Some days ago, i stumbled across Centreon (previously Oreon), a very nice web frontend for displaying nagios monitoring data, but also - even more important - it supports service and host configuration. Although the installation is poorly designed and not FHS compatible, the webapp is very nice and the generated nagios configuration looks very clean and sane.

I have created a centreon-1.4.1.ebuild with a (rather huge) patch for FHS compatibility in my overlay. I'd recommend it for every nagios user frustrated with editing tons of files for adding a host or service

As a follow up on Hannos post i have added the SNI patch to apache-2.2.6-r3. It is currently hard-masked for testing, so please give it a try.

http://shurl.org/TVYjj

honestly, i normally don't do these nerdy tests, but i felt rather bored this morning, so here you go:

After having enjoyed a wonderful vacation in turkey, i have finally found time to resolve the remaining issues with apache and opened bug 190331 for stabilizing apache-2.0.59-r5 -- which contains fixes for the CVEs mentioned on httpd.apache.org -- and apache-2.2.4-r12.

We encourage everyone to upgrade to apache 2.2, there are some changes in the configuration though. We have split much of the configuration for modules bundled with apache to their own files in /etc/apache2/modules.d/. This creates a lean httpd.conf on the one hand, but also eases configuration updates in the future. Additionally, some third-party authentication modules may not work with apache 2.2 (yet), since the internal structure has changed since 2.2. For details see New features of 2.2.

The apache herd will support apache 2.0 until Dec 31 2007, so there should be enough room for migration.

Being quite busy with apache since my return from vacation i haven't touched the experimental qmail ebuilds again yet, but i will catch up on that over the weekend and make a seperate post later on.

Last but not least, i have built new stages with baselayout-2 for vserver usage available at http://people.linux-vserver.org/~hollow/stages/. Stages for i686 are already online, amd64 is still compiling, but should be finished during this evening.

Following my previous post about new qmail ebuilds, i have started a clean install for one of our mail servers at work and already fixed some bugs, mainly in the webapp integration for vqadmin and the dovecot-dspam plugin that has been added to portage recently. Again, these updated ebuilds can be found in my overlay.

During the installation i have also rewritten most parts of the old netqmail/vpopmail guide. It now uses dovecot instead of courier, has a section aboult spam filtering with RBL, ClamAV, DSpam and SpamAssassin and explains howto setup vqadmin/qmailadmin.

The first draft of the qmail guide can be found here.

Due to the huge amount of code duplication and open bugs i have started to clean up several qmail related ebuilds. The most important change is the qmail.eclass which simplifies installation of different qmail variants (netqmail, qmail-ldap, qmail-mysql, mini-qmail) and provides some functions and variables for qmail add-ons.

Some updated ebuilds can be found in my overlay until they are ready for the live portage tree.

The following bugs have been adressed:

• daemontools
  - the daemontools.eclass provides standardized installation for supervise scripts for the daemontools package. supervise scripts are installed to /var/lib/supervise now. You have to change your symlinks
• qmailadmin/vqadmin
  - the qmailadmin and vqadmin ebuilds have been updated to work with webapp-config.
• 
  47668,
  83606,
  152503
  
  - ezmlm-idx-mysql and ezmlm-idx-pgsql have been updated and integrated to ezmlm-idx and can be enabled with use flags now.
• 97267
  - a new virtual/checkpassword has been introduced to combine all checkpwd compatible applications
• 123897
  - you can now use qmail's pop3d with ssl support using ucspi-ssl
• 135571
  - man-pages are now installed by ucspi-tcp directly
• 137207
  - qmail does not install man-pages related to internal libraries anymore
• 140488
  - vpopmail has been updated to the latest version and a supervise script has been provided for vpopmaild
• 
  95184,
  141880,
  164215
  

If you feel like testing, checkout my overlay (yes, it is in layman-global.txt), and report any problems directly to me via IRC or mail.

Enjoy.

