Problematic Programs
From Linux-VServer
Some programs do things that might work on a normal host but not inside a V-Server. This is often not a fault of V-Server itself, the programs are doing automagic things which fail and no proper error handling is done. Also sometimes the actions need special rights which are not permitted by default in V-Servers. Allowing CAPs is often not necessary since those special CAPs are only required once (e.g. when the program initializes the directories/settings/whatever).
OpenGroupware Apache Module
If your V-Server doesn't have access to localhost, then the connection to the OpenGroupware server will fail with a "Internal Server Error". The apache module for OpenGroupware called mod_ngobjweb uses a hardcoded "127.0.0.1" IP address in the source (handler.c line 339), this line you need to change to the IP address that should be used (the IP of the V-Server that runs the OpenGroupware? server)
Hylafax (with CAPI)
If you want to run hylafax in a V-Server, you will get a CAP and device problem which can be easily solved. First you need your capi20 devices in your V-Server, which can't be created by ./MAKEDEV (requires special CAPs) so copy the devices into the V-Server, like this (command run on the host):cp -aR /dev/capi* /vservers/your_vserver/devNow hylafax can access your CAPI ISDN card but will exit after a few seconds, the problem is it tries to create a /dev/null nod in the hylafax chroot. This fails because of missing CAPs, so lets help hylafax again with copying the nod into the hylafax chroot in the V-Server. Like this (command run on the host):
cp -aR /dev/null /vservers/your_vserver/var/spool/hylafax/dev
Allright, now hylafax should have CAPI access and run properly.
Links inside screen inside a V-Server
Don't know why, but links crashes systematically being inside a screen session inside a V-Server started outside a V-Server. (please elaborate!)
screen inside a VServer
[root@ge root]# vserver zoe enter
zoe:/# screen
Cannot open your terminal '/dev/pts/5' - please check.
zoe:/# strace screen
...
stat64("/dev/pts/5", {st_mode=S_IFCHR|0620, st_rdev=makedev(136, 5), ...}) = 0
open("/dev/pts/5", O_RDWR|O_NONBLOCK) = -1 EACCES (Permission denied)
is neither a bug nor an issue with screen, it just shows that a vserver context is not allowed to mess with host terminals. either use ssh/telnet to reach the 'guest' or start the screen session before you do the 'enter' (i.e. on the host)
util-vserver 0.30.211+ includes a workaround for the issue (vlogin), which allocates a tty inside the guest.
OpenLDAP Startup
slapd needs name resolution available in order to start up, otherwise it appears to hang. Make sure you have working DNS (or whatever) available to your vserver before starting one with slapd. This behavior is confirmed in my setup, no confirmation from others yet. My Setup: vservers all bind to an interface on a DMZ-like network segment, BIND runs on a vserver. slapd would hang at startup if the BIND vserver had not been started first.
rndc
Bind's rndc has a hardcoded 127.0.0.1 somewhere so any command to rndc will fail with connection refused. You should have a reachable localhost address defined in /etc/hosts and then you can userndc -s localhostcommand. You can make a rndc.conf and set the default-server option, like that the '-s localhost' isn't necessary.
Please see the section below to get rndc working without switches.
- -Paul Allen
Asterisk
Since some version of Asterisk (at least since 1.0.2), it will not run anymore. On start it fails with: "Unable to set high priority". This can be solved by allowing CAP_SYS_NICE for that V-Server. You can also not run Asterisk with the realtime priority - Just pass the '-p' command line argument to disable the read-time priority. Good doc on setting up Asterisk devices in the vserver: http://www.telephreak.org/papers/vpa/ (additional documentation for Asterisk 1.4 installation available here: https://customer.lylix.net/knowledgebase.php?action=displayarticle&catid=2&id=27)
Open/FreeSwan
No patch needed, openswan gives out some errors about writing to /proc, but those can be ignored.
