Teamsite 6.7.1 SP1 won't start

After installing Teamsite 6.7.1 SP1 on a Solaris 10 machine I tried starting the service to check out the new version. Sadly, the service wouldn't start, dumping a core and printing this message:

[crit] file vhost.c, line 190, assertion "rv == APR_SUCCESS" failed Abort - core dumped /app/teamsite/iw-home/iw-webd/bin/iw.webd start: iwwebd could not be started

In my case, adding "dns" to the "hosts:" line on /etc/nsswitch.conf solved the problem:

hosts: files dns

A little bee tells me that you can also edit /iw-webd/conf/iwwebd.conf.template and change "_default_" on the VirtualHost entry to "*":

<VirtualHost _default_:__IWWEBD_HTTPS_PORT__>

to

<VirtualHost *:__IWWEBD_HTTPS_PORT__>

I didn't try it but that's also the recommendation from an Interwoven's KB article (support account needed).

TCP wrappers: refused connect from ...

I've used inetd + tcp wrappers + netcat a number of times for migration of TCP-based services to a new server. It goes something like this:

1. Get the service running on the new box
2. Point the DNS entry (or IP address of the server on clients) to the new server
3. Stop the service on the old box
4. Enable the redirection using inetd
   

For number 4 and HTTP redirection, an entry like the one below in your /etc/inetd.conf is usually enough:

http stream tcp nowait nobody /usr/bin/tcpd /usr/bin/netcat new-server 80

You then leave the old server running until no more clients connect to it. I do that by inspecting the syslog entries and looking for the netcat redirections. Last time, however, I was seeing these:

Jan 30 14:20:04 old-box netcat[16769]: [ID 947420 mail.warning] refused connect from 189.201.77.65

And sure enough, I started to get complaints that some clients were no longer able to connect to the service. I had left /etc/hosts.allow empty on purpose since there was no need to restrict the service to specific hosts.

After some digging through the tcp wrappers readme, I suspected that the version of tcpd on this SunOS 5.8 (Solaris 8) had been compiled with -DPARANOID. If defined, PARANOID will cause tcpd to reject hosts whose IP address don't resolve to a name (using reverse DNS).

I downloaded the tcp_wrappers source, recompiled without -DPARANOID and installed the newly compiled binary. The refused connection entries were gone from the log and the clients confirmed they were able to reach the server once again.

MSMQ error:0xc00e0027

After installing windows 2003 Service Pack 2 on a production box I started getting errors 0xc00e0027 when the application tried to access the queues. A number of related articles gave different solutions but what worked for me was reinstalling Message Queuing from the Control Panel.

I had to re-create my queues too, since they were wiped-out when I removed the component.

VMWare Workstation on Debian AMD64

I've just upgraded to the x86_64 Debian architecture (AMD64). When installing vmware workstation for x86_64 it complained about some missing libraries but the installation finished nevertheless.

However the application would not open any VMs, spitting this error:

/usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware-vmx: error while loading shared libraries: libX11.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Turns out some of the VMWare binaries need 32bit libraries, even on the 64bit version. This post on vmware's knowledge base gave a solution for Red Hat distros. On Debian the solution is analogous: you just need to install the package ia32-libs.

You will need to re-install VMWare so that it regenerates the vmmon kernel module. The vmware-any-any patch is not needed.

Broadcom 4311 on Linux

The Dell Inspiron 1501 I bought after seeing the ad on TV nearly a year ago is a good bang for your buck, except when it comes to the wireless card shipped with this notebook.

Because of the efforts of the ndiswrapper and bcm43xx developers I managed to use the wi-fi card until I started using the AMD64 binaries for Debian Etch.

If you are buying a notebook and plan to use Linux in it, stay away from the Broadcom wireless cards or any other cards that require loading a firmware at run-time.

I got tired of struggling and I'm now waiting for my Intel 2915ABG mini-pci card to arrive in the mail. Hardware is too cheap nowadays to justify wasting my time getting a vendor to work.