Bad Simplicity

Check if rsyslog's configuration has the following lines:

$ModLoad imtcp
$InputTCPServerRun 514
$PrivDropToUser syslog
$PrivDropToGroup syslog


As the user syslog cannot listen on ports below 1024 in TCP. Rsyslog will not fail and will silently run without any drawback.

You can fix it in two different ways:

• Change 514 for a port number above 1024 (10514 for example).
• Don't drop privileges and run as root.

In http://tarbox.org/, like:

Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats -- Howard Aiken, IBM engineer

 

Add the following two lines:

set -x
export PS4='$LINENO '

And you will get the line number and the text of each executed line 🙂

GNU parallel seems to not work properly in Ubuntu:

bash$ seq 10 | parallel echo {}

bash$

Where are my numbers? For fixing this «problem» (misconfiguration will be a better description) you need to comment an option that is implicit in Ubuntu. Go to:

bash$ sudo vim /etc/parallel/config

And comment the only setting there:

#--tollef

And now GNU parallel works again as expected:

bash$ seq 10 | parallel echo {}
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
bash$

That's all 🙂

Ubuntu doesn't like PostgreSQL 9.2 because it breaks other packages (see explanation in stackoverflow). We need to use PostgreSQL own apt repository:

prompt$ sudo sh -c  "echo 'deb http://apt.postgresql.org/pub/repos/apt/ squeeze-pgdg main' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pgdg.list"
prompt$ wget --quiet -O - http://apt.postgresql.org/pub/repos/apt/ACCC4CF8.asc | sudo apt-key add -
OK
prompt$
prompt$ sudo apt-get update
prompt$ sudo apt-get install postgresql

That's all 🙂

And the solution is simple:

$ sudo date -s "`date`"

Many people were drive crazy by this bug in Linux. For more information visit:

• http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/02/leap_second_crashes_airlines/