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Serial console

If the machine is only providing serial output during bootup, then it may not have been configured for serial logins. Check that the

/etc/inittab

file contains a line like

T0:23:respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttyS0 9600 vt100

which tells init to start the program to provide login prompts.

The original kernel shipped with Debian sarge has a broken serial driver for Ultra 5s. The version in the security updates should work.

Getting user information from [[ldap]]

The

libnss-ldap

package handles fetching account information from LDAP. Also make sure that

nscd

is installed, otherwise bad things may happen.

To tell

libnss-ldap

where to look, you need to edit the

/etc/libnss-ldap.conf

. At the very least, you'll need to give the host and base (

dc=tardis,dc=ed,dc=ac,dc=uk

).

To tell libc to use

libnss-ldap

, you need to amend the appropriate lines in

/etc/nsswitch.conf

:

passwd:         files ldap 
group:          files ldap
shadow:         files ldap

The other databases are best left alone; we don't bother putting host information or such like in LDAP because we don't see much benefit.

The

getent

program is useful for testing.

Authenticating with [[ldap]]

The

libpam-ldap

package is used for authentication against LDAP. You need to configure

/etc/pam_ldap.conf

along the same lines as

/etc/libnss_ldap.conf

. A typical example is:

host piper
base dc=tardis,dc=ed,dc=ac,dc=uk
rootbinddn cn=admin,dc=tardis,dc=ed,dc=ac,dc=uk
ldap_version 3

# NSS lookups need to be restricted to the appropriate parts of the tree.
# If other lookups are added to /etc/nsswitch.conf, they need to be put
# here too.
nss_base_passwd ou=People,dc=tardis,dc=ed,dc=ac,dc=uk
nss_base_group   ou=Group,dc=tardis,dc=ed,dc=ac,dc=uk
nss_base_shadow ou=People,dc=tardis,dc=ed,dc=ac,dc=uk

# Use funky generic LDAP password changing.
pam_password exop

PAM needs to be told to use

libpam-ldap

, as well as the normal authentication for

root

. Canonical

/etc/pam.d/common-auth

:

# ** Use trick from /usr/share/doc/libpam-ldap/README.Debian
#
auth    [success=1 default=ignore]      pam_unix.so nullok_secure
auth    required                        pam_ldap.so use_first_pass
auth    required                        pam_permit.so

Note the

use_first_pass

option. Without it logins will ask for a password for pam_unix, then one for pam_ldap, and so on, causing every other attempt to enter your password to fail even when you get it right. You need to set up

/etc/pam.d/common-account

in the same way.

Restricting access to admins

In

/etc/security/access.conf

add

+:ALL:cron
-:ALL EXCEPT root admin:ALL

[Hmmm… maybe that should be

LOCAL

instead of

cron

.]

Ensure that

/etc/pam.d/common-account

ensure that the pam_access module is used to restrict access. For example,

account [success=1 default=ignore]      pam_unix.so debug
account required                        pam_ldap.so debug
account required                        pam_access.so

Multiple VLANs

Some systems need to appear on several VLANs, most notably the router. First, add

8021q

to the end of

/etc/modules

so that the kernel knows how to deal with the VLAN tagged packets. (Use

modprobe 8021q

to load it immediately if you don't want to reboot.) Then install the

vlan

Debian package, and add extra stanzas to

/etc/network/interfaces

for the new VLANs. For example,

# Admin VLAN
auto eth0.1
iface eth0.1 inet static
        address 192.168.1.6
        netmask 255.255.255.0
        network 192.168.1.0
        broadcast 192.168.1.255

where

eth0.1

means VLAN number

1

on interface

eth0

. Finally, configure the switch so that the port is on the extra VLANs.

Logging to the [[log_host]]

To make syslog send logs to the log host, put

*.*     @loghost

into /etc/syslog.conf. It is a good idea to keep the local logging too, in case of network problems.

Server addresses

See also

Other stuff that should be documented here, but isn't

  • Configuring machines to pass mail on to the mail hub
  • Configuring ntp
  • Booting our suns from the LAN
  • Installing munin
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