Category Archives: System

FTP configuration issues

I found that it was a real mess to set up a FTP server in a DMZ, behind a firewall Cisco Asa (501 model with IOS version 7.0).

The FTP server is on the DMZ area, and therefore I natted a public IP to the private IP in the DMZ subnet of this server.

static (dmz,outside) <public IP> <private_IP> netmask 255.255.255.255

Doing so, I expect that my FTP server (like Vsftpd on Linux) to be reachable within its public IP, from the Asa external interface.
Continue reading

Launchpad.net bug report #154274 : Website does not reference Debian visibly

This bug report, created by a Debian developper, reproaches that the Ubuntu website is not refering enough to Debian.

I am both using Debian and Ubuntu and loves each other.

However, on this point, I am defending the Debian side.

Ubuntu should definitely refers more to the Debian community on their website and, in general, be more cooperative – though on the latter, according to some recent news, it is improving.

Ubuntu is doing a great work, but they should not forget that most of its packages come from Debian, and not being graceful for that is, at least, a serious lack of respect.

pm-utils instead of acpi-support ?

I had several issues with gnome-power-manager and acpi-support.

Both are base on the acpid daemon for power management. Acpi-support is a convenient package of scripts to configure the power management.

It is bundled in many distributions, including Ubuntu and Debian.

The problem is that it does not cooperate very well with gnome-power-manager. As a result, I had many small but anoying issues.

The most anoying was, that after a suspend / hibernation, gnome-power-manager was not able anymore to turn off the screen for power saving. Workaround : kill it and start it again. Not good !

Pretty annoying, especially since I stopped using a screen saver with my LCD screens…

So I tried a new alternative to acpi-support : pm-utils. This is another collection of scripts, attached to the Freedesktop.org project, as gnome-power-manager : the integration with Gnome should now be much better, shouldn’t it ?

So :

$ aptitude remove acpi-support
$ aptitude install pm-utils

Now we copy the default configuration file to the /etc directory. All files will be parsed, but the one in /etc has the priority if you change a value :

$ cp /usr/lib/pm-utils/defaults /etc/pm/config.d/

With my laptop, I had to edit a line to activate suspend-to-ram, so that it looks like :

S2RAM_OPTS="-f -a 3"

And that’s it ! I did not go deeper, but there are already much fewer issues with gnome-power-manager (though it still need some work).

Sound issue on Debian testing

Gnome sounds are based on the ESD mixing system (allowing to play different sounds at the same time with the same card), which is itself based on the OSS sound service.

The problem is that it does not work by default with a Debian Testing system.

And if you try to start Esd in a terminal, you get :

$ esd
/dev/dsp: No such file or directory

First, you have to make sure to have the right packages set up (we consider that you keep using the more modern Alsa sound service instead of OSS) :

$ aptitude install alsa-oss gstreamer0.10-esd

But still, the /dev/dsp device will be missing.

The solution is to create this peripheral manually :

$ mknod /dev/dsp c 14 3

Problem : the next time you boot your machine, the device will be deleted.

Udev, the new device manager, load the peripherals dynamically, when they are detected (part of the kernel or included as a module).

If you want to check that Udev is in use on your machine :

$ ps -ef | grep udevd

Our problem is that a module – snd-pcm-oss – is not loaded at startup. We are using Alsa but we want to be able to use the deprecated OSS, still required by some applications.

The snd-pcm-oss module is emulating OSS for use with the Alsa system.
So, you need to do :

$ echo snd-pcm-oss >> /etc/modules

.. and the module will be started at the boot time, creating the suitable /dev/dsp.

Easy search on Planet Debian and Planet Ubuntu

Russel Coker, a famous Debian developper, took a really interesting initiative.

He used the Google Custom search to create 2 Google search engines :

  • one to search on Planet Debian
  • one to search on Planet Ubuntu

These blogs beeing a big source of information, these engines will be extremely convenient.

The links are available on the author’s page.

Note that you can easely access them through a dedicated link (homepage) , and you can also, from the Google page, get a link to embed them on your own homepage… what I will do soon.

Thanks to Russel Coker !