Samba
Oplocks don't work as smbd insists on receiving break requests from 127.0.0.1 Just patch source/smbd/oplock.c (commenting paranoid code)
+++ oplock.c.orig 2005-02-14 14:27:51.000000000 +0200
--- oplock.c 2005-02-02 12:27:50.000000000 +0200
@@ -181,14 +181,12 @@
return False;
}
+#if 0
/* Validate message from address (must be localhost). */
if(from.sin_addr.s_addr != htonl(INADDR_LOOPBACK)) {
DEBUG(0,("receive_local_message: invalid 'from' address \
(was %lx should be 127.0.0.1)\n", (long)from.sin_addr.s_addr));
return False;
}
+#endif
/* Setup the message header */
SIVAL(buffer,OPBRK_CMD_LEN_OFFSET,msg_len);
or if you don't want to patch the samba source code you can disable oplock in Samba and it will work too!
Just put the following in your smb.conf:
kernel oplocks = no oplocks = no
Note: The Vserver using Samba should also listen on the broadcast address. Thereby you will not be able to have two samba servers in the same net (on the same broadcast).
To assign the broadcast address to a vserver guest you need to create a new directory inside the /etc/vservers/<guest name>/interfaces/ directory. The directory is a number not used by this vserver guest. Inside the directory should be normal information and a file called nodev (see util-vserver for information). The contents of the dev file can be identical between directories.
Samba from Debian 3.1
The samba deb in sarge (3.1) provided file sharing. The only oddity observed is that the vserver guest running samba did not appear in a windows box's 'My Network Places'
Use a WINS server. The SMB browsing protocol relies heavily on broadcasts on the local net, which are problematic with vservers. WINS resolution on the other hand is unicast and works flawlessly under vserver.
Samba printer and file server with cups
Samba runs correctly in a Mandriva (Mdk) 10.1 Vserver, (Apart from the above oplock problem ?).First, edit your /etc/sysconfig/network file, and set networking to yes (This will solve problems for other services !):
# cat /etc/sysconfig/network NETWORKING=yes
Some more tweaking is needeed in /etc/smb.conf
# cat /etc/smb.conf ... # YOUR VSERVER IP/MASK HERE interfaces = xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/mask ...
But if you're using Samba + Cups to provide printing for Windows clients, AND if you want to use the Point and Print feature, there is more: In the [printers] section of your smb.conf, you should have the use client drivers directive set to no, or the driver upload procedure will fail !
# cat /etc/smb.conf ... use client driver = no ...
So, here is a full smb.conf file:
# cat /etc/samba/smb.conf | awk '!/^$/ && !/^\s*(#|;)/ {print $0}'
[global]
workgroup = MYDOMAIN
netbios name = MYHOSTNAME
server string = MYCOMMENT (Samba %v)
printcap name = cups
load printers = yes
printing = cups
printer admin = @adm
log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m
max log size = 50
map to guest = bad user
security = domain
password server = *
encrypt passwords = yes
smb passwd file = /etc/samba/smbpasswd
username map = /etc/samba/smbusers
idmap uid = 10000-20000
idmap gid = 10000-20000
socket options = TCP_NODELAY SO_RCVBUF=8192 SO_SNDBUF=8192
interfaces = 127. MYVSERVERIP/MYVSERVERMASK
wins server = MYWINSIP
dns proxy = no
# for french users:
dos charset = 850
unix charset = ISO8859-1
[homes]
comment = Home Directories
browseable = no
writable = no
[printers]
comment = All Printers
path = /var/spool/samba
browseable = no
guest ok = no
writable = no
printable = yes
create mode = 0700
print command = lpr-cups -P %p -o raw %s -r # using client side printer drivers.
use client driver = no
[print$]
path = /var/lib/samba/printers
browseable = yes
write list = @adm root
guest ok = yes
inherit permissions = yes
...And a working smbusers:
# Unix_name = SMB_name1 SMB_name2 ... root = administrator MYDOMAIN\administrator nobody = guest pcguest smbguest
Cups print server
Symptoms: The Cups init script exits with:
Starting CUPS printing system: cupsd: Child exited with status 98!
And the logs (/var/log/cups/error_log) show:
E [date:hour...] StartListening: Unable to bind socket for address 0.0.0.0:631 - Address already in use.