A short notice from the qmail side of life:

After like 3 years, the qmail-ldap ebuild has been updated:

• Now in sync with netqmail-1.05 ebuild
• Updated qmail-ldap patch to 20060201
• Includes QmailLDAP/Controls patch (let's you store control/ files in LDAP attributes)
• Includes the queue-custom-error.patch (return custom bounce messages from queue programs)
• Includes qmail-spp
• Sane Makefile options handling

A little testing wouldn't hurt, though.

On a sidenote, i have added simscan-1.3.1 to the tree, after successfull testing on my production mail server for a while, enjoy.

Hi Community,

this is just a quick note, that i'm planning to organise a Gentoo user meeting (probably including an installation party) in Berlin, Germany. It will probably take place in the Newthinking Store in Berlin-Mitte or Berlin-Kreuzberg if we can get enough participants.

There is no date scheduled yet, though my suggestion would be to do it in april/may.

So, please, if you are interested in joining, please send me an e-mail (hollow at gentoo org) or contact me on Freenode (nick: Hollow).

Cheers!

To make it short: during the last months I have worked together with Roy to get baselayout-1.13 working within Linux-VServer and OpenVZ guests, and since 1.13.0_alpha5 it seems to work quite fine now ... baselayout-vserver is dead!

Now the long version: Since many things are not allowed inside virtual servers, the Gentoo VPS team has "forked" baselayout and stripped all delicate parts. Since maintaining an up-to-date baselayout-vserver (read: synced to original baselayout) is a PITA we have finally decided to make baselayout working in virtual servers.

Being able to check whether we are inside a virtual server or not, we made all delicate parts (e.g. mounting, sulogin, fsck, etc.) conditional, i.e. they will be skipped inside a virtual server. Additionally, baselayout-1.13 being more modular, previously needed init scripts can be punted from the default runlevels (e.g. modules, clock, hdparm, etc).

Summa summarum, it will enable you to use a normal baselayout within virtual servers.

In case you thought this is the only advantage: wrong! Additionally baselayout-vserver implied the ugliness of an extra portage profile and, being quite an essential package, also a set of extra stages. These are dead now as well!

On a sidenote, a lot of Gentoo support patches have been merged into util-vserver trunk.

• You can now use vserver ... build together with the template build method and the gentoo distribution target using a stage3 tarball! Hence, vserver-new is dead!
• The gentoo init style has been reimplemented to work the same way as it would with an init process. This will bring back output of the boot process ..
• All emerge wrappers (vemerge, vesync, vupdateworld, vdispatch-conf) have been merged!
• The init scripts have been split into vprocunhide and vservers.default again. You can now use vservers.default like the net init scripts. To start vservers of type MARK, just do ln -s vservers.default vservers.MARK and you're done!

If you want to test all this new stuff, you have to follow these steps:

• emerge util-vserver-svn - you can find the live svn ebuild in our overlay.
• In case you didn't do it with old init scripts: /etc/init.d/vprocunhide start

• To build a new virtual server use one of these commands (depending on the init style you want):

  • vserver myguest build \
--context 42 \

--initstyle plain \
-m template -- \

-d gentoo \

-t /vservers/stage3-i686-20061103.tar.bz2
  • vserver myguest build \
--context 42 \

--initstyle gentoo \
-m template -- \

-d gentoo \

-t /vservers/stage3-i686-20061103.tar.bz2

A prepared stage3 with baselayout-1.13.0_alpha5 can be downloaded from here.

It should look something like this if you use my baselayout-1.13.0_alpha5 stage3:

zeus vservers # vserver myguest build \
> --context 42 \
> --initstyle gentoo \
> -m template -- \
> -d gentoo \
> -t /vservers/stage3-i686-20061103.tar.bz2
>>> Adding shared /usr/portage to fstab ...
>>> Checking init-style ... gentoo
>>> Installing special init-style magic ...
!!!
!!! You have to install a service (e.g. syslog-ng) and add it to the
!!! default runlevel before you start the guest the first time!
!!! Otherwise the guest will die as soon as it has finished booting.
!!!
!!! Consult the Gentoo Handbook on how to chroot and install
!!! packages into the guest environment.
!!!
>>> Found baselayout-1.13.0_alpha5
>>> Fixing inittab ...
>>> Fixing default runlevel scripts ...
>>> Fixing fstab ...
zeus vservers # vserver myguest start

