Topic: Leafnode revisited

[Donald E. Stidwell]

First, I feel compelled to say that I am extraordinarily impressed with e-smith. I'm a network engineer with more than 15 years experience in the field, and I have never seem a smoother, more easy to install/maintain server product than this. I've stood up countless NT/Win2K/Linux/FreeBSD/Netware servers and I've never had as pleasant an experience as I have had with the e-smith product. Kudos to the development team.

Okay, that said, I've stood up an e-smith server on my home network serving 1 FreeBSD client, 2 Windows Clients and 1 Linux client. Everything works flawlessly, but I want to be able to provide Usenet servers to my computers.

I'm currently running leafnode on my FreeBSD box, but would really like to have all services on the e-smith box. (It's serving as my file and print server, dhcp server, mail server and MP3 streamer (yes!)). I did the template thing for adding leafnode as my nntp server to xinetd, but when the template expanded, it indicated that nntp service was not listed in the database. (I copied and made appropriate changes to the ftp template and named the leafnode template 25nntp).

Any ideas on why this is happening? I checked /etc/services and nntp on port 119 is listed so I don't understand why the expanded template says it's not in the services database.

Don

[Charlie Brady]

Donald E. Stidwell wrote:
>
> First, I feel compelled to say that I am extraordinarily
> impressed with e-smith. I'm a network engineer with more than
> 15 years experience in the field, and I have never seem a
> smoother, more easy to install/maintain server product than
> this. I've stood up countless NT/Win2K/Linux/FreeBSD/Netware
> servers and I've never had as pleasant an experience as I
> have had with the e-smith product. Kudos to the development
> team.

Well, since you've been so generous, I feel compelled to help!

> I did the template thing for adding
> leafnode as my nntp server to xinetd, but when the template
> expanded, it indicated that nntp service was not listed in
> the database. (I copied and made appropriate changes to the
> ftp template and named the leafnode template 25nntp).
>
> Any ideas on why this is happening? I checked /etc/services
> and nntp on port 119 is listed so I don't understand why the
> expanded template says it's not in the services database.

Yes, but not in the e-smith configuration database, and it seems you have added a reference to it in your template fragments. Try this from the command line:

/sbin/e-smith/db configuration set nntp service status enabled
/sbin/e-smith/signal-event console-save

If this all works and you are feeling generous, we'd love to receive your e-smith-leafnode contrib module, or a HOWTO on integrating leafnode.

Regards

Charlie

[Donald E. Stidwell]

Thanks a ton, Charlie! I'll give it a go tonight and if it works I'll be more than happy to contribute with a howto or an RPM (once I read the docs on making an RPM!).

I stood up another e-smith server at work, replacing a Red Hat 6.2 box that serves as my Squid proxy box and intranet server. I took the DHCP function off my NT server and moved it to the e-smith box as well. Since this box doesn't serve an "essential business need, but is primarily for the convenience of users", my boss won't let me buy an e-smith service contract for this server. However, in 18 months, our Compaq lease expires on our main Novell box and I'm sure I can make a good business case for replacing it with a box running e-smith!

Once I get the hang of using templates, I plan to run more services on the box I just stood up today (right now I want to run the StarOffice scheduler on it, which is currently running on a NT box).

Again, much thanks, I'll post the results of taking the steps  you suggest later.

Don

[Donald E. Stidwell]

Okay! I'm pleased to report success on getting leafnode running, thanks to Charlie's tip and starting to get a handle on how templates work.

The xinetd.conf template is properly expanded. I did overlook the obvious - modifying and expanding the /etc/hosts.allow template. Once xinetd.conf and hosts.allow were properly configured - bingo!

As promised, I'll gen up a HOWTO in the next couple of days and then take a stab at making an RPM of the thing.

Again, thanks to Charlie!

Don

[Keith]

"Once I get the hang of using templates, I plan to run more services on the box I just stood up today (right now I want to run the StarOffice scheduler on it, which is currently running on a NT box)."

I'd be interested in learning how you get the StarOffice scheduler to run on e-smith as I'm looking for a groupwide scheduler.  I'm currently using several instances of matt kruse's calendar which is cgi based.  I haven't found a php/mysql package that achieves what I want.

Keith

[Donald E. Stidwell]

Okay, I've finally genned up a howto and have submitted it to e-smith. Hopefully it will be accepted and posted soon.

I'll start working on an RPM package soon.

Don

Charlie Brady wrote:
>
> Donald E. Stidwell wrote:
> >
> > First, I feel compelled to say that I am extraordinarily
> > impressed with e-smith. I'm a network engineer with more than
> > 15 years experience in the field, and I have never seem a
> > smoother, more easy to install/maintain server product than
> > this. I've stood up countless NT/Win2K/Linux/FreeBSD/Netware
> > servers and I've never had as pleasant an experience as I
> > have had with the e-smith product. Kudos to the development
> > team.
>
> Well, since you've been so generous, I feel compelled to help!
>
> > I did the template thing for adding
> > leafnode as my nntp server to xinetd, but when the template
> > expanded, it indicated that nntp service was not listed in
> > the database. (I copied and made appropriate changes to the
> > ftp template and named the leafnode template 25nntp).
> >
> > Any ideas on why this is happening? I checked /etc/services
> > and nntp on port 119 is listed so I don't understand why the
> > expanded template says it's not in the services database.
>
> Yes, but not in the e-smith configuration database, and it
> seems you have added a reference to it in your template
> fragments. Try this from the command line:
>
> /sbin/e-smith/db configuration set nntp service status enabled
> /sbin/e-smith/signal-event console-save
>
> If this all works and you are feeling generous, we'd love to
> receive your e-smith-leafnode contrib module, or a HOWTO on
> integrating leafnode.
>
> Regards
>
> Charlie

[Donald E. Stidwell]

I'll be working on this next week, so hopefully I'll have something soon. I don't think it will be difficult.

Don

Keith wrote:
>
> "Once I get the hang of using templates, I plan to run more
> services on the box I just stood up today (right now I want
> to run the StarOffice scheduler on it, which is currently
> running on a NT box)."
>
> I'd be interested in learning how you get the StarOffice
> scheduler to run on e-smith as I'm looking for a groupwide
> scheduler.  I'm currently using several instances of matt
> kruse's calendar which is cgi based.  I haven't found a
> php/mysql package that achieves what I want.
>
> Keith

[Kirrily Robert]

In case you haven't seen it yet, there's a revised and improved HOWTO on creating an e-smith add-on module, available at http://www.e-smith.org/docs/howto/building-contribs.php3

Comments/fixes welcome, as it's fairly new and I'm not sure how many people have actually used it to build modules yet.

K.