Common Mailman administrative tasks
This advanced article describes how to perform some common Mailman tasks:
Reset Mailman to defaults
Back up Mailman data
Restore from a Mailman backup
Migrating from one server to another
You are currently browsing the archive for the Mac OS X Server category.
Text* Snippets: MySQL launchd item for Mac OS X Tiger [mysql] [osx] [10.4] [tiger] [launchd]
I had to reinstall Mysql because it wasnt one of the things I backed up before erasing my hard drive. Since Im now running Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, I decided to set it up to start when the system boots, but the system for creating startup items has changed slightly. So I saved the following xml in /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.mysql.Mysql.plist:
Lingon is your friend. It is a GUI for creating launchd plists. Only a little obtuse, but switching to “advanced” mode will show you what your plist looks like, so it’s easy to compare to any samples you may be looking at.
found in the mac os X system admin list
Just wanted to say thanks to Michael Wise for taking time out today
and providing me with a great set of forensic tools and techniques
for locating message queue IDs, and using postcat on the queue to
view actual messages/headers. Now I can start the real investigation.
Haven’t found the offending script yet, but am getting closer.
Notes from my conversation with Michael, for the archives:
* First, find suspicious looking lines in /var/log/mail.log
* Look for the smtp ID, such as: postfix/smtp[25897]
* Grep for other instances of that ID in the log: grep 25897
mail.log
* From there, youÂ’ll be able to see postfix queue IDs, such as
159A347C89C
* You can use this queue ID to find deferred messages in the
postfix queue
* cd /var/spool/postfix/
* Find where in the queue directory hierarchy this message
lives: find . -name 159A347C89C
* The messages are stored in a format not easily readable. To
make them readable, use the postcat command, e.g. postcat deferred/E/
E9B8F4F0E7C
* Now you can see the real message, with all of its headers,
which should give you a lot more info about its origins. You can see
whether it came from outside, or if it comes from a process ID, there
should be some indication. If user is www, you know itÂ’s coming from
a web script.
* To delete a message from the queue, use e.g.: postsuper -d
E9B8F4F0E7C Do not use the path with this command – just the queue ID.
Other tools:
Monitor incoming network connections, filtering out legit traffic on
port 80:
netstat -na | grep EST
netstat -na | grep EST | grep -v ‘\.80 ‘
netstat -na | grep EST | grep ‘\.25 ‘
To find files or dirs owned by www (that might be illegitimate):
find / -user www -ls
In case attacker named directories with spaces or other weird chars
in them:
find / -user www -ls | cat -vet -
(take your cat to the vet – itÂ’s sick)
Thanks also to others who responded on this.
Best,
Scot
–
Scot Hacker, Webmaster
Graduate School of Journalism
UC Berkeley
http://journalism.berkeley.edu
Optimizing an Xserve for Web Hosting
A single Xserve is ideally suited for smaller scale Web hosting, where the task is to host a handful of moderate-traffic sites. (With a fleet of Xserves, you could host an eBay or an Apple.com, but that’s a topic for another article.) The Xserve’s Apache Web server software has a multitude of configuration options. In this article, I will go over how to set up Apache to serve multiple Web sites from the same machine—so-called “virtual hosting.†I will also look at ways to optimize the server’s setup for fast, robust Web hosting. This article assumes that you have already followed the steps in the Mac OS X Server Administrator’s Guide to start Web service. (You can find the Guide on the Mac OS X Server Manuals page.)
At its core, Xserve is a two-socket Core microarchitecture Xeon (Woodcrest) rack server. As I wrote in my review, in hardware design, Xserve lives up to market standards. Some touches, like the SAS/SATA drive bays, a PCI-X slot for existing expansion cards and the SuperDrive dual-layer DVD burner, help tip the scale in Xserve’s favor. But the reason to buy Xserve is OS X Server: No other server app platform rivals it, and no other server system runs it. If you want OS X Server, you need a Mac, and Xserve is the only Mac that’s equipped with external drive bays and a baseboard management controller.
/etc/httpd/sites_disabled/0000_default_default.conf
the location of the default settings for virtual hosts (VirtualHost) that are used by the ServerAdmin GUI interface.
Add or change things here to have newly added web sites get your favorite changes to the configuration.
httpd configuration default virtualhost
often the PHP enabling (LoadModule AddModule) will be made correct during system update
we enable later
after system updates check and make sure that the PHP enabling is commented out in httpd.conf
we enable at the end – entropy
add access to port 2525 by changing /etc/postfix/master.cf – look in the .cf file for examples
restart the mail service
can be useful in deciding if ISP is blocking port 25 access.
Mac OS X Server 10.3: Administrator sees share points, not volumes
server:
In Server Admin, stop Apple File Service.
Open Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/).
Type:sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.AppleFileServer admin31GetsSp false
Press Return.
Enter your administrator password when prompted, and press Return.
Quit Terminal.
Restart Apple File Service.
If you need to administer remotely, you may use the above command in an ssh session. Alternatively, you may also use this command:
sudo serveradmin settings afp:admin31GetsSp = no
AppleShare
– OS X Server print services don’t support non-PostScript USB printers. Does
– anyone know a workaround or third party solution?
Yeap. I use this one successfully : transform temporarily your Mac OS X Server… as a Mac OS X box 
Just type in Terminal :
From Guillaume Gete on the server admin list
sudo mv /System/Library/CoreServices/ServerVersion.plist /System/Library/CoreServices/oldServerVersion.plist
Then log out and login to your server (you will see that it displays the Mac OS X login window ).
Now, just go to the Printer System preference and activate USB printer sharing.
Now, go back to Terminal and type :
sudo mv /System/Library/CoreServices/oldServerVersion.plist /System/Library/CoreServices/ServerVersion.plist
And logout and login again.
There you are, your USB printer is shared. However, you may not be able to use all the nifty functions of the server’s Print service.