DaviCAL installation

Fed up with waiting for Snow Leopard I decided to set up a calender server on our Linux server. After some searching I found out that Davical would be the best solution, especially since we use thunderbird and would like to use lightning as a calerdar client.

I installed DaviCAL on our Ubuntu 7.10 server, this was not very easy! All in all I can't even rember how I exactly did it. My plan is do to the same on a second server and document this step by step.

Most important thing for me is that is all works! There are some disadvantages, but none to big.

Some things to watch out for:

• In the permissions file of PostgreSQL (pg_hba.conf), make sure to post the access control rule at the top of the configuration document!
• The username in the caldav access URL is casesensitive!
• Use this as URL: http:////caldav.php//home/

Since DaviCAL uses PostgreSQL instead of MySQL a extra backup routine is important for me. Our MySQL database is backup, so I added an extra backup script:

#################################################################################################
# PostgresSQL Backup:
mv /network/backups/Database_Backup/Daily6_PostgreSQL_DaviCAL.sql /network/backups/Database_Backup/Daily7_PostgreSQL_DaviCAL.sql
mv /network/backups/Database_Backup/Daily5_PostgreSQL_DaviCAL.sql /network/backups/Database_Backup/Daily6_PostgreSQL_DaviCAL.sql
mv /network/backups/Database_Backup/Daily4_PostgreSQL_DaviCAL.sql /network/backups/Database_Backup/Daily5_PostgreSQL_DaviCAL.sql
mv /network/backups/Database_Backup/Daily3_PostgreSQL_DaviCAL.sql /network/backups/Database_Backup/Daily4_PostgreSQL_DaviCAL.sql
mv /network/backups/Database_Backup/Daily2_PostgreSQL_DaviCAL.sql /network/backups/Database_Backup/Daily3_PostgreSQL_DaviCAL.sql
mv /network/backups/Database_Backup/Daily1_PostgreSQL_DaviCAL.sql /network/backups/Database_Backup/Daily2_PostgreSQL_DaviCAL.sql
mv /network/backups/Database_Backup/Daily_PostgreSQL_DaviCAL.sql /network/backups/Database_Backup/Daily1_PostgreSQL_DaviCAL.sql

su postgres -c 'pg_dump davical' > /network/backups/Database_Backup/Daily_PostgreSQL_DaviCAL.sql
#################################################################################################

Adding an Axiz PTZ camera to ZoneMinder

ZoneMinder has the ability to control a PTZ (Pan, Tilt, Zoom) through it's user interface.

I added a Axis 213 PTZ dome camera to our ZoneMinder server using the following settings (After turning on PTZ in the Options->System tab (ZM_OPT_CONTROL), and restarting ZoneMinder):

General Tab:

• Source type: remote
• FPS: 6.00 (keep this high or you will get a delay in the image)
  

Soure Tab:

• Remote host name: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
• Remote host port: 80
• Remote host path: /axis-cgi/mjpg/video.cgi?resolution=CIF
• 24 bit colour
• Capture width: 384
• Capture Height: 288

Control Tab:

• Control Type: Axis API v2
• Control Device:
• Control Address: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:80 (mind the ':' and the port number !!)

And now for the tricky part, at least on my system (Ubuntu 8.04) you need to install a special Perl module:

• sudo apt-get install libmodule-load-perl

Took me about an hour to figure that one out!

Weird Time Machine errors on Leopard Server

When I open the main GIU of the Leopard Server there's always an error pop up on the screen from Time Machine. This error states that 'a' backup malfunctioned, but all backups seem ok.