Gentoo/Linux 1.13.0_alpha5; http://www.gentoo.org/
 Copyright 1999-2006 Gentoo Foundation; Distributed under the GPLv2

Press I to enter interactive boot mode

 * Using existing device nodes in /dev ...                  [ ok ]
 * Checking all filesystems ...                             [ ok ]
 * Mounting local filesystems ...                           [ ok ]
 * Activating (possible) swap ...                           [ ok ]
 * Setting hostname to localhost ...                        [ ok ]
 * Initializing random number generator ...                 [ ok ]
 * Starting local ...                                       [ ok ]
 * Setting system clock using the hardware clock [VPS] ...  [ ok ]
 * Starting syslog-ng ...                                   [ ok ]

If you downloaded my prepared stage, just ignore the warning about installing a service, i have already done this for you

Report any difficulties to hollow[at]gentoo.org please ..

Today, the Linux-VServer project released a new stable version of its kernel patch featuring support for Bind Mount Extensions, improved filesystem support for JFS, kernel helper improvements and other minor enhancements. The new version also fixes a lot of bugs including potential deadlocks, missing
context unhashing and network adress removal.

Alongside with the new kernel patch, the project announced the launch of a new and overhauled infrastructure for its web presence. The new project website is now based on MediaWiki using a complete new look and feel and will replace the old wiki in the future. Furthermore, an anonymous FTP archive, Subversion repositories and developer webspace have been added to public infrastructure.

The complete announcements (including a ChangeLog and detailed description of the new website) can be found at http://linux-vserver.org/Announcements/20060903

The vserver-sources-2.0.2 ebuild has been added to portage some minutes ago, and should hit the mirrors within an hour or two.

Have fun!

Just a quick note to all Gentoo VServer users:

There is an updated version of the howto available at http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/vserver-howto.xml including a whole new chapter about nice little helpers in util-vserver for Gentoo as well as some minor fixes.

Additionally, util-vserver has been bumped to 0.30.210-r6 including the vlogin patch backported from vserver-utils to allow /dev/pts usage on "vserver foo enter" (See http://list.linux-vserver.org/archive/vserver/msg12117.html for more info), a working "make test", a delete command for guests and some other minor fixes.

Enjoy!

Hey all!

It's time again for some status update regarding VServer/OpenVZ, so i thought i use my spare time for blog dedusting ;)

First, we have created the Gentoo VPS project, in order to concert the development of different implementations, and provide a convenient way for use with gentoo. The project page can be found at http://dev.croup.de/proj/gentoo-vps including Documentation and anonymous SVN access to our repository. The repository contains all patches and scripts for ebuilds in portage (openvz-sources, vserver-sources, util-vserver and vzctl), an experimental overlay, vserver stage building scripts and of course baselayout-vserver.

We also moved the old vserver profile (vserver/x86) to default-linux/x86/2005.1/vserver to provide a profile compliant to the default ones. While doing this, we also added a vserver profile for amd64 (in default-linux/amd64/2005.1/vserver).

There also has been some bug fixing in util-vserver regarding start/stop/restart behaviour and supported init styles. Now, both 1.11.14 and 1.12.0_pre* only support the plain init style, and they will never support the gentoo init style again. So, please consider the gentoo init style a deprecated workaround, and do not use it anymore!

Having fixed so many things, there was also a need for new stages, especially with regard to the profile move. So we built new stages for x86 and amd64, which can now be found on the gentoo mirrors in the experimental/{arch}/vserver directory. There won't be any stages on my space on dev.gentoo.org anymore, so please update your bookmarks, if you have any ;)

The last weeks have also brought some new releases to the VServer community, including a bugfix release of the stable VServer branch (2.0.1) and the first release of the next development branch (2.1.0). A list of changes can be found at http://www.13thfloor.at/vserver/s_rel26/overview or http://www.13thfloor.at/vserver/d_rel26/overview/ respectively.

