HEP System Administration

In the upgrade, I missed installing the hypermail package. I installed the rpm as soon as I noticed. We probably don’t need to use this now that we’re running mailman. But, just in case, I’ve installed it anyway. It’s invoked from the crontab with:

/usr/bin/hypermail -m /var/spool/mail/theta13mail -d /web/mwtheta13/archive
/usr/bin/hypermail -m /var/spool/mail/apsmail -d /web/apsreactor/archive

Added postscript plotter to hep with:

lpadmin -p plotter -E -v socket://hepplot:9100 -P /usr/share/cups/model/postscript.ppd.gz

The version of sendmail that came with RHEL4 had these two lines in the /etc/mail/sendmail.cf file.

TRUST_AUTH_MECH(`EXTERNAL DIGEST-MD5 CRAM-MD5 LOGIN PLAIN’)dnl
define(`confAUTH_MECHANISMS’, `EXTERNAL GSSAPI DIGEST-MD5 CRAM-MD5 LOGIN PLAIN’)dnl

For most mail readers, this was ok, but PC-Pine had a lot of problems with it. Since we’re already using SSL to connect, I changed the lines to this:

TRUST_AUTH_MECH(`LOGIN PLAIN’)dnl
define(`confAUTH_MECHANISMS’, `LOGIN PLAIN’)dnl

Now, PC-Pine works as expected.

The upgrade is complete. Now, it’s just a matter of helping the users to get their settings fixed.

Some notes on the upgrade.
1. Can’t copy certificates between machines. I didn’t think it was possible, but I thought I’d give it a try. So, I had to make new certificates, which means all users must delete their old ones and install the new ones.

2. Mailman lists set up on the old machine don’t work on the new one. So, I deleted all the lists and remade them. I was afraid this would be true as well, but again, thought I’d give it a try.

3. Must put links in /etc/smrsh for all the programs that use it. Otherwise, get a bunch of errors about how smrsh couldn’t run procmail or whatever program.

4. Forgot to copy the users crontabs. Also had to touch /etc/cron.deny, then anyone had the ability to run cron jobs.

RHEL4 does not come with the vacation program. It is not a part of the sendmail rpm and it’s not available by itself. So, I downloaded the source and compiled it myself. Source is in /support/data1/kickstart/vacation.

Currently we have the backup machine set with quotas as shown here:

setquota -u user 100000000 125000000 100000 150000 /local/ls1

Copied /usr/local/bin/tkpostage and /usr/local/lib/TkPostage.xbm from hep to hep1. It looks to be working.

Edit the file: /usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/mm_cfg.py. Basically, adding the hostname of the computer running it.

DEFAULT_URL_HOST  = 'hostname.uchicago.edu'
DEFAULT_EMAIL_HOST = 'hostname.uchicago.edu'

Since I had screwed it up previously, all my links and things were saying localhost.localdomain, instead of the above hostname. The solution was to use rpm to delete mailman, delete all the rpmsave files and reinstall. Then I just edited the above file and /etc/httpd/conf.d/mailman.conf. That took care of it. Next, I set the site password with mmsitepass and started the mailman service. Lastly, copied the files from /var/lib/mailman to /web/hep/mailman, made the link “ln -s /web/hep/mailman /var/lib/mailman” and changed the permissions on /web/hep/mailman to:

drwxrwsr-x root mailman mailman/

To add a new list, run /usr/lib/mailman/bin/newlist and follow the prompts. The last step is to add the following lines to /etc/mail/aliases and run newaliases. Note that test needs to be changed to the new list name.

test:              "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman post test"
test-admin:        "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman admin test"
test-bounces:      "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman bounces test"
test-confirm:      "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman confirm test"
test-join:         "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman join test"
test-leave:        "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman leave test"
test-owner:        "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman owner test"
test-request:      "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman request test"
test-subscribe:    "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman subscribe test"
test-unsubscribe:  "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman unsubscribe test"

Files are in /usr/lib/mailman. Edit the file, /usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/mm_cfg.py. Originally, I put our fqdn of the host in DEFAULT_URL_HOST and DEFAULT_EMAIL_HOST, but this didn’t work. After I commented out these two lines, I was able to successfully run check_perms.

/usr/lib/mailman/bin/newlist mailman
Enter the email of the person running the list:  me@hep
Initial mailman password:  usual one
To finish creating your mailing list, you must edit your /etc/aliases (or
equivalent) file by adding the following lines, and possibly running the 
`newaliases' program:

## mailman mailing list
mailman:                   "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman post mailman"
mailman-admin:         "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman admin mailman"
mailman-bounces:       "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman bounces mailman"
mailman-confirm:        "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman confirm mailman"
mailman-join:              "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman join mailman"
mailman-leave:            "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman leave mailman"
mailman-owner:           "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman owner mailman"
mailman-request:          "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman request mailman"
mailman-subscribe:       "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman subscribe mailman"
mailman-unsubscribe:    "|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman unsubscribe mailman"

Hit enter to notify mailman owner...

We now have a machine with just under 2TB worth of storage to use for backing up laptops. The 1.75TB are made by setting up a raid 5 system with the eight 250gb drives connected to the machine. The raid is then mounted as /local/ls1 (Laptop Storage #1).

On this disk, a directory will be created for each person wanting to use the system. Then, that directory is available through samba, after the user has logged into the system.

So, as an example, if our samba server is set with the following and user george wants to mount it:

Hostname of samba server: backup.uchicago.edu
Workgroup: UCHEP
Samba Share: user
user: george
Want to mount it to directory zzz, located in the current directory

Use the following commands:

Windows
Double-click on “My Computer”. Go to Tools -> Map Network Drive.

Drive: Choose a letter for the drive to use
Folder: \\backup\user

A window will appear for you to enter your username and password.

MAC OS X:

sudo mount_smbfs "//UCHEP;george@backup/user" zzz

You’ll be prompted for a password twice here. The first is your account password on the mac, which is from the sudo command. The next prompt is for your samba password. Unfortuately, both prompts look the same.

The other way to mount the disk is through the Finder. In the Finder, go to Go -> Connect to Server. In the window that appears, enter: smb://UCHEP;george@backup/user.

Then enter your samba password in the next window that appears.

Linux:
Must be root to run this command

mount -t cifs //backup/user zzz -o user=george,domain=UCHEP