I looked through the logs and found this: (note that most backups finish ok, just some with the error below)
4/24/09 9:38:15 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[64124] Starting standard backup
4/24/09 9:38:15 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[64124] Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
4/24/09 9:38:17 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[64124] No pre-backup thinning needed: 131.4 MB requested (including padding), 187.56 GB available
4/24/09 9:38:21 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[64124] Stopping backup.
4/24/09 9:38:21 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[64124] Error: (-43) SrcErr:NO Copying /private/var/imap/user/a to /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/Saturn/2009-04-24-093816.inProgress/83D4516C-94ED-4201-9F20-9547F53209EF/Leopard Server/private/var/imap/user
4/24/09 9:38:21 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[64124] Copied 4 files (10.7 MB) from volume Leopard Server.
4/24/09 9:38:21 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[64124] Copy stage failed with error:11
4/24/09 9:38:27 AM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[64124] Backup failed with error: 11

I always thought that Time Machine does not backup mail stuff, but it apparently does backup parts (useless parts) of the IMAP mail store.

The fix I'm trying is to add the /var/imap/users/ dir to the exclude list in the Time Machine preferences screen. See if this helps....

Rebuilding a Zoneminder system after a Crash

The Zoneminder system setup using this link has had a hard disk crash. Not much of the system could be saved. So we chose to rebuild from scratch.

This time we installed a 160GB disk for the system itself and swap, and a seperate 500GB disk for events and backups of the system.

The start of the guide still applies, but we also did the following:
using fdisk created a 6GB for backups and a 482GB partition for events

Formated both as EXT3 and added the following to /etc/fstab:
/dev/sda1 /backups ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/sda2 /var/cache/zoneminder/events ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1

Set correct permissions for the events dir:
sudo chown www-data:www-data /var/cache/zoneminder/events/

Added a time sync script:
sudo nano /etc/cron.daily/timesync

And added:
#!/bin/sh

ntpdate 0.nl.pool.ntp.org

Then:
sudo chmod 755 /etc/cron.daily/timesync

Fix Video permissions:
chmod 4755 /usr/bin/zmfix

Added a MySQL backup script I also use on our main Linux server:
sudo nano /etc/cron.daily/DB_backup

Added:
#!/bin/sh

mv /backups/MySQL_Backup/Daily6.sql /backups/MySQL_Backup/Daily7.sql
mv /backups/MySQL_Backup/Daily5.sql /backups/MySQL_Backup/Daily6.sql
mv /backups/MySQL_Backup/Daily4.sql /backups/MySQL_Backup/Daily5.sql
mv /backups/MySQL_Backup/Daily3.sql /backups/MySQL_Backup/Daily4.sql
mv /backups/MySQL_Backup/Daily2.sql /backups/MySQL_Backup/Daily3.sql
mv /backups/MySQL_Backup/Daily1.sql /backups/MySQL_Backup/Daily2.sql
mv /backups/MySQL_Backup/Daily.sql /backups/MySQL_Backup/Daily1.sql

mysqldump -r /backups/MySQL_Backup/Daily.sql --all-databases

Then ran:
sudo chmod 755 /etc/cron.daily/DB_backup
sudo mkdir /backups/MySQL_Backup

Set up main backup system using Rsnapshot:

sudo apt-get install rsnapshot

sudo nano /etc/rsnapshot.conf (Watch for tabs instead of spaces!!!)

Contents of config file: (used cat /etc/rsnapshot.conf | grep -v -e ^# to get this output btw)
(ALL SPACES MUST BE TABS!!)
config_version 1.2
snapshot_root /backups/
cmd_cp /bin/cp
cmd_rm /bin/rm
cmd_rsync /usr/bin/rsync
cmd_ssh /usr/bin/ssh
cmd_logger /usr/bin/logger
cmd_du /usr/bin/du
cmd_rsnapshot_diff /usr/bin/rsnapshot-diff
interval hourly 6
interval daily 7
interval weekly 4
interval monthly 6
verbose 2
loglevel 3
logfile /var/log/rsnapshot.log
lockfile /var/run/rsnapshot.pid
rsync_short_args -a
rsync_long_args --delete --numeric-ids --relative --delete-excluded
exclude /backups
exclude /dev
exclude /media
exclude /proc
exclude /tmp
exclude /mnt
exclude /sys
exclude /proc
exclude /var/cache/zoneminder/events
backup / localhost/

