Linux System Admins Blog » Debian

Debian FTP archive for Etch – archive.debian.org

marius — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 00:49:17 +0000

Debian Etch has been discontinued for a while now, and in an ideal world everyone has upgraded to lenny a long time ago. Still, this is not always possible and there are some systems out there that are still running etch, some for a good reason, some just because their admins are lazy . Recently we worked on a project with such a system that was still running etch, and the devs on the team told us that all is working perfect but they are no longer able to install new packages using apt tools. Hmm… let’s see.

And indeed running apt update was giving a 404 error, as the etch files are no longer in the main ftp archive (on ftp.debian.org):

apt-get update Ign http://ftp.debian.org etch Release.gpg Ign http://ftp.debian.org etch Release Ign http://ftp.debian.org etch/main Packages Ign http://ftp.debian.org etch/non-free Packages Ign http://ftp.debian.org etch/contrib Packages Err http://ftp.debian.org etch/main Packages 404 Not Found [IP: 130.89.149.226 80] Err http://ftp.debian.org etch/non-free Packages 404 Not Found [IP: 130.89.149.226 80] Err http://ftp.debian.org etch/contrib Packages 404 Not Found [IP: 130.89.149.226 80] Fetched 4B in 1s (3B/s) Reading package lists... Done W: Couldn't stat source package list http://ftp.debian.org etch/main Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/ftp.debian.org_debian_dists_etch_main_binary-i386_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory) W: Couldn't stat source package list http://ftp.debian.org etch/non-free Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/ftp.debian.org_debian_dists_etch_non-free_binary-i386_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory) W: Couldn't stat source package list http://ftp.debian.org etch/contrib Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/ftp.debian.org_debian_dists_etch_contrib_binary-i386_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory) W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems

and the apt sources line causing this error was (from /etc/apt/sources.list):
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ etch main non-free contrib

We could not upgrade the machine because of internal constrains, and this was not even the scope of our project, but we needed to install some new debian packages we had to point the apt sources to a new place and this is to the archive.debian.org that continues (and will continue) to have the etch files. Basically our new apt sources became:
deb http://archive.debian.org/debian/ etch main non-free contrib
and this made it possible to complete our project and install the needed libraries. A few weeks after we finished the project we were hired for a new project to perform the upgrade to lenny, but this is a different storry.

I hope you found this post useful, in case for some reason you are still running etch and need to find a proper etch mirror to install new softwares as needed. Of course I would urge you to upgrade to lenny, or even to squeeze if possible, as etch is no longer supported, you have no longer security patches, etc.

cvs [checkout aborted]: absolute pathnames invalid for server

gerold — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:44:00 +0000

Absolute Path Error:
cvs [checkout aborted]: absolute pathnames invalid for server (specified `/path/drupalsite/')

Ok, I got the error above when I performed Drupal CVS update on our Debian server (newly installed CVS 1.12.13). The same command works on other server with older CVS installation. The issue is the reference to local cvs directory where I used absolute path (-d /path/drupalsite/), which is a bug (security hole on client side) – it was fixed on newer CVS version to use relative path.

Drupal Checkout Command:
cvs -z6 -d:pserver:anonymous:anonymous@cvs.drupal.org:/cvs/drupal co -r DRUPAL-6-15 -d /path/drupalsite/ drupal

Use of Relative Path (sample)
cd /path cvs -z6 -d:pserver:anonymous:anonymous@cvs.drupal.org:/cvs/drupal co -r DRUPAL-6-15 -d drupalsite drupal

Problem with Lilo Boot Loader

gerold — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:43:30 +0000

Lately, we installed additional memory on our Debian (lenny) servers and installed ‘bigmem’ kernel for our 32-bit systems to recognize more than 3GB of ram. Bigmem kernel installations went fine on servers with Grub as their boot loader – most of them uses Grub. But on one machine with Lilo as boot loader, it didn’t boot on bigmem kernel and below was the entry on /etc/lilo.conf.

# Boot up Linux by default. default=Linux

image=/vmlinuz label=Linux read-only # restricted # alias=1 initrd=/initrd.img

image=/vmlinuz.old label=LinuxOLD read-only optional # restricted # alias=2 initrd=/initrd.img.old

From this config I don’t see the details of which kernel is the old one and the bigmem. I also tried to set the default to kernel with “LinuxOLD” label but it points to the same kernel (not the bigmem). I solved my problem by modifying the /etc/lilo.conf config as follows:

# image=/vmlinuz image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-2-686-bigmem initrd=/boot/initrd.img-2.6.26-2-686-bigmem label=Linux read-only # restricted # alias=1 #initrd=/initrd.img

NOTE: Don’t forget to test first your changes on the /etc/lilo.conf by running ‘lilo’ command – this will verify your changes.

