Tag: debian

[redmine] “Email delivery is not configured” error

If you get this error on Redmine‘s email notification configuration page:

Email delivery is not configured, and notifications are disabled. Configure your SMTP server in config/email.yml and restart the application to enable them.

you did configure config/email.yml file, and you did restart the application, and this message is still showing in the administration panel, you can try placing the email.yml file in other directory. For me, it helped when I placed it in /etc/redmine/default/, where Debian keeps YAML configuration files for Redmine installation instances. If you run multiple instances on one host, you may have to change default subdirectory name to the instance name.
I’m writing this post because while the solution is trivial, I’ve noticed that many questions about this error on Redmine’s forum remains unanswered.

[Linux] PHP not working in userdir (public_html)

Today I wanted to give my users possibility to test their PHP scripts, but without all the fuss with creating virtual hosts for each one of them. My first and obvious choice was userdir – user creates public_html directory in his home dir, puts there files, and those files are accessible via http://servername/~username/ URL. To enable this behavior you only have to enable userdir module (a2enmod userdir), and remember to set correct permissions to the userdir (chmod +x $HOME) and public_html (chmod 755 $HOME/public_html). I did this, and everything was working fine, except PHP scripts – browser wanted to download them instead of displaying proper processed content. It appeared that apache in Debian has by default PHP disabled for userdirs. To enable scripting in this dirctory, open file /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/php5.conf, find that piece of code:

    <IfModule mod_userdir.c>
        <Directory /home/*/public_html>
            php_admin_value engine Off
        </Directory>
    </IfModule>

and disable it, either by deleting or by commenting it out (precede each line with # sign). You can also change php_admin_value engine setting to On, but if you do that, you will be unable to turn off PHP engine in .htaccess files.

[linux] Upgrading Debian Lenny to Testing halts on udev package

Few days ago I wanted to create VirtualBox image of Debian Squeeze (current testing release). I already had Debian Lenny (stable) image, so the whole process seemed relatively easy – dist-upgrade Lenny, switch to “testing” apt sources, then dist-upgrade. It appeared easy, but in fact there were some bumps on the road. Dist-upgrade broke on “udev” package. From what I’ve understood, udev didn’t want to be upgraded while working with old kernel, and kernel wouldn’t be upgraded because of some unmet dependencies. At first it seemed that the upgrade upgrade process broke down the dependency system and the easiest way was to install the system from scratch. But udev package has an “emergency rope”. When you pull it, you promise udev that before the next reboot you will upgrade kernel – and udev will believe you and install. To use that rope, create an empty file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade and then manually install the udev package, which already resides in /var/cache/apt/archives directory. After this you can continue dist-upgrade, using -f switch. So the whole set of commands to upgrade the distribution is:

apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade
cat > /etc/apt/sources.list << ENDF
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ testing main
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ testing main

deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib
ENDF

apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade
touch /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
dpkg -i  /var/cache/apt/archives/udev_151-3_i386.deb
apt-get dist-upgrade -f

After that upgrade should finish. But be warned – after switching from lenny to squeeze I’ve experienced some problems like kernel not booting (I run previous version and regenerated initrd – it, or something else, helped), problems with VirtualBox guest additions (had to install kernel sources for guest additions to build themselves, then reinstalled virtualbox-ose-dkms package, and then reinstalled guest additions from the CD image attached to VirtualBox).

Upgraded system needs a few touches, but that’s not unusual. Don’t worry about “udevd : SYSFS{}= will be removed in a future udev version, please use ATTR{}= to match the event device” and similar messages while booting – it will be silenced in future versions of some packages. You can fix it if you want by replacing SYSFS with ATTR in /etc/udev/rules.d/* files, but other similar warnings will appear. You can also run upgrade-from-grub-legacy script, if you chose to chainload new grub from the old one during the upgrade. There is also significant amount of files in /var/cache/apt/archives, which can be safely deleted after successful upgrade (in my case it was 2.5GB of data).

Phew, now everything works and I have a proper VirtualBox image of Debian Squeeze.

SVN problems in Debian Squeeze/testing

If you get error messages like “svn: OPTIONS of ‘http://svn.example.com/svn/module’: could not connect to server (http://svn.example.com)” in Debian Squeeze/testing, you probably have the same problem as I. It appears that recently a broken neon library was transferred to debian/testing repository, what broke subversion client functionality. There are few options.
Continue reading SVN problems in Debian Squeeze/testing