cpan does not work - Undefined subroutine &Compress::Zlib::gzopen

while running cpan on a more-or-less out-of-the-box CentOS 5.2 with Perl updated to version 5.8.8 the following error occurred:

Fetching with LWP: ftp://bo.mirror.garr.it/mirrors/CPAN/modules/03modlist.data.gz Going to read /home/egon.stemle/.cpan/sources/modules/03modlist.data.gz Undefined subroutine &Compress::Zlib::gzopen called at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/CPAN.pm line 5721.
suggestions from here helped finding a solution. however, i did not want to and could not delete things from system paths... so, problem solved without deleting things in /usr/lib/...

the following modules are needed:
IO-Compress (2.017), which itself depends on two packages

Compress-Raw-Bzip2 (2.017)

Compress-Raw-Zlib (2.017)

Scalar-List-Utils (1.19)

...and then installed manually.

you need to have working local, aka. user-modules, configured, i.e. perl should look for and install modules into a directory you have r/w permissions; e.g. ~/usr (cf. this link for some hints on how to get started)

start with the Scalar-List-Utils: untar, cd into and
PERL5LIB=~/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8:~/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8 perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=~/usr -xs make make test make install (you can also give the PERL5LIB path as option -I to perl - or not at all if you are really sure your local set-up is wokring...)

continue with the dependencies for IO-Compress and then IO-Compress itself.

if you want to be on very safe side you may recompile all dynamically loaded modules with
cpan -r (this will take a while - and will install many modules as a local version... watch your quota!)

anyways, afterwards i could happily use cpan to install my two(!) missing modules...

Blogged with the Flock Browser

personal reminder: less secure but quicker rsync

rsync -e 'ssh -ax -c blowfish' [-a --partial ... (--relative ...)]

personal reminder: Convert Nikon NEF to JPG with ufraw

$ ufraw-batch --out-type=jpeg --out-path=/home/itsme/Pictures/export --compression=85 --size=1280 /media/Data/home/itsme/Pictures/MyPics/*.nef

for more details cf. http://otype.net/2008/08/convert-nikon-nef-to-jpg-with-ufraw/

howto copy CalendarServer (content) - use rdiff-backup

rsynced a complete and functional copy of CalendarServer to another drive (and to another file system). afterwards, the server started and didn't complain but iCal.app didn't show any calendar (but still logged in and didn't complain about anything - just no calendar!).

tryied rsync -aA, rsync -rlpAtgoD (long version - one never knows...), and cp -a - but all to no avail.

finally, i tried rdiff-backup -b - and this worked... why? not quite sure! ideas welcome....

personal reminder: building debian packages from source

...for future reference:

1. apt-get source (-t testing) PACKAGENAME
2. apt-get build-dep (-t testing) PACKAGENAME
   
3. cd PACKAGANAME-version
4. OPT: vi debian/rules (e.g. to activate some experimental features)
   
5. OPT: vi debian/patches/00list (to enlist a patch that should be applied)
6. OPT: vi debian/patches/... (the patch enlisted previosly)
7. dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -uc -b
8. dpkg -i ../PACKAGENAME-version-etc (only the necessary packages)
   

apt-listchanges chokes on its DB (bsddb.db.DBRunRecoveryError)

in case of:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/apt-listchanges", line 229, in ?
main()
File "/usr/bin/apt-listchanges", line 150, in main
seen.close()
File "bsddb/__init__.py", line 237, in close
bsddb.db.DBRunRecoveryError: (-30974, 'DB_RUNRECOVERY: Fatal error, run database recovery -- PANIC: fatal region error detected; run recovery')

(similarly to the post below) something along the lines of:

cd /var/lib/apt
db4.6_dump listchanges.db | db4.3_load temp.db
mv temp.db listchanges.db

helps.

spamassassin (or spamd) fails while accessing bayes databases - R/O: tie failed: Transport endpoint is not connected

just found lines like these in the spamd.log (i.e. spamassassin was not able to use the bayes databases any more...)