Then add this to /etc/crontab:
0 */4 * * * root /usr/bin/rsnapshot hourly
50 23 * * * root /usr/bin/rsnapshot daily
40 23 1,8,15,22 * * root /usr/bin/rsnapshot weekly
30 23 1 * * root /usr/bin/rsnapshot monthly

Installed X and setup autologin and auto script run:
sudo apt-get install gdm

sudo apt-get install xorg

On the machine itself (not SSH) ran:
sudo startx

sudo gdmsetup

In gdmsetup I set the user 'zoneminder' as autologin, and set the default session to run the Xclient script.

Create the Xscript:
nano /home/zoneminder/.xsession

And insert:
#!/bin/sh

while ( true )
do
/usr/sbin/xlib_shm-script
sleep 1
done

Then run:
chmod 755 /home/zoneminder/.xsession

Set the correct screen resolution:
sudo apt-get install displayconfig-gtk
sudo displayconfig-gtk

I set this to 800x600, this suits the cameras best

Stop screen blanking by adding this to the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file:
Section "ServerFlags"
Option "blank time" "0"
Option "standby time" "0"
Option "suspend time" "0"
Option "off time" "0"
EndSection

Create, setup & install the Xlib_shm Zoneminder raw viewing script:
Check the version numbers! not all Xlib_shm version is compatible with each version of Zonderminder!

sudo wget http://dig.hopto.org/xlib_shm/xlib_shm-0.6.3.tgz

sudo tar xfz xlib_shm-0.6.3.tgz

sudo apt-get install libxv-dev

sudo apt-get install build-essentials

sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient15-dev

sudo nano xlib_shm.c
And changed /usr/local/etc/zm.conf into /etc/zm/zm.conf

sudo make all

Place the binary xlib_shm in /usr/sbin/

sudo chown root.root /usr/sbin/xlib_shm
sudo chmod +s /usr/sbin/xlib_shm

For the actual auto starting of xlib_shm I first created a new shell script:
sudo nano /usr/sbin/xlib_shm-script

And added this:
#!/bin/sh
xlib_shm -m 1 -m 23 -m 11 -m 12 -k 0x07a6d0000 -d 40000

Then:
sudo chmod 755 /usr/sbin/xlib_shm-script

Automated mailbackup with Mailbfr

After messing around with cron (which does not work!) and launchd I found a very simpel solution to automatically run mailbfr -b.

I made a new script:
sudo nano /etc/periodic/daily/710.mailbfr

Added this:
#!/bin/sh
mailbfr -b /Volumes/Backups -mo full

Seems to work!

Setting up rsnapshot backup tool on Linux + NFS

Since the Mac server is now sharing it's RAID device with NFS the Linux server can now backup to this share.

Hint:
I'm always struggling to get NFS going for some reason, using the command showmount -e you will get a list of the NFS server's shares. That helps a lot!

I set up a seperate partition on the Mac server as an NFS share only to be accessed by one IP address, that is the IP of the Linux server.

The Linux server has an hourly cronjob to keep the NFS mounted, just to be sure. I placed this file in /etc/cron.hourly/MountNFS-Share Contents:
#!/bin/sh
mount 192.168.0.3:/Volumes/Jupiter-Backups /mnt/backup/

Next I added this following to /etc/crontab on the Linux server:
0 4 * * * root /usr/bin/rsnapshot hourly
50 23 * * * root /usr/bin/rsnapshot daily
40 23 1,8,15,22 * * root /usr/bin/rsnapshot weekly
30 23 1 * * root /usr/bin/rsnapshot monthly

This way the Linux server should backup itself incrementally to the Mac server's RAID device. Also, because the backup goes to the RAID device it will automaticaly be an extra off-site backup.

Installed new backup hardware

The 500GB backup disk in the Mac server is showing a SMART failure warning. So needs replacing. We also wanted a more solid offline backup method.