...Or something like this.
With a correct "cupsd.conf file" (Tested version 1.1.21-0.rc1.7mdk, on Mandrake 10.1 - Now Mandriva), it works; All we need is to remove references to 127.0.0.1 or localhost from the file, as well as correctly unsetting the Listen directive:
LogLevel info TempDir /var/spool/cups/tmp # No 'Listen' directive ! Port 631 BrowseAddress @LOCAL BrowseDeny All BrowseAllow @LOCAL BrowseOrder deny,allow <Location /> Order Deny,Allow Deny From All Allow From @LOCAL </Location> <Location /admin> AuthType Basic AuthClass System Order Deny,Allow Deny From All Allow From YOUR_NETWORK_ADDRESS/YOUR_NETMASK # Example: 172.16.0.0/24 # Or Allow From @LOCAL </Location>
Then you'll need to modify the /etc/init.d/cups script, to comment any section referring to 127.0.0.1 lookup and configuration. This section exists at least on Mandrake 10.1, and is pretty long (Lines 35 to 55 and/or 79), and additionnaly four "else...if" lines must be commented far below (Lines 161 to 164) !
Remember to stop any Cupsd running in the host server, or to start it via a wrapper /etc/init.d/v_cups script:
#!/bin/sh # chkconfig: 2345 15 60 # description: Wrapper to start cups bound to a single IP USR_LIB_VSERVER=/usr/lib/util-vserver exec $USR_LIB_VSERVER/vsysvwrapper cups $*
Do not forget to give a password to the root user, if you want to be able to manage your printers from the web interface (http://yourcupsvserver:631)!
# passwd root ...
If you use Mandriva 10.1 (And maybe some other distros), you’ll need to add the printers drivers for Cups, and reload it:
# urpmi --root /vservers/yourcupsvserver/ cups-drivers # /etc/init.d/cups reload
…It added 67 Mb of packages for me.
Then use /etc/init.d/v_cups (re)start to launch Cups on the host server. You will now be able to make Cupsd start in the vserver , but more tweaking on the ACLs may be necessary to avoid authentification problems...
Bind9 on Debian GNU/Linux Woody (3.0), Sarge (3.1), Etch (4.0)
named provided by the bind9 binary packages fails to start because it is compiled with CAPs option.
The debian way is to build** your own package without CAPs:
su - cd /usr/src apt-get build-dep bind9 apt-get source bind9 cd bind9-x.x.x vi debian/rules
Insert the following line after "./configure --prefix=/usr \":
--disable-linux-caps \
On a NPTL-enabled system you alse have to replace
--enable-threads \
with
--disable-threads \
or bind might refuse to run with an other user than root.
Save the file and go ahead with compiling/installing:
dpkg-buildpackage dpkg -i ../bind9-x.x.x.deb echo "bind9 hold" | dpkg --set-selections
or you may be better off to set the selections for all the packages that were generated by dpkg-buildpackage:
echo -e "bind9-doc hold\nbind9-host hold\nbind9utils hold\ndnsutils hold\nlibbind9-40 hold\nlibbind-dev hold\nlibdns43 hold\nlibisc44 hold\nlibisccc40 hold\nlibisccfg40 hold\nliblwres40 hold\nlwresd hold" | dpkg --set-selections
The last line is to set the package "on hold", so it is not touched by the update process. you have to take care of security holes by yourself now!
The Xs in "bind9-x.x.x" denote the version number of bind9. Alternatively you can allow the CAP_SYS_RESOURCE for that V-Server. The best way would be to fix bind, which is somehow broken when it comes to capabilities. Daniel Hokka Zakrisson repaired it. His patch is to be found here:
bind-9.3.2-caps-when-available.patch
So, if you recompile, it would be the cleanest way to apply that patch. Thanks Daniel! It would be also nice, if someone submits that patch to the bind people or maybe to your distribution's package maintainers in the first step.
Get my vserver-guest-ready Debian bind9 package for Debian Sid guests. Feedback welcome: aj@net-lab.net
AMD 64 Etch Vserver Guest WORKING!!! :o) 21Oct2008
Before I begin with all the grueling steps, if you want to be lazy, I wrote a Perl script to do all of this for you, and you can get it here.
