Though this ebuild makes installing qmail with John’s patch a little easier, it doesn’t make administering a qmail system child’s play. Before merging this ebuild, you should read through John’s website. You may also want to read about netqmail on Gentoo. While this ebuild has nothing to do with netqmail, it does borrow some the conventions presented in the Gentoo doc concerning starting, stopping and controlling qmail.

I didn’t include any of John’s run scripts or configuration files. Only the combined patch is applied to the base qmail image. I’ve also included some additional patches I’ve found useful. They are described in more detail on my qmail patches page. Most of my extra patches are controlled by use flags (dkim, ipv6) and not applied by default.

For the impatient, here is a direct link to the ebuild:
http://svn.bltweb.net/repos/public/gentoo_overlay/mail-mta/qmail-jms1/qmail-jms1-7.08-r1.ebuild

Install my portage overlay

The easiest way to use the qmail-jms1 ebuild is to use my Gentoo Portage Overlay. Please see the overlay page for instructions on how to set it up.

You will need the following ebuilds from my overlay:

• virtual/qmail
• mail-mta/qmail-jms1
• sys-apps/ucspi-tcp
• mail-filter/libdkim (only needed if using the dkim use flag)

Install Qmail

Once the overlay is set up, installing qmail-jms1 is easy.

Add the following to your /etc/portage/package.keywords file:

Now install qmail-jms1:

Configure Qmail

Yeah right… There is plenty of documentation elsewhere for this. Try John’s website.

Start Qmail

 
 
That’s all I have for now. Installing, configuring and administering qmail should not be taken lightly. This ebuild has made it easier for me to set up and maintain my servers, however you should only consider using it if you are already familiar with setting up a qmail server.

Feel free to leave any comments, suggestions or problems below!

As April 1st is just a few hours away (I guess it’s already here in some parts of the world), I wanted to scan my network using the latest version of the nmap tool. As Gentoo doesn’t have an ebuild yet, I quickly created one and thought I’d share it.

This file contains everything you need:
Nmap 4.85BETA5 ebuild

Installing Nmap 4.85BETA5

Scanning for Conficker

insecure.org has some instructions on how to scan for Conficker. Basically, here is what I did to scan a 192.168.1.0/24 network:

This stores the complete output of the nmap command in conficker_scan.txt, but displays a quick-and-dirty summary to stdout. Your milage may vary. Obviously you should edit the network address (in green above) for your network.

You should see something like:

Host 192.168.1.101 appears to be up ... good.
|  Conficker: Likely CLEAN
--
Host 192.168.1.102 appears to be up ... good.
|  Conficker: Likely CLEAN
--
Host 192.168.1.103 appears to be up ... good.
|  Conficker: Likely CLEAN
--
Host 192.168.1.104 appears to be up ... good.
|  Conficker: Likely INFECTED
--

Linux boxes usually return something like Conficker: ERROR: NT_STATUS_OBJECT_NAME_NOT_FOUND.

One advantage that Host Virtual provided was a more recent Gentoo image.  Linode only offers a Gentoo 2007.0 install, which it doesn’t even list as a current distribution.  No worries, in this post I describe the steps I took to install a fresh Gentoo 2008.0 amd64 image on my new Linode!

Before we get started, some of the things I wanted on my system:

• x86_64 kernel running natively compiled 64-bit applications
• ReiserFS filesystem instead of ext3
• Basic LAMP server and no more

1. Create recovery configuration profile

1. From the Linode Manager Dashboard, click Deploy a Linux Distribution
2. Select an Unbuntu 8.10 64-bit (or similar 64-bit OS) with a 300MB disk drive. If you want swap space, you should configure that here.
3. Click Create Profile
4. Change the name of the profile to “Recovery Ubuntu 64bit”

