Slackware Server Discontinued

     I decided to remove the Slackware from the shell servers today.

     1) It was not being used, about a month between logins on average and then only brief logins.

     2) It was not being maintained.  I’ve seen no updates for a long time.

     3) I could not get x2go to work on it.  There have been problems since it’s installation and they are not being resolved.

     4) It works only with non-GPT partition tables, and this precludes using boot-repair if something goes wrong.

     5) It uses the lilo boot loader, also precluding the use of boot-repair if something goes wrong.

     In short it was a lot of effort to maintain.  If it were getting used, I’d make that effort, but it was not.

Ubuntu SSH Re-installed

     I needed to re-install ssh server on ubuntu.eskimo.com because there was a problem with the existing installation that caused it not to re-start automatically upon reboot.

     The result is the openssh encryption keys will have changed.  You can remove the old key from your .ssh/known_servers with:

     ssh-keygen -f “/home/nanook/.ssh/known_hosts” -R “ubuntu.eskimo.com”

     You will also be prompted if you use x2go.  Do not worry, this is NOT a man in the middle attack, it is simply an installation problem that needed to be corrected.

Postfix on mail.eskimo.com

     Postfix is acting up on mail.eskimo.com, I do not know if this is because of an update or exactly what is wrong.  Specifically, it is rejecting some clients even though I have explicitly told it to accept SASL authenticated clients regardless of EHLO status.  This is causing issues when sending e-mail from some phones when the IP address assigned has no inverse DNS OR when it is running off of WiFi and using a NAT address instead of a real IP address.

     I am attempting to compile the latest postfix which has a number of bug fixes after the version that Ubuntu supplies to see if it will correct this.  Also compiling the latest openSSL as the Ubuntu version is one release behind and does not have all the latest encryptions.  There will be some interruption of outgoing mail service as it will be necessary to remove the Ubuntu version before installing the locally compiled version.