HowTo display PHP errors when you don’t have access to php.ini

marius — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 12:10:34 +0000

If you are using a shared server, or just have a limited account on your company servers, you might not have access to your php configuration file php.ini (this is usually found under /etc/php.ini in rhel/centos and /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini in debian/ubuntu). Still, in many situations it might be needed to enable php errors in the browser so you can see what is the actual problem instead of an empty page (if the server has error reporting disabled as most production systems should have).

In order to enable error reporting for your php script or application include inside your code the following lines:
error_reporting(E_ALL); ini_set("display_errors", 1);
and this will result in displaying in the browser any errors your application might have.

ps: once you are done with this and fixed the issue, don’t forget to remove the error reporting lines, as we don’t want our users/clients to see errors in the browser in case something went wrong.

hpacucli: error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++-libc6.2-2.so.3

gerold — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 01:15:46 +0000

Problem: I got this error when installing hpacucli on Lenny and i can’t find it on my default repo. Others have similar problem.

Solution: I just installed a package directly from packages.debian.org and this worked fine for my hpacucli in Lenny.

Any idea why this library is not included anymore?

New Debian apt keys

max — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:37:05 +0000

Running apt-get update gives an error message:

W: GPG error: http://ftp.us.debian.org etch Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 9AA38DCD55BE302B W: There is no public key available for the following key IDs: 9AA38DCD55BE302B W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems

A check for this missing key tells us it is for Lenny/5.0 sources which have been introduced to the Debian Archive and all new packages are being signed with this new key.

root@debian:~# gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net --list-keys 9AA38DCD55BE302B pub 4096R/55BE302B 2009-01-27 [expires: 2012-12-31] uid Debian Archive Automatic Signing Key (5.0/lenny)

Add this key into your apt keyring with:
root@debian:~# gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net --recv-keys 55BE302B && gpg -a --export 55BE302B | apt-key add - gpg: requesting key 55BE302B from hkp server wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net gpg: key 55BE302B: public key "Debian Archive Automatic Signing Key (5.0/lenny) " imported gpg: no ultimately trusted keys found gpg: Total number processed: 1 gpg: imported: 1 (RSA: 1) OK

and if you are using Debian-Volatile sources:
root@debian:~# gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net --recv-keys 6D849617 && gpg -a --export 6D849617 | apt-key add - gpg: requesting key 6D849617 from hkp server wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net gpg: key 6D849617: public key "Debian-Volatile Archive Automatic Signing Key (5.0/lenny)" imported gpg: no ultimately trusted keys found gpg: Total number processed: 1 gpg: imported: 1 (RSA: 1) OK

List keys in your apt-keyring:
root@debian:~# apt-key list /etc/apt/trusted.gpg -------------------- pub 1024D/2D230C5F 2006-01-03 [expired: 2007-02-07] uid Debian Archive Automatic Signing Key (2006)

pub 1024D/6070D3A1 2006-11-20 [expires: 2009-07-01] uid Debian Archive Automatic Signing Key (4.0/etch)
pub 1024D/ADB11277 2006-09-17 uid Etch Stable Release Key
pub 1024D/BBE55AB3 2007-03-31 [expires: 2010-03-30] uid Debian-Volatile Archive Automatic Signing Key (4.0/etch) sub 2048g/36CA98F3 2007-03-31 [expires: 2010-03-30]
pub 4096R/55BE302B 2009-01-27 [expires: 2012-12-31] uid Debian Archive Automatic Signing Key (5.0/lenny)
pub 2048R/6D849617 2009-01-24 [expires: 2013-01-23] uid Debian-Volatile Archive Automatic Signing Key (5.0/lenny)

OPTIONAL

Remove the 2 new gpg keys from root gpg keyring:
root@debian:~# gpg --delete-keys 55BE302B 6D849617 gpg (GnuPG) 1.4.6; Copyright (C) 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions. See the file COPYING for details.

pub 4096R/55BE302B 2009-01-27 Debian Archive Automatic Signing Key (5.0/lenny)

Delete this key from the keyring? (y/N) y

pub 2048R/6D849617 2009-01-24 Debian-Volatile Archive Automatic Signing Key (5.0/lenny)

Delete this key from the keyring? (y/N) y