2. Create the Gentoo disk image

1. From the Linode Manager Dashboard, click Create a new Disk Image
2. Give your disk a label (you can change this later) and size (most likely all the remaining disk space on your Linode)
3. Pick Unformatted / raw for the filesystem, we’ll format using ReiserFS later
4. Click Create Disk
5. Edit your Recovery Unbuntu 64bit profile: set /dev/xvdc to the disk image you just created.
6. Click Save Profile

3. Boot the recovery profile

1. From the Linode Manager Dashboard, boot your recovery profile
2. Log in with your favorite ssh client: root@<linode vps IP> and the root password you set up in section 1
3. Install some tools required in later steps:
   root@li # apt-get update
   root@li # apt-get install reiserfsprogs wget

4. Set up Gentoo

This section roughly follows the Gentoo Quick Install Guide.

1. Create the ReiserFS filesystem:
   root@li # mkreiserfs /dev/xvdc
2. Mount the filesystem:
   root@li # mkdir -p /mnt/gentoo
   root@li # mount /dev/xvdc /mnt/gentoo
   root@li # cd /mnt/gentoo
3. Set up the stage:
   root@li # wget http://gentoo.osuosl.org/releases/amd64/2008.0/stages/stage3-amd64-2008.0.tar.bz2
   root@li # tar xjpf stage3*
   root@li # rm stage3*
4. Install latest portage snapshot:
   root@li # cd /mnt/gentoo/usr
   root@li # wget http://gentoo.osuosl.org/snapshots/portage-latest.tar.bz2
   root@li # tar xjf portage-lat*
   root@li # rm portage-lat*
5. Chroot into the new Gentoo environment:
   root@li # cd /
   root@li # mount -t proc proc /mnt/gentoo/proc
   root@li # mount -o bind /dev /mnt/gentoo/dev
   root@li # cp -L /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/gentoo/etc/
   root@li # chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash
   li50-172 / # env-update && source /etc/profile
6. Set your timezone:
   li50-172 / # ls /usr/share/zoneinfo
   (Using US/Central as an example)
   li50-172 / # cp /usr/share/zoneinfo/US/Central /etc/localtime
   li50-172 / # nano -w /etc/conf.d/clock
   (Change value of TIMEZONE variable, e.g. TIMEZONE=”US/Central”)
   li50-172 / # date
   Mon Feb 9 14:41:50 CST 2009
7. Set host and domain name
   li50-172 / # cd /etc
   li50-172 etc # echo “127.0.0.1 mybox.at.myplace mybox localhost” > hosts
   li50-172 etc # sed -i -e ‘s/HOSTNAME.*/HOSTNAME=”mybox”/’ conf.d/hostname
   li50-172 etc # hostname mybox
   li50-172 etc # hostname -f
   mybox.at.myplace
8. Configure fstab mount points
   li50-172 etc # nano -w fstab

   Edit the fstab file similar to:

   /dev/xvda     /       reiserfs     noatime,notail  0 1
   /dev/xvdb     none    swap         sw              0 0
   

9. Edit /etc/inittab.
   To ensure the lish console works if you ever need it, edit the terminals section of /etc/inittab to look like:

   # TERMINALS
   c1:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 hvc0 linux
   #c2:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty2 linux
   #c3:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty3 linux
   #c4:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty4 linux
   #c5:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty5 linux
   #c6:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty6 linux
   

10. Configure networking and SSH:
    li50-172 etc # rc-update add net.eth0 default
    * net.eth0 added to runlevel default
    li50-172 etc # rc-update add sshd default
    * sshd added to runlevel default
    li50-172 etc # passwd
    New UNIX password: type_the_password
    Retype new UNIX password: type_the_password_again
    passwd: password updated successfully
11. Install system tools:
    li50-172 etc # emerge logrotate syslog-ng vixie-cron reiserfsprogs dhcpcd
    li50-172 etc # rc-update add syslog-ng default
    * syslog-ng added to runlevel default
    li50-172 etc # rc-update add vixie-cron default
    * vixie-cron added to runlevel default
12. Prepare to reboot:
    li50-172 etc # exit
    root@li # umount /mnt/gentoo/proc /mnt/gentoo/dev/ /mnt/gentoo
    root@li # exit

