The Debian stable version of our authentication database does not work on our hybrid mix of some stable, some testing, and some unstable debian packages (which is practically the mandatory way of running a Debian server these days, since the gap between releases is measured in aeons). All accusatory fingers currently point to Berkeley DB, which also blew away David's MovableType database.
The upgrade from stable to testing packages of the authentication database has a flaw, and is not guaranteed to work. After 2 hours of trying, I finally managed to use the stable package and a command-line tool to export from the db files without the authentication database running, do an upgrade to testing, rewrite the export file, and re-import it.
Our database is now up and running. I can browse it as before using the gui tools, and all the data appears to be there, in the same shape as before. Authentication works just fine for Apache and SVN. Of course, the business-critical email is still dead in the water - courier is outputting incredibly useful 'Terminating child processes after a SIGTERM' without any further debug information.
Did I mention what a rancid pile of festering camel droppings courier is?
I'm reserving the rudest words of all for the sysadmin that installed courier in the first place, failed to add courier to the init scripts so it won't start when the server boots, and failed to install the debian package of it so it does not stay in sync with other software on the system. Not to mention many other configuration abominations caused by "short cut" tools.
More generally it makes me think we're starting to see a new breed of "sysadmins" that think webmin (and gui or web-based config tools in general) is the way it should be done. Sadly this seems to lead to an ignorance of the server's inner workings and a lack of professionalism (point-n-click-n-look-it-works and never mind testing eh?). I don't mean to be elitist (well, I do ...) but kids that installed RedHat on a desktop once do not automatically qualify to manage enterprise services.
All this boils down to one thing. If you want something done properly, do it yourself :-(
Posted by savs at October 26, 2004 1:33 AM