Date: Mon, 01 Sep 2008 12:55:15 +0000 From: "O. Hartmann" <ohartman@zedat.fu-berlin.de> To: Konrad Heuer <kheuer2@gwdg.de> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Linux, LDAP and the impossibility of handling editable PDFs Message-ID: <48BBE633.8040108@zedat.fu-berlin.de> In-Reply-To: <20080901124900.F877@gwdu60.gwdg.de> References: <48BBB022.4030708@zedat.fu-berlin.de> <20080901113702.U877@gwdu60.gwdg.de> <48BBBED9.9060901@zedat.fu-berlin.de> <20080901124900.F877@gwdu60.gwdg.de>
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Konrad Heuer wrote: > > On Mon, 1 Sep 2008, O. Hartmann wrote: > >> Konrad Heuer wrote: >>> >>> On Mon, 1 Sep 2008, O. Hartmann wrote: >>> >>>> Several months ago I tried configuring the Linuxulator on several >>>> FreeBSD 7.X boxes, most of them pure amd64 and pure 64 bit (as it is >>>> possible with Intels pseudo 64 bit crap). The reason for that is >>>> simple. Having FreeBSD (now 7.1-PRE) as my favorite OS on servers >>>> AND hybrid boxes (acting as workstations AND small servers) makes >>>> life easy - I thought and was touhgt wrong. >>>> Our administration sends a lot of PDFs around and as it is very >>>> usual, our applications, forms and so on for scientific congresses >>>> etc. are all PDF and subject to be edited. And here it comes that >>>> FreeBSD seems to be a definite deadend! >>>> Using pdfedit is wrong, it can't show or edit any PDF we obtained so >>>> far. Using 'pdftk' fails, it is not made to run in modern 64 bit >>>> environments only when using FreeBSD (linux seems to have no >>>> problem, especially Ubuntu does the thing). So, then I remembered >>>> myself about Linuxulator and tried acrobatviewer - and failed. As in >>>> other professional environments we were far away from using simple >>>> user management and therefore there is a LDAP environment. And, >>>> funny, Linuxulator does not contact LDAP even if I try to configure >>>> it to use our LDAP environment. Digging around what flavor of Linux >>>> FreeBSD installs (means: do al ot of work), reading about how to use >>>> PAM and LDAP on Linux (means: doing again additional work in an >>>> environment I try to avoid!) and at last no success, because >>>> something is missing or the Linuxulator should use something for >>>> user authentication and autorization it does not have and uses >>>> therefore the FreeBSD stuff and then fails. Especially for the >>>> Acrobat weirdness (or call it software) something like this occurs >>>> whenn attempting starting acrobat reader: >>>> >>>> (acroread:18831): GLib-WARNING **: getpwuid_r(): failed due to >>>> unknown user id (2001) >>>> >>>> (acroread:18831): Gdk-WARNING **: shmget failed: error 12 (Cannot >>>> allocate memory) >>>> >>>> >>>> If there is someone here running a 64 bit environment within a LDAP >>>> realm and already got successfully running the Linux add ons as >>>> expected for LDAP users, you are really welcome to give me some >>>> hints how to turn around my frustration and thoughts about >>>> definitely leaving the FreeBSD path ... >>> >>> I use a simple workaround to make the Adobe reader (and some other >>> Linux binaries) work - I simply added following entries to the >>> crontab file of root: >>> >>> 00 05 * * * /usr/bin/getent passwd | /usr/bin/sed '1,/nobody/d' > >>> /usr/compat/linux/etc/passwd 2> /dev/null >>> 15 05 * * * /usr/bin/getent group > /usr/compat/linux/etc/group 2> >>> /dev/null >>> >>> Hope that helps a little bit ... >> >> Thank you very much, this works. >> But this seems to be a hack, unclean in my opinion. As I got responses >> earlier of the year for a similar problem, Linuxulator should utilize >> lacking facilities from FreeBSD host system - but obviously it >> doesn't, especially if there are non-existent users. As I realized - >> and this puzzles me - there was no passwd file in my configuration, so >> I guess the Linuxulator has to contact the underlying FreeBSD >> infrastructure to get UIDs like root and others - but this seems not >> to be the case. > > I agree a little bit. When we used YP years ago it was possible to edit > /usr/compat/linux/etc/yp.conf to make the Linux binaries contact the NIS > service. > > Making use of LDAP should work in an similar way. Of course my > "solution" is a hack - but not the worst one. ;-) > > Best regards > > Konrad Heuer > GWDG, Am Fassberg, 37077 Goettingen, Germany, kheuer2@gwdg.de > In the days of NIS/YP the Linuxulator worked very well the way you described, so I expecte LDAP working for me. But whatever I tried to configure (also a complete Linux-based config!), I never had success, especially when it comes to UIDs. Your 'hack' works for me, thank you very much.Regards, Oliver
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