- Note:
- If you plan to use the script, you need to ensure you have Perl5, as well as have your locale set properly.
- (On a brand-new Etch guest, I had to do those before my script would work)
- I noticed after much googling that all links I found to any of the pre-compiled Bind9 (in the above bind9-capacheck directories) are DEAD. However, after many times of running into a brick wall, I caught something that isn't mentioned here...
Following the above steps to build Bind9 from source acquired with apt-get, if you look closely, on about line 499 or so after you execute the dpkg-buildpackage command, you'll see this:
dpkg-source: building bind9 using existing bind9_9.3.4.orig.tar.gz dpkg-source: building bind9 in bind9_9.3.4-2etch3.diff.gz dpkg-source: building bind9 in bind9_9.3.4-2etch3.dsc
- ...which is basically ignoring the debian/rules modifications you just made...
So, following you will find the steps I took to make Bind9 AND rndc run flawlessly on my vserver guest. Everything denoted with // in front is a comment:
su -
cd /usr/src
mkdir bind9-build
cd !$
apt-get build-dep bind9
apt-get source bind9
mkdir unused
mv bind9_* !$ //note the ones you don't need all have the underscore _
cd bind9-x.x.x //whatever your version # is
nano debian/rules
beneath this line: ./configure --prefix=/usr \
-add --disable-linux-caps \
-change --enable-threads \ to: --disable-threads \
dpkg-buildpackage
cd ../
dpkg -i *deb //This will install all the debs that were created, but the actual bind9 deb will fail because of dependencies
//At this point, you can just run it again, or 'apt-get install -f' might fix it, but I'm unsure on that
dpkg -i *deb
echo "bind9 hold" | dpkg --set-selections
- Here you will still see it fail to start, and even though it says that, it isn't named that failed, but only rndc.
- So actually, you can stop here, but rndc will fail every time, and bind won't restart with the /etc/init.d/bind9 restart call
- In fact, everytime you want to reload, you'll need to manually kill the named process ID and then issue:
- /etc/init.d/bind9 start
- But if you're a perfectionist like me, and you want a completely error-free starting Bind9 with working rndc, keep reading...
ps aux|grep named
- That will show an output something like:
bind 9376 0.0 0.3 20844 3228 ? Ss 15:52 0:00 /usr/sbin/named -u bind
- Assuming the above was your actual output, your next command would be:
kill 9376 //Kill the process ID
- Now here's where the trickery comes in...
- For some reason, if you have the EXACT same key definitions in all the correct places, but the conf files aren't using the actual key file, rndc WILL fail...
- Let me say that again... rndc WILL fail... I only know because it took me 3 days to find out why it was failing...
- So first:
rndc-confgen -s your.eth0.ip.address -k your-custom-keyname
- Assuming my eth0 IP is 11.22.33.44 and I used a keyname of my-vps-key, the following would be my output:
vps:~# rndc-confgen -s 11.22.33.44 -k my-vps-key
# Start of rndc.conf
key "my-vps-key" {
algorithm hmac-md5;
secret "D4fZPZPFpG037a/NHLedgg==";
};
options {
default-key "my-vps-key";
default-server 11.22.33.44;
default-port 953;
};
# End of rndc.conf
# Use with the following in named.conf, adjusting the allow list as needed:
# key "my-vps-key" {
# algorithm hmac-md5;
# secret "D4fZPZPFpG037a/NHLedgg==";
# };
#
# controls {
# inet 11.22.33.44 port 953
# allow { 11.22.33.44; } keys { "my-vps-key"; };
# };
# End of named.conf
- Now, this information is VERY important, and misleading at the same time...
- Don't simply plop the 'named.conf' data into named.conf and the 'rndc.conf' data into rndc.conf... It will NOT work.
- The 'key' portion is all you need for your keyfile, and your keyfile MUST be named the same as the name you put into rndc-confgen
- There are several ways to do this, but the simplest is to highlight the key section, right click, click 'copy' and then:
nano /etc/bind/my-vps-key //Don't forget, name must match the rdnc-confgen output!
