Archive for August, 2010

About errors setting up SASL/StartTLS in Postfix under Ubuntu

Sunday, August 29th, 2010

In the process of setting up SASL and StartTLS under Postfix, I got this in the log:

“warning: SASL authentication failure: cannot connect to saslauthd server: No such file or directory”

It took me some minutes to figure out what was wrong. Obviously it has to do with postfix not being able to connect to the saslauthd server. The question is just, why? I went with a hunch of permissions … and wasted some time, so if you get the error, here is what solved it for me. In

/etc/default/saslauthd

You have to remove the default line and let saslauthd create its file under the postfix dirstructure. That is

> OPTIONS="-c -m /var/spool/postfix/var/run/saslauthd
< OPTIONS="-c -m /var/run/saslauthd"

And then

/etc/init.d/postfix restart

Not rocket science, but I chased a wild goose looking at permissions for 15 minutes before figuring out what was wrong.

Friday, August 13th, 2010

If you get this, trying to execute basic PBS commands

$ qstat -a
qstat: End of File

it is a permission problem. Basically you have to do some queue/server adminstration using qmgr as a user who have admin access already:

$ qmgr
set server acl_users += <username>
set queue <queuename> acl_users += <username>

Ubuntu Headless installation (serialport)

Sunday, August 1st, 2010

I had to install ubuntu 10.04 server edition over the serialport. This is doable, but requires a keyboard to be attached and keys pressed blindly in the right sequence. Here is a little cookbook on what to press:

  1. Run a terminal client on the serial console device. Configure the serial port to either the failsafe 9600 n-8-1, Hardware Flow Control=NONE, or to the much speedier 115200 n-8-1, Hardware Flow Control=NONE. The latter should be used only if the serial port in both ends support this kind of speed.
  2. Boot the server with the ubuntu 10.04 server install media in the CD/DVD drive, or from a USB ke
  3. When it has booted into the installation menu (takes a couple of seconds), then do this
    • Press ‘Enter’ (for language selection)
    • Press ‘F6′ (Other Options)
    • Press ‘ESC’ (to close the Other Options Menu)
    • Press ‘Backspace’ 3 Times (to delete “– “)
    • Type ‘console=ttyS0,115200n8 — ‘
    • Press ‘Enter’
  4. Installation willl continue, ouputting the dialogs on the serial device.

You should ofcourse replace ttyS0 with another serial device, if applicable. I am at a loss as to why I have to do this in order for me to install Ubuntu Server 10.04 over the serial port in 2010!