Linux Scratchpad

I upgraded my file server to Fedora Core 3 a couple of weeks ago. Today I wanted to download some software, so I started up firefox only for it to complain about not finding libXP.so.6

A quick goolge around turned up this thread, which explains that this lib is deprecated in FC3, but is part of the xorg-x11-deprecated-libs package, which can be found here.

I've moved the location of the feed for this blog so that it doesn't clash with my other blog.

The new feed location is http://bigpinkmedia.co.uk/linux.xml

Setting Up a Samba Share

I needed to set up Samba access from my firewall machine to the main server so that I could access my MP3s from SlimServer, so here's what I did:

1/ set up a new Linux user on the file server with minimal privilages called "share" (with a nice complex password).
2/ set up the new user for Samba with the same user name and password
3/ On the firewall machine edit create a file in /etc called smbmnt.pwd containing:
Username = share
Password = complex password
4/ set file permissions so that only root can read this file
5/ create the directory /mnt/music
6/ edit the /etc/fstab file to add an entry for the new samba share
//FileServer/mp3s /mnt/music smbfs credentials=/etc/smbmnt.pwd 0 0
7/ mount the new filesystem - if all goes well it should appear under /mnt/music

N.B. The mp3s share was already set up for windows clients, so I didn't need to set it up

lame on fedora

I needed to install lame to encode MP3s but found that it wasn't in the standard fc1 packages. I found this page and added the following to the /etc/yum.conf file:

[livna-stable]
name=Livna.org - Fedora Compatible Packages (stable)
baseurl=http://rpm.livna.org/fedora/$releasever/$basearch/yum/stable
http://livna.cat.pdx.edu/fedora/$releasever/$basearch/yum/stable
#gpgcheck=1
## GPG Key run: rpm --import http://rpm.livna.org/RPM-LIVNA-GPG-KEY

and running yum -install lame did the trick.

DHCP Traffic

My log files are showing that I'm blocking a lot of DHCP traffic with my cable provider. I found some useful info on this page:
http://www.robertgraham.com/pubs/firewall-seen.html on what each of the ports does.

Lots of traffic on 10.x Reserved IP Address

I'm seeing a lot of traffic on the 10.x reserved IP range coming in from my cable modem this morning. I thought it might be something I've changed (currently upgrading firewall from Redhat 9 to Fedora) . A quick google found this post on securityfocus.com. I'm going to tweak the firewall rules to drop the traffic from that IP rather than log it.

Differences between Redhat and Fedora

I've just found the following differences, between my Redhat and Fedora machines. I'm sure there are more, which I'll post as I find them.

1/ Network config files (ifcfg-eth0, ifcfg-eth1) have moved. On RH they can be found under /etc/sysconfig/networking/devices but on Fedora htey are under /etc/sysconfig/metworking/network-scripts.

This is a bit confusing as it now mixes scripts with config data. I think I prefered the old (RH) way.

2/ DHCP Information about the process id and leases for DHCP used to be stored in /etc/dhcpcd/dhcpcd-eth0.pid and /etc/dhcpcd/dhcpcd0-eth0.info

These files ave been replaced in Fedora with /var/run/dhclient-eth0.pid and /var/lib/dhcp/dhclient-eth0.leases.

This change makes a lot of sense as the data is'nt really configuration related (which the /etc directory is used for) but is specific to the running machine.

Creating a Print Server using Samba

I'm using samba to allow me to hook a printer up to one of my machines and then print form my Windows laptop. These are the steps I took to connect my HP5550 using USB:

1/ Connect the printer and use the Red Hat Printer Configuration GUI to set up the printer and print a test page. So far so good.

2/ Edit the samba configuration file (/etc/samba/smb.conf).

Make sure the workgroup and server string are set to something sensible. I'm using the default "workgroup" and the a string that relates to the name of the server "Dionysus Share".

Edit the hosts allowed section to allow everything on my subnet (192.168.0)

Uncomment the printer configuration, to load the printer configuration:
printcap name = /etc/printcap
load printers = yes

Dont worry about specifying the printer system - samb will use CUPS by default

Towards the bottom of the file uncomment the printers section and modify it so that it looks like this:
[printers]
comment = All Printers
path = /var/spool/samba/lpd/
browseable = no
# Set public = yes to allow user 'guest account' to print
guest ok = yes
public = yes
writable = no
printable = yes
create mode = 0700
use client driver = yes

The important bits here are:
path = /var/spool/samba/lpd/ - this tells samba where to write the temporary file created for printing. This directory needs to exist and needs to be writable (by all users ?!?!)

use client driver = yes - this tells samba that clients using the service will have a print driver installed (so they don't have to download it from the server). This is what makes the queue viewable from Windows machines.

3/ Restart Samba using /etc/init.d/smb restart

4/ On the client (i.e. Windows machine), browse the network and find the print server (in this case it's called Dionysus). Drilling down on the server should show the printer (with the name it was given in the CUPS conffiguration of step 1).

5/ Double click on the printer. If the drivers are set up correctly on the client the print queue should be displayed; if they are'nt, then Windows will prompt for the driver to be installed.

6/ Attempt to print a test page (In Windows, open the print queue, select the Printer menu and the Printing Preferences option. Click the "Print Test Page" button).

7/ If the test page does'nt print then check the samba log for the client machine in /var/log/samba for clues. The following message:
lpr: unable to print file: client-error-document-format-not-supported
had me foxed for a while. I could see that the file was making its way via the /var/spool/samba/lpr directory becasue the timestamp on the directory would change. A google search on the error message turned up the following changes that must be made to the CUPS configuration file /etc/cups/mime.convs to enable the raw filter (by uncommenting the line):

application/octet-stream application/vnd.cups-raw 0 -

Also, edit the mime.types file to un comment the line:

application/octet-stream

8/ restart CUPS using /etc/init.d/cups restart

9/ Repeat step 6 and the test page *should* print.