- Inside nano, hit shift+insert on your keyboard, and it *should* paste everything properly. Hit ctrl+x to exit nano (press y at the prompt to save).
- Once complete, you can verify your key file with:
cat /etc/bind/my-vps-key
- ...and the output should read something like:
vps:~# cat /etc/bind/my-vps-key
key "my-vps-key" {
algorithm hmac-md5;
secret "D4fZPZPFpG037a/NHLedgg==";
};
- Now, do the same thing for the 'options' section of the rndc-confgen output, except you'll be adding that to the rndc.conf file, along with an include statement for the key file you just made.
- NOTE: Delete all lines in rndc.conf first so that it contains only what you paste. (ctrl+k will cut lines... cut all of them before pasting)
- After pasting, your ENTIRE rndc.conf file should look thusly:
include "/etc/bind/my-vps-key";
options {
default-key "my-vps-key";
default-server 11.22.33.44;
default-port 953;
};
- Finally, you need to do the same process, but with the 'controls' section of the rndc-confgen output, and that goes in /etc/named.conf. Again, you will need to add the include statement for the key you created.
- Also, while you're editing named.conf, you might as well go ahead and edit the IP addresses. The only one that really seems to matter is the 'localhost' zone
- When finished, your named.conf should look something like this (only showing the relevant portions)
- Be sure to remove the comment tags (#) from the beginning of the lines!!!
<snip>
// If you are just adding zones, please do that in /etc/bind/named.conf.local
include "/etc/bind/named.conf.options";
include "/etc/bind/my-vps-key";
controls {
inet 11.22.33.44 port 953
allow { 11.22.33.44; } keys { "my-vps-key"; };
};
zone "." {
type hint;
file "/etc/bind/db.root";
};
// be authoritative for the localhost forward and reverse zones, and for
// broadcast zones as per RFC 1912
zone "11.22.33.44" {
type master;
file "/etc/bind/db.local";
};
zone "127.in-addr.arpa" {
<snip>
- I'm unsure if this next step is necessary, but I did it anyway...
- Edit /etc/bind/db.local and modify all instances of 'localhost' and '127.0.0.1' with your IP address.
- When complete, it should look something like this:
vps:~# cat /etc/bind/db.local
;
; BIND data file for local loopback interface
;
$TTL 604800
@ IN SOA 11.22.33.44. root.11.22.33.44. (
1 ; Serial
604800 ; Refresh
86400 ; Retry
2419200 ; Expire
604800 ) ; Negative Cache TTL
;
@ IN NS 11.22.33.44.
@ IN A 11.22.33.44
- All that's left is to start your new error-free Bind9 (we hope...)
/etc/init.d/bind9 start
If you find anything in this tutorial OR in the Perl script that's incorrect, or that would make it better, please let me know: paul@grandesigns.net
Update (11/04/08)...
After an apt-get dist-upgrade, bind9 failed to start. After poking around, I found out that somehow /etc/default/bind had the -u switch set to run Bind9 as the user 'named'. Weird, because with Bind9, there is no user 'named'. I set it back to: -u bind and everything fired right up. Also, my particular vserver doesn't log to dmesg, so if you want intuitive debug level info that isn't being printed in /var/log/syslog, then you can run named like this:
named -g -d 10
That tells named to start with the debug level globally set to 10.
I also tinkered a little more and found that you can remove all of the db. files in /etc/bind and in /etc/bind/named.conf except for db.local and db.root. In other words, you don't need to configure or keep db.0, db.127, db.255, db.empty, nor do you need them referenced in named.conf.
Problems getting this to work in an x86_64 vserver. Any hints? From what I can tell from stracing, turning off threads doesn't fix everything related to it. It also caused a juicy Ksymoops.