warn: bayes: cannot open bayes databases /.../.spamassassin/bayes_* R/O: tie failed: No such file or directory
...
warn: bayes: cannot open bayes databases /.../.spamassassin/bayes_* R/O: tie failed:
warn: bayes: cannot open bayes databases /.../.spamassassin/bayes_* R/O: tie failed: Transport endpoint is not connected

the problem seemed to have been a mismatch in used versions of the BereklyDB files (don't know how exactly they got mixed up...)
anyways, the following commands helped:

for i in auto-whitelist bayes_*; do db4.6_dump ${i} | db4.3_load ${i}.db; chown Debian-exim:Debian-exim ${i}.db; chmod g-rwx ${i}.db; done;
mmv '*.db' '#1'

after that one may check/sync/rebuild the databases along the lines of:

sudo -u Debian-exim sa-learn -u USERNAME --rebuild --dbpath /.../.spamassassin/ -D

some inspiration cam from this thread: http://lists.debian.or.jp/debian-users/200601/msg00113.html

tweking perl dependencies in debian

wanted to install dkimproxy on a debian server and was happy to find that the package existed. however, installing this package would have altered quite a lot of the perl installation - including many removes (due to dependency errors...); after some manual tweaking of aptitude, apt-get, and dpkg i finally, realized that this won't work...

but then i found: http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/78 - and started with:

dh-make-perl Mail-DKIM-0.32/

...but found that more modules were needed:

dh-make-perl --cpan Crypt::OpenSSL::Random --build
dh-make-perl --cpan Crypt::OpenSSL::RSA --build
dh-make-perl --cpan Crypt::OpenSSL::Bignum --build

installation is done via regular dpkg -i. and afterwards:

sudo aptitude install --without-recommends dkimproxy/testing

worked.


References:

1. http://dkimproxy.sourceforge.net/
2. http://www.cpan.org/modules/01modules.index.html
3. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/GnuPrivacyGuardHowto (in case something like 'running debsign failed' comes up...)
   

CalDAV support in Google Calendar

neat, Google Calendar can be used with iCal.app and Mozilla Sunbird/Lightning:  http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=99355

oo documents in svn

short summary of how to get oo documents into svn (content aware...) - well, it doesn't really work. but, at least, some idea: http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=51797&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0 which goes along the lines of:

unzip -oq [filename] -d [directory]
zip -rq9DX [filename] *

Apple Calendar Server and memcached

the apple calendar server (in r2002) seems to 'forget' to make libevent - it works hard to download, compile and install - available for the executable...

[memcached] memcached: error while loading shared libraries: libevent-1.4.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or director

/usr/local/share/libevent-1.4.4-stable/_root/lib holds the files (per default) - cf. man ldconfig and ld.so to proceed from there...

OpenVPN and fail2ban

wanted to combine Shorewall and fail2ban for SSH and OpenVPN - but found no OpenVPN filters, hence, added http://www.fail2ban.org/wiki/index.php/OpenVPN.

How many days in the current month?

echo `cal | wc -w ` - 9 | bc

Shorewall and Limit: how to reset a Limit counter

...i have still no ide how to reset the counter in /proc/net/ipt_recent/

but found a way to circumvent the blocking of an address for some time:

1. sudo iptables -L | grep -e "Chain.*%Limit\([0-9]\+\)\? "
 - this lists all the Limit Chains
2. sudo iptables -I %Limit -m recent --name SSHA --remove -s IPADDRESS
 - in case the Chain is calld %Limit and the name for the recent module is SSHA

References:

• http://www.shorewall.net/Actions.html
  

OS X Leopard (>= 10.5.4 + Security Update 2008-005) - 'Add Printer' for non-admin users

funnily enough the latest Security Update seems to have outdated this hack.

now the Add Printers... dialogue shows all broadcasted cups printers. however, users cannot add them without authenticating as an Administrator of the computer.

a possible solution seems to be to edit a different part of the cupsd.conf file. look for this section and change it accordingly...

  # All administration operations require an administrator to authenticate...
<Limit CUPS-Add-Modify-Printer CUPS-Delete-Printer CUPS-Add-Modify-Class CUPS-Delete-Class CUPS-Set-Default>
  # AuthType Default
  # Require user @SYSTEM
  Require valid-user
  Order deny,allow
</Limit>

Referenes:

• http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1373822&tstart=173