Apr 16 18:47:20 vpn pluto[6294]: “test2″ #1: probable authentication failure (mismatch of preshared secrets?): malformed payload in packet
Apr 16 18:47:20 vpn pluto[6294]: | payload malformed after IV
Apr 16 18:47:20 vpn pluto[6294]: | b3 39 dc a6 a7 2a 59 0f d9 06 4b 7f 4a ed 0f 7a
Apr 16 18:47:20 vpn pluto[6294]: “test2″ #1: sending notification PAYLOAD_MALFORMED to 81.141.210.226:500

On the client side i was getting:

010 “test2″ #1: STATE_MAIN_I3: retransmission; will wait 40s for response
003 “test2″ #1: Informational Exchange message must be encrypted
003 “test2″ #1: discarding duplicate packet; already STATE_MAIN_I3
031 “test2″ #1: max number of retransmissions (2) reached STATE_MAIN_I3. Possible authentication failure: no acceptable response to our first encrypted message

I made sure there are no typos in ipsec.secrets but in the end I figured out the issue.
You have to have a new blank line after the PSK declaration in ipsec.secrets otherwise the system doesn’t recognize it. Hope it helps.

Copy & paste this in to a file test.php on your server and run it on your favourite browser.

If the current script owner is the same as the user that php runs as, than suPHP works.

<?php

echo ‘Current script owner: ‘ . get_current_user(). ‘<br>’;
echo ‘UID:’ . getmyuid() . ‘<br>’;
echo ‘GID:’ . getmygid() . ‘<br>’;
echo ‘PID:’ . getmypid() . ‘<br>’;
echo ‘<br>’;
echo “PHP runs under the user: [" . system('whoami') . "]<br>”;

?>

If you can’t find this utility install it using apt-get on debian: apt-get install hdparm

then at the console type: hdparm -I /dev/sda an it should list something like this:

/dev/sda:

ATA device, with non-removable media
Model Number:       ST31000340NS
Serial Number:      9QJ365N0
Firmware Revision:  SN05
Transport:          Serial
Standards:
Used: unknown (minor revision code 0×0029)
Supported: 8 7 6 5
Likely used: 8
Configuration:
Logical         max     current
cylinders       16383   16383
heads           16      16
sectors/track   63      63
–
CHS current addressable sectors:   16514064
LBA    user addressable sectors:  268435455
LBA48  user addressable sectors: 1953525168
device size with M = 1024*1024:      953869 MBytes
device size with M = 1000*1000:     1000204 MBytes (1000 GB)
Capabilities:
LBA, IORDY(can be disabled)
Queue depth: 32
Standby timer values: spec’d by Standard, no device specific minimum
R/W multiple sector transfer: Max = 16  Current = 16
Recommended acoustic management value: 254, current value: 0
DMA: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6
Cycle time: min=120ns recommended=120ns
PIO: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
Cycle time: no flow control=120ns  IORDY flow control=120ns
Commands/features:
Enabled Supported:
*    SMART feature set
Security Mode feature set
*    Power Management feature set
*    Write cache
*    Look-ahead
*    Host Protected Area feature set
*    WRITE_BUFFER command
*    READ_BUFFER command
*    DOWNLOAD_MICROCODE
SET_MAX security extension
*    48-bit Address feature set
*    Device Configuration Overlay feature set
*    Mandatory FLUSH_CACHE
*    FLUSH_CACHE_EXT
*    SMART error logging
*    SMART self-test
*    General Purpose Logging feature set
*    64-bit World wide name
*    Write-Read-Verify feature set
*    WRITE_UNCORRECTABLE_EXT command
*    {READ,WRITE}_DMA_EXT_GPL commands
*    Segmented DOWNLOAD_MICROCODE
*    SATA-I signaling speed (1.5Gb/s)
*    Native Command Queueing (NCQ)
*    Phy event counters
*    Software settings preservation
*    SMART Command Transport (SCT) feature set
*    SCT LBA Segment Access (AC2)
*    SCT Error Recovery Control (AC3)
*    SCT Features Control (AC4)
*    SCT Data Tables (AC5)
Security:
Master password revision code = 65534
supported
not     enabled
not     locked
not     frozen
not     expired: security count
supported: enhanced erase
196min for SECURITY ERASE UNIT. 196min for ENHANCED SECURITY ERASE UNIT.
Logical Unit WWN Device Identifier: 5000c50010f8c3d0
NAA             : 5
IEEE OUI        : c50
Unique ID       : 010f8c3d0
Checksum: correct

i could ping the domain clients using their netbios name ( my pdc was also running as a wins server )

i could acces the clients by using their netbios name ( eg. \\netbiosname )

