So (can I over-use that word any more?), without getting into too much detail, yesterday was spent trying to get some friends setup with Dreamweaver MX, so that they could publish content to Mike and Kevin's Linux box. This particular Linux box happens to be running Debian, thanks to the influence of "a certain Guju"...
Normally, I can deal with Linux in just about any flavor, but Debian is different enough to be giving me fits. After wasting a good chunk of yesterday fighting various Dreamweaver/SSH/ftp/NAT/tunneling issues, I decided that I would like to leave all of that in the dust by configuring the Linux box to act as a VPN server for the Windows VPN (PPP over L2TP) client.
Sounds simple enough, right?
Well, it took all day today, but it finally looks like I will have a kernel that both:
- Has the pre-requesite FreeS/WAN support in the kernel, and
- compiles to completion, without error.
Ug. So this means that I spent a lot of time fighting to get all of the requisite sources and packages on the box. And then fought trying to understand Debian's unique way of compiling the kernel (make-kpkg). And then, watched the compile fail in the FreeS/WAN "ipsec_init.c" code.
Much, much, much use of Google later, I decided to apply a patch to the "freeswan-kernel-patch" (patching the patch -- that is great). One hunk from that patch failed to apply, so I applied it by hand. Now things appear to be working -- of course, I say 'appear" because the kernel is still compiling (it has been at least 2.5 hours as of this writing). Granted, this box is a single-processor 400Mhz Celeron. But come on, my FreeBSD box has a comparable processor, and it takes about this long to do a whole "make buildworld"! I suspect that I didn't eliminate enough crap when I configured the kernel...
And after all of this, is IPSec going to work? Hell no, I still have to configure it, and fight through broken l2tpd daemons, and whatever all else isn't going to work right "out of the box".
And people wonder why Windows Server is gaining market share...
I suppose that I should mention, the specific things giving me trouble on Debian is the whole apt/dpkg thing. For example, I had no idea how to figure out which packages were installed on the box (the "rpm -qa" equivalent). Nor could I figure out how to determine which packages were even available for me to install. For example, "make menuconfig" failed in the kernel sources, because for some reason, this box didn't have ncurses. Well finally, a certain Guju supplied the command "apt-cache search <str>, which can be used to display a list of installable packages, with the names that "apt-get install" will understand. I'm still not sure how to print a list of packages already installed on the machine...
-Andy. Posted by andyr at January 18, 2004 11:36 PM"And people wonder why Windows Server is gaining market share..."
Word! I've been saying this for years. Windows has it's faults that we're all aware of but I have yet to see any sort of Linux that is easier to deal with. With MS, you wait for a patch to come out, double click and BAM!, fixed. All the basement dwelling Linux junkies who keep decrying Windows are seriously deluded in my opinion.
Is Windows perfect? Far from it.
Is Linux perfect? Farther from it, at least for now.
ease your pain, do 'apt-get install aptitude'
oh, and 'dpkg -l' will list installed packages :-) (actually, pipe it through 'grep ^ii' to get just _currently_ installed packages)
Fredrik
Also, for the record, this whole problem is caused because Dreamweaver (or at least the version Stan has) does not do either sftp or scp.
Another thing, for the record, is that I'm not exactly a Debian guru. I just know a little more than joe debianuser. So I'm the wrong person to give Andy tech support.
And finally, why am I, of all people, defending Debian against Windows???
I agree with Mark -- in the case of one or two servers, I think that Windows is probably easier to deal with. Where windows falls down currently is in the areas of remote management and managing a *lot* of servers. The time investment to manage just one UNIX server is pretty steep. But once you have one, you can scale to many, many servers with little effort. I haven't found windows to be the same way.
Fredrik -- thanks for the tips. I installed aptitude, but it looks pretty crazy. At least I was able to tell which packages needed upgrading. But, I think it will require reading something in order for me to be truly effective.
And Rushabh -- technically, the problem isn't dreamweaver's fault, because due to Mike and Kevin's crazy firewall situation, normal FTP doesn't work either. Also, if you're not a debian guru, then how is it that you convinced Mike and Kevin to install debian in the first place? Oh, you are a charmer...
-Andy.
Posted by: Andrew Reitz at January 20, 2004 12:09 AM