unable to open Berkeley db /etc/sasldb2: No such file or directory

Just a quick note, I would be grateful if anyone can explain what happened.

I was configuring the mail server for a new server running OpenSuSE 11.2. I was not able to get smtpd authentication. After correcting a lot of stuff (and probably making the mistake at the same time), I got into a situation where I could not authenticate when making a smtp connection, even though I could get TLS. In the log I had the message

"unable to open Berkeley db /etc/sasldb2: No such file or directory"

I did not find the solution on the forums, but comparing their main.conf printouts with mine, I decided to remove the parameter

smtpd_sasl_path=smtp

and everything started working. I also tried

smtpd_sasl_path=smtpd

and it also works.

I hope that this may help anyone.

Some words about updating OpenLDAP

To put it simply:
Don't
After all the problems I've run into while updating an OpenSUSE server from 8.something to 11.0, I think it's not doable. I think the best route is to backup the data through an LDIF dump, remove OpenLDAP, upgrade the system, reinstall OpenLDAP, do the first configuration and upload the LDIF data.
I think that, for a small system, it is not worth the effort.
I am sure that somebody will swear by OpenLDAP, and am almost certain that, if I were a full-time system administrator, I would be one of them.

Extracting data from a SunOS SCSI disk

Well, it is a bad start for the blog, I forgot the notes at the office. I am going to keep this one short, and out of memory.

It is the second time that I do this operation, but I forgot how I did the first time. As far as I remembered, I used an Jaz SCSI drive, which is a rebranded Adaptec 1460, in a laptop. The laptop had an incredible crash some time after I extracted the data, and, as I only found out recently, I did not backup the files.

I first tried to insert the card in my Toshiba Portégé M800, which of course does not accept old PCMCIA cards (I'm really getting old...). I then picked the remains of my old laptop, which is now running OpenSuSE 10, and inserted the card. However, I did not manage to read the disk. I thought that it was due to a bad fstab configuration.

I checked the /etc/fstab and confirmed that the field for the type is ufs, and that one of the options is ufstype=sunos. I checked the message log and found that there were error messages a short time after inserting the card. I checked the net, and there is a recent post in a Linux forum about problems with the Adaptec 1460 in the recent kernels. Am I lucky or what?

OK, now memories were slowly starting to return. Maybe I did not use Linux to extract the data. I checked the net and found a free software named ufsread, which sounds exactly like what I might have used. I downloaded it and tried to find a laptop to run it in, that accepted PCMCIA cards. I tried a very old computer running Windows ME (yes, that one...). It accepted the card but couldn't run the software. The I tried another computer with Windows Vista: the software worked but there are no drivers for the card. Talk about luck...

Sudenly, I remembered that I had an old server , with Windows NT Server 4.0 in it. I went to the warehouse, picked it up checked that it had a SCSI connector compatible with my cables. I switched the disk to it, made it run, installed the software and voila, data available...

Now I am going to make a copy of the data to a DVD, and make sure that it is well kept.