Friday, July 17, 2009

Problem with Debian "apt-get upgrade"


Recently when attempting to upgrade a server that was being neglected we ran across an issue with Debian stating.

trying to overwrite `/usr/sbin/add-shell’, which is also in package passwd

The solution was simple and was required on a few similar errors where the overwrite and package names changed. Again we had really neglected this server and had not run the apt-get upgrade in a long time.

The fix?
dpkg -r --force all passwd
apt-get -f install

To explain briefly the "dpkg -r --force" forces the removal of the package "passwd". The "all" switch turns on(or off) all force options. An important note taken directly from the dpkg man page.
Warning: These options are mostly intended to be used by experts only. Using them without fully understanding their effects may break your whole system.

If you are worried and do not understand the possible risks DO NOT run the above dpkg command. The "apt-get -f install" is less risky but again, research before you apply.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

How to Prevent Gmail Spam Filtering

As discussed in last night's post, Google Apps Outlook 2000 How To, we were migrating a client from their existing email hosting to Google Apps Standard. Although Google does a good job with Postini of filtering spam it still was too much for them and they wanted to disable all spam filtering.

Fortunately a blog post, Bypass Gmail's Spam Filter, covers it however it appears there is not a way to disable it for all accounts in the Google Apps Administrative interface.

Monday, July 13, 2009

Google Apps Outlook 2000 How To


We were doing a migration for a client today that was moving from a local hosting company to using Google Apps Standard for email hosting. Most of their workstations were using Outlook 2003 and 2007 however we found one that was running Windows 2000 and Office 2000. Although Google provides some good tutorials for configuring email clients it did not cover our version. it turns out that the Outlook 2002 setup was close enough to get everything configured.

Outlook 2002 Setup for Google Apps
Outlook 2003 Setup for Google Apps
Outlook 2007 Setup for Google Apps

An interesting note is that Google apparently moved from using SSL for outbound to TLS in Outlook 2007. So make sure to read the correct tutorial for your version of Outlook.