dstdomain .windowsupdate.com
never_direct allow windowsupdate

never_direct tells squid to always try to get the object from cache even if the client specifically asks for it.

UPDATE: I found that Microsoft change the updates whilst keeping the old filename, and this will break if you cache the files. So the best solution is to use SUS (Broken link ~~http://microsoft.com/sus/~~).

I’ve just found this quite usefull in setting up amanda to do disk only backups.

To force a linux nic to 100Meg Full Duplex for example:

[root@ sm-b01 network-scripts]# mii-tool
eth0: no autonegotiation, 100baseTx-HD, link ok
eth1: no autonegotiation, 100baseTx-HD, link ok
[root@sm-b01 root]# mii-tool -F 100baseTx-FD eth0
[root@sm-b01 root]# mii-tool -F 100baseTx-FD eth1
[root@sm-b01 root]# mii-tool
eth0: 100 Mbit, full duplex, link ok
eth1: 100 Mbit, full duplex, link ok

UPDATE: I have since discovered that mii-tool doesnt support gigabit ethernet NICs, to force these to a particular setting, or to see what setting they have auto-negotiated use ethtool, which is included in RedHat 9, but if you dont have it you can get it from Source Forge.

ethtool can be used to set and get the current state:

[root@mon-b01 root]# ethtool eth1
Settings for eth1:
        Supported ports: [ TP MII ]
        Supported link modes:   10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
                                100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
        Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
        Advertised link modes:  10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
                                100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
        Advertised auto-negotiation: No
        Speed: 100Mb/s
        Duplex: Full
        Port: Twisted Pair
        PHYAD: 1
        Transceiver: internal
        Auto-negotiation: off
        Supports Wake-on: puag
        Wake-on: g
        Link detected: yes
[root@mon-b01 root]# ethtool -s eth1 speed 100 duplex full

UPDATE: Have found this post which explains how to set the duplex and speed settings permanently on RedHat 9, although will probably work for most distributions.

The options you can pass to the network drivers (for the e100 module) are well documented here (Broken link http://www.scyld.com/network/eepro100.html) and most of the other network drivers are documented back (Broken link http://www.scyld.com/network/index.html#pci) a page.