We placed a DeoNet RAID external USB2.0 next to the server. Backups will now be as followed:

• Mac server Time Machine will backup itself to the RAID device
• Mailbfr running on the Mac server will backup all the mail files to the RAID device
  
• The Mac server will share the RAID using separate partitions, one for the Linux server and one for Time Machine clients on the LAN
  
• The Linux server will backups its data to the shared RAID using rsnapshot and NFS
• Macs on the LAN will backup themselves using Time Machine via the Mac server on the RAID.
  

There are two 1TB discs in the RAID, configured as mirrored RAID 1. There are also two separate discs stored off site. Once every week one of these disks will be swapped with one in the RAID. The RAID will automatically update the disc.

Sendmail changes and correct setup on Linux server

I'm doing some modifying of a PHP script which now needs to be able to send emails. The script (todolist.php) runs on the local Linux server, and is only used internally.

I ran 'sendmailconfig' on the Linux server, this suggested I altered /etc/mail/sendmail.mc. I used the public address of our local SMTP server (Mac Server). After entering this info sendmailconfig continued and reset sendmail.

Immediately emails from the queue started coming in! Pretty cool, and easy!

Extra backup routine for SuperDuper

Added a backup routine and schedule for the backup tool SuperDuper on the Leopard Server.

The script backups only mailbfr's mailbackup directory located on the Leopard Server's backup drive. The backup, of the backup, is backuped as a disk image to the Linux server in it's backup directory. The backup is scheduled for each day at 04:30.

Automated mailback for the Mac OS X Leopard Server by using the 'mailbfr' tool, works great!

I used to use it manually by running:
mailbfr -b /Volumes/Backups/MailBackup/ -mo rotate

I now ran:
mailbfr -i

Which prompted this:

crontab: no crontab for root
cat: /etc/crontab: No such file or directory
There IS NO cron job for mailbfr
if you want to use 'mailbfr' it is recommended that this be added
Would you like me to enable it for you (yes/no)
yes
What time would you like the job to run (24-hour format)?
Please enter the hour (1)
2
Please enter the minutes (0)

Enter the path you would like to backup to? Enter for default (/mailbfrBackups)
/Volumes/Backups/MailBackup
Enter the type of backup you would like? (incremental/full/rotate) Enter for default (incremental)
rotate
The following cron job for 'mailbfr' has been prepared
0 2 * * * /usr/sbin/mailbfr -b /Volumes/Backups/MailBackup --mode rotate
Would you like to add it? (yes/no)
yes
crontab: no crontab for root
The following cron job for 'mailbfr' has been enabled'
0 2 * * * /usr/sbin/mailbfr -b /Volumes/Backups/MailBackup --mode rotate


Backups are now made daily at 02:00 and are stored on the extra backup drive in the Leopard server. The 'rotate' option is used, which means that each day the backup is updated, and is rotated on Saturday.

Mac OS X Webmail

Re-enabled a webmail account on the OS X server, not all worked.

It is apparently very important that you set a user name and an email address in the 'options' section for the users email account. I you do not do this the name will be "SERVER_NAME" and the email address will be @getenv.example.com instead of @example.com (or whatever).

Endless loop for Xlib zoneminder viewer & logging feature

It seems that now and then 'something' goes wrong with the xlib_shm viewer. When we turn on the LCD in the morning the GDM login screen is shown instead of the cameras.

We altered the .xsession file for the auto login user to endlessly re-run the xlib script. The .xsession file now looks like this:

#!/bin/sh

while ( true )
do
/usr/sbin/xlib_shm-script
sleep 1
done


To try and find out what's going wrong we changed /usr/sbin/xlib_shm-script from this:

xlib_shm -m 1 -m 23 -m 11 -m 12 -k 0x07a6d0000 -d 40000


To this:

xlib_shm -m 1 -m 23 -m 11 -m 12 -k 0x07a6d0000 -d 40000 >> /tmp/xlib-log 2> /tmp/xlib-log-dinges


This way we may get some output of errors in the log files.