I recently wanted/needed to upgrade Debian on my Beagleboard. The original Debian install was done following the instructions over at elinux.org. when I update distributions I usually prefer doing a clean install but since 90+% of my time on the Beagleboard is done while working remotely I thought I would give the upgrade route a try.

Before beginning I backed up my system. I took a copy of /etc, /var, /root, /home. I also made backups of my webmin config. Lastly I also took copies of all the binaries I have compiled (some needed major tuning). Once I was satisfied I could rebuild should I encounter a catastrophic meltdown during the upgrade I decided to proceed.

My first stop was a Google search on the subject. This yielded an excellent x86 centric guide over at HowtoForge. The first section of the guide detailing package cleanup was helpful as aptitude identified 27 packages that could be removed. My second avenue for information, given the unsatisfactory results from my Google searches, was the Beagleboard mailing list. I posted a message requesting steps for a Debian upgrade and got some immediate feedback. The Beagleboard group is great!

So, to recap, here is what I assembled from the HowtoForge and Beagleboard group posts as my upgrade procedure.

Clean up Apt source list file /etc/apt/sources.list, mine looked like this post clean-up:

deb http://ftp.ca.debian.org/debian lenny main
deb-src http://ftp.ca.debian.org/debian lenny main

# webmin
# deb http://download.webmin.com/download/repository sarge contrib

Next I cleaned up all the packages beginning with making sure the current distribution is up to date:

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get dist-upgrade

Now I regularly update my system so no actions were required for the above commands. (I’ve written about apt-* before as I was learning about it)

Next was package cleanup, I followed the instructions by Deninix here exactly as he wrote them.

Ensure that no packages on hold with:

dpkg –audit
dpkg –get-selections | grep hold

For the final go ahead test use:

aptitude

Press g and the list shows which packages need your attention. In my case they were 27 packages listed as needing to be removed. So I removed them and then I was clean.

Next I followed the advice from the Beagleboard group.

I upgraded to the latest 2.6.35.x kernel for lenny using:

wget http://rcn-ee.net/deb/lenny/v2.6.35.9-x9/install-me.sh
/bin/bash install-me.sh

*I had to remove the “sudo” commands from the script

and rebooted.

Then I updated my sources list for squeeze, here’s what it looks like now

deb http://ftp.ca.debian.org/debian squeeze main
deb-src http://ftp.ca.debian.org/debian squeeze main

# webmin
# deb http://download.webmin.com/download/repository sarge contrib


Then I started the upgrade process with:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install apt aptitude udev
sudo aptitude update

The next recommned step was:
sudo aptitude safe-upgrade

I did run into some fairly significant issues with “aptitude safe-upgrade”. On the first pass just about all running processes on the beagleboard became defunct and nothing was working correctly. So I rebooted with an absolute minimal system running little more than kernel and sshd and ran “aptitude safe-upgrade” again. This time I let it run for 18+ hours and during that time the CPU was pegged at 100% and I was getting into some pretty serious swapping so I decided it wasn’t likely working as intended. I decided to move on with

sudo aptitude dist-upgrade

Here, dist-upgrade wanted to remove the “sysvconfig” package. I didn’t have any issues with this so I said “Yes”. The dist-upgrade command completely successfully and took about an hour.

I rebooted to make sure everything was sane. Next I decided to upgrade to the latest stable squeeze kernel with:

wget http://rcn-ee.net/deb/squeeze/v2.6.37.2-x4/install-me.sh
/bin/bash install-me.sh

*I had to remove the “sudo” commands from the script

I rebooted to make sure everything was sane. Next I tested a few of my applications:

Apache : ok
Webmin : Requested I re-detect the OS, after that it was OK
Anyterm : ok
munin : ok
Various scripts : ok

All and all it was a fairly painless process and was able to complete it without needing the console.

TF is that Exchange 2003 doesn’t know about these new-fangled file extensions so it looks at the headers and sees that they are zip-compressed and assumes they are ZIP files… We just need to add the proper MIME types to Exchange which will in turn set up the attachment properly in OWA.

1. Open Exchange System Manager
2. Open the Global Settings branch
3. Right-click on Internet Message Formats and choose Properties. This brings up the current list of known MIME-types.
4. Click the Add button. Add the MIME type descriptions (application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.presentation) below into the first textbox, and then enter the extension (pptx) in the other textbox.
5. Click OK and get out of all the dialogs, close ESM.
6. When you’ve added all 8 of the new MIME-types, restart the Microsoft Exchange Information Store service.

MIME-types:

• application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.presentation pptx
• application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.slide sldx
• application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.slideshow ppsx
• application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.template potx
• application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet xlsx
• application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.template xltx
• application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document docx
• application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.template dotx

After doing this on the server side, close and re-open Internet Explorer and re-login to OWA.  I cleared my cache in between just to be on the safe side and now .docx files download properly.  Yay!

FWIW, when searching for this solution I found a number of people suggesting that these MIME-types needed to be set up in IIS.  They were already there on my system, just not in ESM.  Also, there is this KB article about opening documents in or not in IE here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/162059 if that is part of your problem.  Just sayin’.

For future reference, running these commands in a shell is much faster than trying to follow Microsoft’s Knowledge Base instructions (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/816042).

C:\> w32tm /config /manualpeerlist:"0.pool.ntp.org 1.pool.ntp.org 2.pool.ntp.org",0x8 /syncfromflags:MANUAL
C:\> w32tm /config /update
C:\> net stop w32time
C:\> net start w32time
C:\> w32tm /resync /nowait

Thanks to Dave Nickason who posted this in 2008 to the Microsoft Forums!

