Patrick's playground

... would you know what to do with it?

And what did you do today to get closer to it?

Today
is the first day
of the rest
of YOUR life.

What are you doing with it?

Note to self:
"/etc/init.d/apache2 restart" does not actually restart apache on debian.

Also, coworkers that randomly edit the ACL so that noone can access the webserver deserve to have their fingernails pulled out slowly.

Oh hey, it's Sunday! Perfect day to do some emergency maintenance on random important servers.

On a debian system:

# /etc/init.d/cfengine2 start
#

Hmm, no error, so let's see what runs ...

# ps aux | grep cfengine
root      2095  0.0  0.2   2852   704 pts/0    S+   10:34   0:00 grep cfengine

Strange. Why is it not running?

# ls /etc/cfengine/
#

Hmm, no config. *wizard* *stab* There, now we have configs.
But it still doesn't start ?!?
So after some braining I started hunting through the init scripts, and remembered the aneurism I had stumbled over last time:

cat /etc/default/cfengine2
# Cfengine2 defaults configuration  -*- sh -*-

# Set variable to 1 to start the daemon; 0 otherwise.

# Note that cfservd will only run if you have put a file into
# /etc/cfengine/cfservd.conf, even if you set RUN_CFSERVD.

RUN_CFSERVD=0
RUN_CFEXECD=0
RUN_CFENVD=0

CFSERVD_ARGS=""
#CFSERVD_ARGS="--multithread"

So there's a force-disable in a random file. And the init script throws no error.

Which part of this is now so simple and administration-friendly that I should use it on all my machines?
Oh, and I will not even mention the puppet packages and init scripts.

I'll just get really really drunk and forget I ever looked at that.
Say no to obsolete distros :)

Now you might be wondering why I attempted this, but ... uhm ... there are reasons. But this is just amusing:

# alien compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-140.i386.rpm
warning: compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-140.i386.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 4f2a6fd2
warning: compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-140.i386.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 4f2a6fd2
warning: compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-140.i386.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 4f2a6fd2
warning: compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-140.i386.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 4f2a6fd2
warning: compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-140.i386.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 4f2a6fd2
warning: compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-140.i386.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 4f2a6fd2
warning: compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-140.i386.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 4f2a6fd2
warning: compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-140.i386.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 4f2a6fd2
error: incorrect format: unknown tag
warning: compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-140.i386.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 4f2a6fd2
warning: compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-140.i386.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 4f2a6fd2
warning: compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-140.i386.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 4f2a6fd2
warning: compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-140.i386.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 4f2a6fd2
warning: compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-140.i386.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 4f2a6fd2
warning: compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-140.i386.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 4f2a6fd2
warning: compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-140.i386.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 4f2a6fd2
warning: compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-140.i386.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 4f2a6fd2
warning: compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-140.i386.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 4f2a6fd2
Package build failed. Here's the log:
dh_testdir
dh_testdir
dh_testroot
dh_clean -k -d
Undefined subroutine &Getopt::Long::GetOptionsFromArray called at /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.8/Debian/Debhelper/Dh_Getopt.pm line 76.
make: *** [binary-arch] Error 255
find: `compat-libstdc++-296-2.96': No such file or directory

What made it even more funny:

 $ alien compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-140.i386.rpm
Must run as root to convert to deb format (or you may use fakeroot).