I just couldn’t browse the domain ( the list with computers on my domain ).

The problem was caused by samba working only on port 445. I’ve enabled samba to work on port 139 also and the error was gone.

REMEMBER! THIS WORKS WITH A LINUX SAMBA DOMAIN running with a TDBSAM Backend, If you have a WINDOWS DOMAIN or a LINUX DOMAIN with LDAP BACKEND this WON’T WORK !!!! Also this howto was only tested with WINDOWS XP. I don’t know if it’ll work in vista but i think it should.

First of all you have to login to the computer with a local administrative account ( eg. Administrator ).

Go to -> Start -> run > and type regedit.

Go to this key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ComputerName]

Under Computer Name you’ll have 2 subfolders: ActiveComputerName and ComputerName, and in the 2 subfolders you’ll see the key ComputerName with the value being your current computer name. Change both of these values to the new name you want for your machine.

Reboot. ( this is the only time you need to reboot ).

Go to your linux domain controler and search for the smbpasswd file. This file stores both the computer and user accounts. Find your old computer’s name in this file. It should look something like this :

GKOO$:1396:XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX:578E3D23GF5C1AA7588D3295281282EB:[W          ]:LCT-00000000:

Change it’s name to the new name you assigned previously to your windows machine. Be sure to keep the $ mark at the and of the name ( the $ sign means this account is a machine account not a user account ) and also all the other numbers following your computer name.

Next create a machine account on your linux box with the new computer name:

useradd -s /bin/false -d /dev/null gkoonew$ ( remember to always attach the $ sign to your machine account name ).

That’s it you should now be able to login to your domain with the new computer name. If you can’t watch the samba logs, they’ll tell you a lot. Also you can remove the old machine account from your linux users database to keep things more organised.

Good luck, GKoo.

In this case, on the server, in sshd_config add the following line to solve your issue:

UseDNS no

When you try to umount the regular way, if a device is busy you’ll get the following :

dev:/# umount /dev/sda1
umount2: Device or resource busy
umount: /boot: device is busy

This can be solver very easy by entering this :

dev:/# umount -l /dev/sda1

ip link show - shows the available interfaces on your machine

ip address show – shows the IP addresses attached to your interfaces.

ip route show – shows the available routes on your machine.

ip neigh show – shows the current information in your ARP cache.

ip rule – shows the routing tables active on yout machine.

ip route list table table_name – lists the rules available in a specific table

ip rule add from 10.0.0.1 table table_name – adds a new rule in the table_name table.

ip route add default via 200.100.50.25 dev eth0 table table_name – adds a default route on a specific table.

If the thing is not already installed on your machine, if you run debian simply use apt-get install mii-tool . After the tool in installed just type mii-tool in your console.

Example:

server1:~# mii-tool
eth0: negotiated 100baseTx-FD flow-control, link ok
eth1: negotiated 100baseTx-FD, link ok
eth2: negotiated 100baseTx-FD, link ok
eth3: negotiated 100baseTx-FD, link ok

MyDNS started giving me problems when i was query-ing the DNS for this TXT record which has around 230 characters. MyDNS was crashing with the following log entry:

mydns: out of memory: Cannot allocate memory

The solution for this was replacing MyDNS 1.0.0 with the brand new MyDNS-NG ( Next Generation ) 1.2.8.26. Everything came back to normal now and It’s working like a charm.

You can get the mydns-ng 1.2.8.26 from here : http://sourceforge.net/projects/mydns-ng/