Topic: bug report

[James Nofsinger]

I am using the newest version of E-smith for our email server here at summit county (ohio), I have run across a few bugs.

Lemme give you some stats on the machine first:

its a pen][266 hp kayak XA, it has 196meg of ram, 4 gig hd, and 2 dec tulip drivin network cards, latest bios rev also.

The first annoyance bug is the time clock settings.  no matter what trick i try to use [i tried a few things i seen on this message board] the time is off by at least 30 minutes.

The second bug i found was a little more serious, i am using the squid bundle with the nsca auth module.  there are about 120 people using it, for some unknown reason the squid.conf file gets overwritten with the defaults at random times of the day.
to fix this i simply added a cp command to the init.d to copy the known good over the sometimes bad at startup.

The third bug is probally related to the second.  I also set up a proxy autoconfig file for the cubicle dwellers.  When i went in and set up the final e-mail accounts (300 users!) i went to back up the server, and my  srm.conf in the /etc/httpd/conf dir. just happened to be overwritten with the generic one provided.
It seems to only happen when e-smith server backups or adds accounts?

Well thats the major problems i have had with the system, its still a good system and i like it very much.  I have added to it and its becomming a good web-portal also.  If anyone would like to e-mail me with questions feel free, also can any of you guys/gals at e-smith tell me if this is a template issue?

[Joseph Morrison]

Hello James,
Thanks for your post!

James Nofsinger wrote:

> The first annoyance bug is the time clock settings.  no matter
> what trick i try to use [i tried a few things i seen on this
> message board] the time is off by at least 30 minutes.

I don't have any suggestions for this one offhand. Once the server is running, is the time off by a constant amount, or is it drifting? Have you tried correcting the time using the BIOS? When you use the e-smith time-setting function, does anything at all happen to the system clock, or is the time unaffected?

> The second bug i found was a little more serious, i am using
> the squid bundle with the nsca auth module.  there are about
> 120 people using it, for some unknown reason the squid.conf
> file gets overwritten with the defaults at random times of the
> day. to fix this i simply added a cp command to the init.d to
> copy the known good over the sometimes bad at startup.

Have you modified /etc/squid.conf manually? e-smith does regenerate those configuration files whenever the user interface is used. If you wish to make a permanent change, you should change the corresponding e-smith template file:

/etc/e-smith/templates/etc/squid.conf

Then your changes will be retained whenever the config file is regenerated by e-smith.

It sounds like your other problems are also due to the same thing. You should always modify the templates, rather than the original files. The templates are all under /etc/e-smith/templates, in the same hierarchy as the normal configuration files.

Anyway I'm glad the software is working well for you otherwise, and hope this solves your problem.

Best regards,
- Joe Morrison

[James Nofsinger]

Ahhh ok, i am not to keen on the template part of your program yet.  That sounds like it will clear up the majority of the problems i have been having.  I just didnt feel comfortable messing around with part of the framework of the e-smith program.  Especially since i added about 320 users to it the other day.


The time issue is very very strange let me try to explain why.  

If i set the time to Eastern daylight it will drift randomly but no more then 6 hours away.  I can set the time to GMT -5 and it will be correct even after i reboot a few times, but in a day or two it will be off no more then 1 hour.  The computer that i am using used to have windows on it and it always kept the correct time.  oh ya i even tried UTC but that jumps around randomly also.  Hmm my next question is why does e-smith set the time in utc when the machine boots up? is this for the e-smith email system?  It just seems that the time somehow gets a little off either by the bios of when it gets set.  Even if i correct it in the bios, doesnt e-smith overwrite whats in the current bios with its version of the time? or am i getting all of this wrong?


Thank you very much for the pointer

James

[Charlie Brady]

James Nofsinger wrote:

> The second bug i found was a little more serious, i am using
> the squid bundle with the nsca auth module.  there are about
> 120 people using it, for some unknown reason the squid.conf
> file gets overwritten with the defaults at random times of the
> day. to fix this i simply added a cp command to the init.d to
> copy the known good over the sometimes bad at startup.

That's not a bug, that's a standard feature. There is some excellent design documentation at www.e-smith.org.

Charlie

[Charlie Brady]

James Nofsinger wrote:


> i like it very much. I have added to it and its becomming
> a good web-portal also. If anyone would like to e-mail me
> with questions feel free,

Please join up on the devinfo@e-smith.net mailing list and let us know what additions you have made and what you like and don't like about the server.

Regards

Charlie

[Charlie Brady]

James Nofsinger wrote:


> The time issue is very very strange let me try to explain why.
>
> If i set the time to Eastern daylight it will drift randomly
> but no more then 6 hours away.  I can set the time to GMT -5
> and it will be correct even after i reboot a few times, but in
> a day or two it will be off no more then 1 hour.  The computer
> that i am using used to have windows on it and it always kept
> the correct time.  oh ya i even tried UTC but that jumps
> around randomly also.

The only thing that I can guess is that the APM system is doing something funny with the clock. Try shutting down apmd and running it like that for a while, and see if it makes a difference.

> Hmm my next question is why does e-smith set
> the time in utc when the machine boots up? is this for the
> e-smith email system?

No. It's just that *nix systems run better that way. I would rather fetch updated time zone files from NIST than rely on the
manufacturer of a motherboard/BIOS to work out if and when  my system switches into/out of daylight savings time. Just leave it at UTC and be happy.

Charlie