How to convert RPM software packages to Debian (.deb)

The world of Linux is diverse, Linux distributions using different package management systems. RPM (Red Hat Package Manager) and Debian's DEB are two of the most common package formats. Occasionally, users of Debian-based systems might need to install software that's only available in the RPM format. This guide covers converting RPM packages to DEB format, ... Read more

Debugging of ISPConfig 3 server actions in case of a failure

The following article describes the steps that need to be taken to debug ISPConfig 3 server scripts. This procedure applies to all ISPConfig 3 versions incl. ISPConfig 3.1 and ISPConfig 3.2. Enable the debug Loglevel in ISPConfig Login to the ISPConfig interface and set the log level to Debug under System > System > Server ... Read more

Fix for Courier IMAP Error: check for configuration errors with the FAM/Gamin library

I've got the following error message on Debian Linux with Courier IMAP server: Filesystem notification initialization error -- contact your mail administrator (check for configuration errors with the FAM/Gamin library) when I tried to access an IMAP share. The reason for the problem seems to be that the "fam" package was not working correctly. The ... Read more

Get the disk health status with SMART monitor tools on Debian and Ubuntu Linux

Disk SMART status

Every current disk includes a built-in monitoring feature known as SMART that keeps track of faults. On Linux, there is a software package called smartmontools that may be used to query the SMART status of the disk to see if it will fail soon. Installation apt-get install smartmontools Usage First we need to know the ... Read more

How to enable verbose logging in pure-ftpd on Debian and Ubuntu

PureFTPD Verbose Log

To turn on verbose logging (e.g. to debug FTP connection or authentication problems) in pure-ftpd FTP server on Debian and Ubuntu Linux. Enable debug log in pure-ftpd Execute the following command as root user in the shell to enable verbose logging: echo 'yes' > /etc/pure-ftpd/conf/VerboseLog and then restart pure-ftpd, for init based systems: service pure-ftpd-mysql ... Read more

How to Backup/Clear/Restore a SpamAssassin Bayes Database

SpamAssassin Bayes Database

Sometimes you might have to work with the Spamassin Bayes Token database. This is the database that is used by the SpamAssassin Self Learning (Bayesian) Classifier to store the ham and spam tokens. This tutorial will show you how to make a backup of that database. E.g. when you want to move it to a ... Read more

Webalizer error opening the file /usr/share/GeoIP/GeoIP.dat on Debian Linux

The Webalizer package in Debian 6 has currently small bug as the required package for the  GeoIP database is not installed automatically when Webalizer is installed. The symptoms are that Webalizer statistics was not created and this error message is displayed when Webalizer is run: Error Opening file /usr/share/GeoIP/GeoIP.dat The solution is to install the ... Read more