There are various tools to automatically keep a Debian/Ubuntu system security wise up to date, among others the unattended-upgrades package.

Also, there’s the checkrestart script from the debian-goodies package, that scans all the open files on a system and tries to determine to what service they belong and how that service might be restarted.

The last piece that’d tie all those scripts together and would automatically restart all services that are using stale libraries or files was missing.

With the help of Michal Fiala there however is now the restart-services script, that does just that.

The script has not seen much real world usage and as such should be regarded as experimental (f.ex. by restarting /etc/init.d/screen it will as of the time of writing terminate existing screen sessions).

The script currently lives on Github. If you encounter any problem with the script then we’ll very much wellcome a patch that fixes it…

Tomáš Pospíšek

Update 18.6.2012: The most recent checkrestart (from debian-goodies 0.61) now excludes screen from beeing listed among the services to be restarted.

There are various tools to automatically keep a Debian/Ubuntu system security wise up to date, among others the unattended-upgrades package.

Also, there’s the checkrestart script from the debian-goodies package, that scans all the open files on a system and tries to determine to what service they belong and how that service might be restarted.

The last piece that’d tie all those scripts together and would automatically restart all services that are using stale libraries or files was missing.

With the help of Michal Fiala there however is now the restart-services script, that does just that.

The script has not seen much real world usage and as such should be regarded as experimental (f.ex. by restarting /etc/init.d/screen it will as of the time of writing terminate existing screen sessions).

The script currently lives on Github. If you encounter any problem with the script then we’ll very much wellcome a patch that fixes it…

Tomáš Pospíšek

Update 18.6.2012: The most recent checkrestart (from debian-goodies 0.61) now excludes screen from beeing listed among the services to be restarted.

A while ago I’ve compiled PostGIS 1.5.2 for PostgreSQL 9.0.

To install it on Ubuntu the following steps are required:

apt-get install python-software-properties

add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntugis/ubuntugis-unstable
add-apt-repository ppa:pitti/postgresql
add-apt-repository ppa:pi-deb/gis

apt-get update

apt-get install postgresql-9.0-postgis

A basic template database can be created with the following commands:

sudo su - postgres

createdb template_postgis
psql -q -d template_postgis -f /usr/share/postgresql/9.0/contrib/postgis-1.5/postgis.sql
psql -q -d template_postgis -f /usr/share/postgresql/9.0/contrib/postgis-1.5/spatial_ref_sys.sql
psql -q -d template_postgis -f /usr/share/postgresql/9.0/contrib/postgis_comments.sql
cat <<EOS | psql -d template_postgis
UPDATE pg_database SET datistemplate = TRUE WHERE datname = 'template_postgis';
REVOKE ALL ON SCHEMA public FROM public;
GRANT USAGE ON SCHEMA public TO public;
GRANT ALL ON SCHEMA public TO postgres;
GRANT SELECT, UPDATE, INSERT, DELETE
  ON TABLE public.geometry_columns TO PUBLIC;
GRANT SELECT, UPDATE, INSERT, DELETE
  ON TABLE public.spatial_ref_sys TO PUBLIC;
EOS

To test database creation you can do the following:

createdb --template template_postgis test_gis
psql -d test_gis -c "select postgis_lib_version();"

Ubuntu supports parallel installations of different PostgreSQL versions. So if you have already PostgreSQL 8.x installed, PostgreSQL 9.0 will probably be configured to listen on port 5433. So you have to add the option -p 5433 to each command and to specify the full path for the executables. For example:

/usr/lib/postgresql/9.0/bin/psql -p 5433 -d test_gis -c "select postgis_lib_version();"

A while ago I’ve compiled PostGIS 1.5.2 for PostgreSQL 9.0.

To install it on Ubuntu the following steps are required:

apt-get install python-software-properties

add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntugis/ubuntugis-unstable
add-apt-repository ppa:pitti/postgresql
add-apt-repository ppa:pi-deb/gis

apt-get update

apt-get install postgresql-9.0-postgis

A basic template database can be created with the following commands:

sudo su - postgres

createdb template_postgis
psql -q -d template_postgis -f /usr/share/postgresql/9.0/contrib/postgis-1.5/postgis.sql
psql -q -d template_postgis -f /usr/share/postgresql/9.0/contrib/postgis-1.5/spatial_ref_sys.sql
psql -q -d template_postgis -f /usr/share/postgresql/9.0/contrib/postgis_comments.sql
cat <<EOS | psql -d template_postgis
UPDATE pg_database SET datistemplate = TRUE WHERE datname = 'template_postgis';
REVOKE ALL ON SCHEMA public FROM public;
GRANT USAGE ON SCHEMA public TO public;
GRANT ALL ON SCHEMA public TO postgres;
GRANT SELECT, UPDATE, INSERT, DELETE
  ON TABLE public.geometry_columns TO PUBLIC;
GRANT SELECT, UPDATE, INSERT, DELETE
  ON TABLE public.spatial_ref_sys TO PUBLIC;
EOS

To test database creation you can do the following:

createdb --template template_postgis test_gis
psql -d test_gis -c "select postgis_lib_version();"

Ubuntu supports parallel installations of different PostgreSQL versions. So if you have already PostgreSQL 8.x installed, PostgreSQL 9.0 will probably be configured to listen on port 5433. So you have to add the option -p 5433 to each command and to specify the full path for the executables. For example:

/usr/lib/postgresql/9.0/bin/psql -p 5433 -d test_gis -c "select postgis_lib_version();"