Also, as some of you may have noticed, i started an alternative userspace implementation for util-vserver, which is meant to be clean, arch independant and legacy-free. With the release of 2.1.0 i have made the first development version (1.0.x) available to the public. It can be found at http://dev.croup.de/proj/vserver-utils . Be aware that these new utils do not contain all features the current utils do, but the implemented ones should work quite reliable. Feel free to test and report any issues!

Last but not least, OpenVZ has made it into the tree, and alongside the VServer X-Mas stabilisation, i marked all OpenVZ components stable on x86 and amd64 too. There are still some bugs in the stages with regard to OpenVZ, which will be fixed during the next release; everything else should work quite well.

To make this blog post a bit more interactive, i have prepared a Gentoo Linux-VServer usage survey, in order to collect some usage information from Gentoo users. It would be very kind if you'd spend another five minutes to fill out the form, and help us to improve VServer in Gentoo even more.

Also if you feel generous or just like the work for Gentoo VServer/OpenVZ and want to support further development, you can take a look at my Amazon Wishlist or just make a PayPal donation to hollow@gentoo.org

Thanks for your support and attention, and merry X-Mas to you all.

Benedikt

app-portage/eix is currently unmaintained upstream, and definitely needs some love for upcoming portage changes

if you're interested please contact hollow@gentoo.org

Hi All,

recently Stuart and I came up with idea to consolidate development of all Virtualization systems in Gentoo.

Virtualization is a framework or methodology of dividing the resources of a computer into multiple execution environments. Virtualization techniques create multiple isolated partitions (Virtual Machines (VM) or Virtual Private Servers (VPS)) on a single physical server. There are several kinds of virtualization techniques which provide similar features but differ in the degree of abstraction and the methods used for virtualization.

First technique: Virtual Machines (e.g. VMWare, MS VirtualPC)
Second technique: Para-Virtualized Machines (e.g. UML, Xen)
Third technique: Virtualization on the OS Level (e.g. Linux-VServer, OpenVZ aka Virtuozzo)

A more detailed comparision can be found at [1].

We'd like to encourage everyone who is interested in Virtualization development in Gentoo to join #gentoo-vps (or reply to the list) and participate in the planning of this effort.

Cheers!

[1] http://openvz.org/documentation/tech/virtualization

Long time no post, well, i'm not that kind of person who spends his time with writing, but as this is a major milestone in vserver development, i thought to share some facts and ideas...

First of all sys-kernel/vserver-sources-2.0 should hit the mirrors in some hours, and wrt new archs supported in the 2.0 series i opened a bug for arch testers as well, so we get the appropriate keywords.

Some days ago i also created the vserver herd which consists of phreak (who has just been recruited, congrats btw!) and myself atm. If you want to help out, just drop a note in #gentoo-vserver or email vserver-devs@gentoo.org - currently the util-vserver package would need some love wrt start/stop a vserver, as this procedure is kinda borked in 205-208...

As of util-vserver-0.30.208-r1 a new script called vserver-new will be shipped, which automagically creates vservers from a stage3 tarball or just clones an existing one.

Since the util-vserver package contains many legacy wrappers and an imo completely borked configuration layout I started to write new tools and also a libvserver, a wrapper around the vserver syscalls (check the libvserver wiki). If you're interested in tool development or if you have any wishes/suggestions/whatever, just drop a note.

Also the vserver-howto will get some love the next days, since it definitely needs some tweaking wrt latest development!

If you have any questions about vserver feel free to conteact me via mail or on irc

Cheers!

This is really driving me nuts. Why do people always have to moan?

I can understand that breaking the system isn't a very good idea and people will complain, but this does not count for the testing branch. And I totally agree with vericgars post clarifying the situation.

I also cannot underline trapnis denunciation of the php herd, it's their decision to not unmask it for certain reasons, and users using testing may not complain if things break. they do.

So, finally, tbh i don't really care. Working ebuilds are in the tree and whether i have to unmask them or not is kinda irrelevant.

Just my 2 cents

Well... hello planet gentoo :)

This is my first blog ever (therefore the tagline) and i hope to write some information about what i'm currently doing and thinking from time to time

So, thanks for this nice piece of gentoo!