5. Set up Gentoo profile

1. From the Linode Manager, shutdown the recovery Linode.
2. Create a new profile by clicking Create a new Configuration Profile
3. Set the following options:
   • Label: Gentoo 2008.0 amd64
   • Kernel: a 64-bit kernel, e.g. 2.6.27.4-x86_64-linode3
   • Drive: /dev/xvda: The disk image you set up in section 2 (not the small Ubuntu recovery disk)
   • Drive: /dev/xvdb: Swap Image

6. Boot Gentoo and finish installation

1. From the Linode Manager, click the Boot button for your new Gentoo profile
2. Log in via ssh: root@<Linode VPS IP>
   (You may have to delete the old ssh key out of your known_hosts file on your local machine)
3. Add a non-root user, install sudo and disable root logins via SSH:
   mybox ~ # useradd -m -G wheel username
   mybox ~ # passwd username
   New UNIX password: type_the_password
   Retype new UNIX password: type_the_password_again
   passwd: password updated successfully
   mybox ~ # nano -w /etc/ssh/sshd_config
   (Add a line: PermitRootLogin: no)
   mybox ~ # emerge sudo
   mybox ~ # visudo
   (Uncomment the line: “%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL“, around line 24)
   mybox ~ # /etc/init.d/sshd restart
4. Install a simple conservative firewall:
   mybox ~ # emerge iptables
   mybox ~ # iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp –dport 22 -j ACCEPT
   mybox ~ # iptables -A INPUT -p icmp -m icmp –icmp-type 8 -j ACCEPT
   mybox ~ # iptables -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
   mybox ~ # iptables -A INPUT -m state –state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT
   mybox ~ # iptables -P FORWARD DROP
   mybox ~ # iptables -P INPUT DROP
   mybox ~ # /etc/init.d/iptables save
   mybox ~ # /etc/init.d/iptables start
   mybox ~ # rc-update add iptables default
   * iptables added to runlevel default
5. Select a Gentoo mirror and update make.conf:
   mybox ~ # emerge mirrorselect
   mybox ~ # mirrorselect -i -o >> /etc/make.conf
   mybox ~ # mirrorselect -i -r -o >> /etc/make.conf
   mybox ~ # nano -w /etc/make.conf

   Edit the file to include the parts in bold:

   # Typical Linode has 4 processors, make use of them when compiling
   MAKEOPTS="-j5"
   
   CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
   CFLAGS="-march=nocona -O2 -pipe"
   CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"
   

   At this point you should also run emerge -vpe world and decide what USE variables you want to include in your make.conf file.

6. Define locales:
   mybox ~ # nano -w /etc/locale.gen
   (Uncomment the first two en_US lines)
   mybox ~ # locale-gen
7. Update portage and installed packages:
   mybox ~ # emerge portage
   mybox ~ # emerge -vpuD –newuse world
   mybox ~ # emerge -vUD –newuse world
   (Go grab some lunch, this is going to take a while.)
   mybox ~ # emerge –oneshot libtool
   mybox ~ # emerge gentoolkit
   mybox ~ # revdep-rebuild

7. Reboot and enjoy

At this point I like to reboot the server to ensure that everything comes back up the way I expect it. This isn’t necessary however.

After reboot my server was using just under a GB of data (990264 bytes) and about 60MB of RAM. The server is now ready to install apache, mysql, etc. I’ll be looking at optimizing my memory usage in a later post.

Note: If you found this helpful and are interesting in signing up for Linode, feel free to use my referral code below. I’m only putting this out there if you’d like to use it – you can easily sign up for a Linode VPS without it!
http://www.linode.com/?r=edff465df97bb1e29468836d3700c79a2d24a17e