Welcome to MekTrix 4.0

The guide to Sarge I found here very nearly worked, but with some problems.

Quick summary of changes:

• where libpam-ldap and libnss-ldap suggest an LDAP URI of ldapi:///, ldapi://127.0.0.1/ doesn’t work — ldapi:// seems to be for unix sockets only. ldap:// or ldaps:// should work (I’ve tested ldap:// so far, as it was communicating with localhost)
• The /etc/pam.d stuff was screwy — where that guide suggests replacing your pam_unix.so lines with completely different ones, I suggest replacing them with copies of themselves but “required” replaced with “sufficient”. Screwing with my existing pam_unix.so config broke the ability to change local user’s passwords.
• In common-password, the “use_first_pass use_authtok md5” after pam_ldap.so gave me a “passwd: Authentication information cannot be recovered” error when trying to change the password. Removing them (so that the line simply reads “password sufficient pam_ldap.so”) works.
• To clarify; the general idea of the common-* files should be “unix auth is sufficient, if that fails then ldap auth is sufficient, if that files then denying access is required”. I suspect that “unix auth is sufficient, if that fails then ldap auth is required” would be the same, but IMHO that’s uglier and more prone to breaking if people want more layers later.

Sorting through some of my old code, I found a link to one of my old websites; the site itself is long gone, though googling it did bring back memories; days of hunting down “host 1mb for free”, “get a free subdomain”, etc sites; hosting things on my 56k modem. Also, playing SMAUG and having parents yell at me because I’d been using the internet for a whole hour, and it cost a penny a minute! Then downloading 200MB of software development stuff in 1.4MB chunks that took 3 hours each…

Screenshot! Mektrix v2, in Mozilla (it was modern at the time), running on one of my first linux setups XD

Coniston’s network card died, and I was the nearest employee; thus, my turn to run up to the datacenter and replace it /o/

This would be easier if I had parts, or the tools to attach them -_-

Wilkinsons do screwdrivers though, which is useful \o/ Though they are cheap and bend when you attempt to unscrew things with them /o\ Even less usefully, it seems that wired networks are dying off — All the high street stores had shelves full of wireless cards, but at best 2 or 3 ethernet models, and those were 10/100 v_v

After trying a few shops and being pointed back and forth, I ended up at yoyotech, which seems to be a place of at least some clue; the sales dude (Brian, apparently) asked if I was using linux, and googled to see if the model of card was sufficiently supported~

Having bought it (and a second of another brand, just in case), I was off to the datacenter /o/ The trip was relatively short and uneventful, aside from a youth in a shopping center throwing a big enough tantrum for the police to take note :-/

The DC itself was relatively normal, with coolers and cables and such; the part exchange went well once I’d figured out how to get the side panels off, and what to do with the switch bolted to the side o_O

On the way home, the train was declared unfit for human transport, so we all had to get off and wait for the next, which was much more crowded :( But then I was home \o/