OK, so I know these cell phone companies think they’re doing everyone a favor by setting up their own custom software loads and wallpaper and crap, but come on…

Basically, if you go to Telus and buy a Pearl 9100, they will helpfully install your SIM card in it and make sure you can make calls and surf the web and all that jazz, then they hand it to you and away you go. They will not ask you what you intend to do with it – like say, use it WITH A BLACKBERRY SERVER. So you take your new phone home, install the latest version of BlackBerry Professional on your Exchange server, create your account, set your activation password, pick up your Pearl and hunt (and hunt, and Google) for the Enterprise Activation icon.

Stop looking, it’s not there. But don’t worry.

Hopefully since you just brought the phone home, there’s not much on it. Go into “Options” -> “Security Options” and choose “Security Wipe”. Check off “Emails, Contacts, etc.” and “User Installed Applications”, enter the word “blackberry” in the field provided, and click on the “Wipe” button.

Let the phone reboot, and when it turns on and asks if you want to connect to the network, say “No”. Whip through the setup wizard and get to the home screen. You will find that the Telus wallpaper is there and the standard welcome message is in your Inbox, but you won’t find all of their custom crap. You will also find Enterprise Activation under “Options” -> “Advanced Options”. Enter your email address and activation password and tell the phone to activate. It will ask you to connect to the network. Say “Yes” now, and the activation should succeed if your server is working properly.

Oh, and before you tell me that you have to have an Enterprise (BES) plan from Telus in order for the icon to show up, or for BES to work, don’t bother. The new version of BES (5.0.1 at the moment) doesn’t require a BES data plan, and the removal of the Enterprise Activation program on the phone is just asinine.

At some point the Telus network may push their crapware down to my phone again, and hopefully it doesn’t break the already activated enterprise setup that I have going on. If it does, there will be another post. Trust me.

My Linux background centers around RedHat and Centos. I have been using yum for a long time and I am very comfortable with it. One of the greatest frustrations I have with ubuntu is having difficulty finding the packages I need easily from the command line.

I realize there are a bunch of “apt-*” how to articles/blog posts out there but all of the ones I have read did not provide me with the required golden nugget which is, “I need file X, what package contains this file?” Specifically I needed mkimage to complete my boot image for a 1BeagleBoard and I did not know what package I needed to install to get it. The required command is apt-file, which is not installed by default on 10.04, so let’s go through some more basic commands first.

It’s probably a good idea to always start package management by running ‘apt-get update’ which fetches latest software list and version numbers

apt-get install –> installs packages and resolves dependencies
apt-get remove –> remove a package, leaves configuration files intact
apt-get purge –> remove package and configuration files

OK, so now we can install apt-file (sudo apt-get apt-file), once the package is installed, apt-file update must be run.

apt-file update –> updates file cache, takes a while

When the update has completed, we can search using apt-file search . Let’s look at my example above, what package do I need to install to get mkimage


don@S10:~$ apt-file search mkimage
cvsgraph: /usr/share/doc/cvsgraph/examples/mkimage.php3
grub-efi-amd64: /usr/bin/grub-mkimage
grub-efi-amd64: /usr/share/man/man1/grub-mkimage.1.gz
grub-efi-ia32: /usr/bin/grub-mkimage
grub-efi-ia32: /usr/share/man/man1/grub-mkimage.1.gz
grub-pc: /usr/bin/grub-mkimage
grub-pc: /usr/share/man/man1/grub-mkimage.1.gz
jigit: /usr/bin/jigit-mkimage
jigit: /usr/share/man/man1/jigit-mkimage.1.gz
lupin-support: /usr/share/lupin-support/grub-mkimage
opennebula: /usr/lib/one/tm_commands/nfs/tm_mkimage.sh
opennebula: /usr/lib/one/tm_commands/ssh/tm_mkimage.sh
opennebula: /usr/share/doc/opennebula/examples/tm/tm_mkimage.sh
python-freevo: /usr/share/pyshared/freevo/helpers/mkimagemrss.py
uboot-mkimage: /usr/bin/mkimage
uboot-mkimage: /usr/share/doc/uboot-mkimage/changelog.gz
uboot-mkimage: /usr/share/doc/uboot-mkimage/copyright
don@S10:~$


The output is quite verbose and some interpretation is required. In my case the required package is uboot-mkimage. This was fairly easy to identify since uboot is the grub equivalent on the 1BeageBoard.

In my personal quest to learn about apt-* I came across a a few more useful commands which I will summarize here:

apt-get upgrade -u –> get a list of what can be upgraded (run apt-get update first)
apt-get upgrade –> install available upgraded packages
dpkg-query -l “search_string” –> query package database (of installed packages)
dpkg-query -l –> list all installed packages
dpkg -i <*.deb> –> manually install a package, use this with care and make sure the package is trusted
deborphan –> with no arguements lists orphaned packages, must be installed, apt-get remove can then be used to remove orphans manually, use care with this!

Ii can now say that I can do all my required package management with apt-* as well as i can with yum which make using ubuntu somewhat less irritating.

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1 The Beagleboard is an embedded ARM platform that can run many flavours of Linux, I run Debian Lenny on mine (http://beagleboard.org/)

That title might be longer than this post, but if you’re running into problems with zone transfers that don’t appear to happen, check to make sure you are putting your zone files in /var/cache/bind.

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