Enhanced Linux

This article will outline how to install the EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux) repository for your CentOS 5.x server or desktop. This is one of the few third-party repositories that I trust, and provides a great number of newer and otherwise unavailable packages to your CentOS installation.

Installation

To install and activate the EPEL repository on your system, run the following command with administrator privileges:

rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-3.noarch.rpm

After this command is successful you’ll find that you have two new files in your yum configuration directory, /etc/yum.repos.d/.

• epel.repo
• epel-testing.repo

The testing repository is disabled by default, but the core epel repository should be active.

Installing Packages

I include EPEL on all of my CentOS installations and use it to install a number of otherwise unavailable packages. Some of my preferred EPEL packages are:

• htop
• lighttpd
• bzr
• git
• puppet
• cobbler

To install these, or any other EPEL package, simply use yum as you normally would. For example:

yum install htop

Conclusion

EPEL has been a great addition to the core CentOS repositories, providing trusted packages to the available list of software. Where others may revert to using community (un)maintained repositories, EPEL packages are often maintained by Red Hat employees and are extensively tested to comply with RHEL, CentOS and Fedora systems.

This post will outline how to reset the root password on FreeBSD. These instructions require local access to the machine and are available on FreeBSD versions 5.4 and greater.

Resetting the root password

As I mentioned above, resetting the root password and gaining administrative access to the machine requires local access to the server. Following the steps below should put you at an administrative prompt where you will be able to run the ‘passwd’ command to reset the password to a known value.

1. Restart the server.
2. When the “Welcome to FreeBSD” menu appears, press the [SPACEBAR] to pause the boot countdown.
3. Select “4″ which should be: Boot FreeBSD in single user mode.

After the machine boots you should be presented with a prompt:

When prompted Enter full pathname of shell or RETURN for /bin/sh:

Press the enter key, or enter the full pathname of your preferred shell. At this point you should be at a shell prompt, as the root user. The remaining step is to reset the password to a known value.

In order to make this change you’ll need to remount the filesystem(s) in read-write. Use the following two commands to make this change:

mount -u /

mount -a

Finally, reset the root password using the passwd command:

passwd root

At this point you should be able to reboot the machine, or type ‘exit’ to continue the boot process into its normal multi-user environment.

Troubleshooting

If you have problems regarding the “passwd” command not being found, or other similar issues, you may need to ensure that you have properly mounted any additional file systems. I might suggest using:

mount /usr

To ensure that your /usr partition is mounted (assuming it is on a separate partition).

This week, as we get ready to start a new year, I want to present Google-Chrome-Beta as the AUR package of the week. This is Google’s official Beta release of their browser.

Installing Google-Chrome-Beta

To install the Google Chrome Beta browser from AUR, use the following command from your favorite terminal:

yaourt -S google-chrome-beta

This will download and install the Google Chrome browser and create a menu entry.

Configuration

Configuring this browse, if you’ve never used Chrome before, is done by selecting “Options” from the configuration menu once the browser has launched. This is the icon furthest to the right, just beneath the address bar.

There isn’t a lot to configure, but there are enough options to let you personalize the browser. From cookie and password management, to themes and extensions, you should be able to find it all within that menu.

Troubleshooting & Comparison

I have been using this browser for months now and I haven’t had any issues, but if you do experience any you have a few options. You can, of course, fallback to another browser until an update is available. (This solution was more common previous to this browser becoming Beta quality.) You may also be interested in comparing the configuration differences in the Chrome Beta and Chromium browsers. Have a look at this link for those details.

Despite the fact that I am a Red Hat Certified Engineer, and manage Red Hat and CentOS for a living, I prefer running Debian 5.x (Stable) on my personal servers.  The one thing that I end up needing to add to my Debian servers however is Logwatch (which is default on Red Hat). This post will outline how to install, configure and verify Logwatch on your Debian 5.x (Stable) server.

From the Logwatch home page:

Logwatch is a customizable log analysis system. Logwatch parses through your system’s logs for a given period of time and creates a report analyzing areas that you specify, in as much detail as you require. Logwatch is easy to use and will work right out of the package on most systems.

Installing Logwatch

To install the Logwatch Log Monitoring tool, you’ll need to install the required package. This package should be available in the main repository and simply requires Perl and a Mail Transport Agent. Perl is something you’ll likely already have, and Exim should be installed by default (although I prefer Postfix).

Use the following command to install Logwatch:

sudo aptitude install logwatch

Configure Logwatch

Logwatch runs via cron each day and, assuming you want to receive these reports, you’ll likely want to configure it to send these reports via email. You’ll need to update the configuration to output to mail as well as define the address you’d like it to send to. This is done in the following file:

/usr/share/logwatch/default.conf/logwatch.conf

The two changes you’ll want to make are as follows:

1. You should find, around line 35, a setting for Output. You’ll want to change this to mail.
2. Find, around line 44, the setting for MailTo. You’ll want to change this to the email address you’d like the reports sent.

You can verify the functionality by simply running the logwatch command and checking the email account you configured.

Troubleshooting

If you find that you don’t receive an email as expected, it is likely an issue with your Mail Transport Agent (Exim, Postfix, Sendmail, etc..) Take a look at /var/log/mail.log and see if that gives you any hints.

I have run into machines where Exim, the default Mail Transport Agent, was not configured properly to be able to send email outside of the machine. You can try to reconfigure Exim by reconfiguring the package installation:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure exim4

You can also try installing something you might be more familiar with. Perhaps Postfix or Sendmail. If you install Postfix, select the “Local Only” option during installation and it should work as expected.

Welcome to Enhanced Linux! This blog aims to enhance your Linux and UNIX experience by publishing tips and tricks on all aspects of Linux life. Whether it be Desktop users on Ubuntu or Server Admins on FreeBSD, we’ll publish tips to try and make your life easier. Enhancing the user experience is our goal!