- Apparently this does work when running bind as user root. I Installed a bare Debian Etch vserver without granting any special capabilities on my x86_64 system, apt-get install bind9, kill any started named-processes and edit /etc/default/bind, changing the user (-u) from bind to root. Bind starts now starts when using /etc/init.d/bind9 start and resolving seems to work. Mind you, the usual warnings and rants about running stuff as root still applies! - 2007-08-06 MGS
Zimbra Mail
Zimbra is many applications (including Postfix and MySQL? and OpenLDAP? and more) which try to take over the interfaces, and depend a lot on binding from 127.0.0.1 - it is not hard to change, but there is a couple of tricks - it is documented here - http://wiki.zimbra.com/index.php?title=Install_VServer
xine
won't start with no error message.
"xine --verbose" shows this.
ERROR: Could not determine network interfaces, you must use a interfaces config line
This happens if you have the xineplug_inp_smb.so plugin. Delete it and everything is fine.
nagios
Compiling nagios-1.4 within a vserver requires an explicit lo with 127.0.0.1, otherwise it hangs during the configure with "checking for ICMP ping syntax..."
on older kernels, which do not support loopback isolation (separate 127.0.0.1) and use 'localhost' mapped to the first guest IP you can work around this by adding 127.0.0.1 to the interfaces (temporarily) but make sure to remove it afterwards.
note: nagios is broken, because it uses a hardcoded 127.0.0.1, and this change (which is not needed with newer kernels providing lback remapping) will affect guest security and should not be used lightly (Bertl)
Hula-project
Does not want to start. TODO: add more information.
Postfix
Postfix 2.1.5 (Debian Sarge)
On a vserver with two interfaces (lo and eth0), and a postfix 2.1.5 listening on lo, postfix can't send emails : "Invalid argument"... Setting smtp_bind_address (http://www.postfix.org/postconf.5.html#smtp_bind_address) to the external address solves the issue.
Postfix on Debian Etch (for local only mail)
See Postfix local only problem
Postfix Policy Daemon
Running a Debian 3.1 Sarge with Backports I have several issues with the postfix-policyd because it wants to set the rlimits.
Log returns:
cannot set rlimit: Operation not permitted
Strace tells us:
setrlimit(RLIMIT_NOFILE, {rlim_cur=4097, rlim_max=4097}) = -1 EPERM (Operation not permitted)
Output on the Host
# ulimit -Ha ... -n: file descriptors 1024 ...
Thats too little...
Solution:
The App has again a build in need to use CAP_SYS_RESOURCE (which is bad (tm)) so in the guest do:
# ulimit -HS -n 8192 # ulimit -Ha .. shows us now the correct 8192 instead of 1024. # vserver $yourVserverName restart # vserver $yourVserverName enter $yourVserverName # ulimit -Ha ... -n: file descriptors 8192 ...
Everything should be fine now !
DB2
DB2 needs at least the following capabilities:
CAP_NET_RAW CAP_NET_ADMIN CAP_SYS_ADMIN CAP_IPC_LOCK CAP_IPC_OWNER
WARNING: this configuration reduces security
ejabberd
ejabberd does not work properly in a Linux-VServer guest under Debian Etch. The server eventually stops accepting connections. Also, it's not possible to control ejabberd with ejabberdctl.
Newer versions of ejabberd (2.0.x) don't seem to have this problem. On Debian Etch a newer version can be installed from etch-backports (backports.org).
The Jabber server from the jabber package also works.
VMware Server
VMware Server needs the following capabilities to run correctly:
CAP_MKNOD CAP_SYS_MODULE CAP_SYS_ADMIN CAP_SYS_NICE CAP_NET_RAW CAP_NET_ADMIN CAP_IPC_OWNER
WARNING: this configuration reduces security
ntpd
The ntpd daemon needs to set the hardware time and can't do that from inside a vserver by default. Allow CAP_SYS_TIME and ntpd will be happy.
FAI server / fai-setup
FAI Server / fai-setup fai-setup wants to create some devices and needs to mount proc.
bcapabilities:
MKNOD
ccapabilities:
SECURE_MOUNT SECURE_REMOUNT BINARY_MOUNT
WARNING: this configuration reduces security big time
Only do it if you just want your FAIserver in a seperate tree from main server.
