Title Security FAQ
Back Documentation
Language French



Some information or links may be obsolete. This FAQ will be updated gradually. The information has been drawn from the former FAQ at e-smith.org and SME-FR (french).

This error occurs when SME thinks that an access request for "server-manager" is coming from outside your local area network (this is forbidden for security reasons). If your system has only one Ethernet card, verify that your SME Server is in "Server only" mode.
If you use two Ethernet cards, SME (in "Server and Gateway" mode) will automatically assign one card to your local area network and the other one to an external connection. Initially, you must know which card is assigned to which network, and if you get this error message, try switching your network cables.

This error also occurs when a user name or a password is invalid. A common error trying to connect to "server-manager" as the 'root' user - only the 'admin' user is authorized.

Some users have seen only an empty frame (on the left side in the server-manager window) after having connected to server-manager. This is because you are connected as user "root", and not as "admin".

You must be connected as "admin", and not as "root". The password is also accepted for the root user, however "root" does not have privileges necessary to use server-manager, and the result is an empty menu.

Some older browsers did not understand the HTML Meta-tag directive DIV, and displayed it incorrectly. Browsers known to have this problem are:
KDE Konqueror
Microsoft Internet Explorer 3
Netscape 4.x (the Linux and Windows versions)
Generally, reloading the page will correct the problem with Netscape. I'm also not seeing this issue with Konqueror v3.2.1 .

Type "accept" to accept the license before pressing the enter key at the prompt.

The execution of cgi scripts can be enabled/disabled for each i-bay, when the new i-bay is created. For the Primary ibay, use the following instructions:

Please note that the use of scripts cgi can pose a security problem. The administrator should check each cgi script before authorizing their activation on a server.

Important notes about cgi:
The root directory for the Web server is '/home/e-smith/files/ibays/primary/' .
This directory has three sub-directories, cgi-bin, HTML, and files. Cgi scripts used by your primary Web pages (www.yourdomain.com) are placed in the "cgi-bin" directory, and your HTML files in the HTML directory. Cgi Scripts are referenced in your web page(s) by the relative path /cgi-bin/'yourscript'.
For example:

'FORM METHOD"post" ACTION="/cgi-bin/my_script"'=

To use this script you will have to make it executable. Put your script in /home/e-smith/files/primary/cgi-bin directory. Open a session (SSH) on SME server as root user. Type this command:

'chmod a+x /home/e-smith/files/primary/cgi-bin/your_script'

(This will set the permissions to authorize everyone to execute this file).
Close the terminal session on SME. This order will make script runnable, and usable.
For security reasons, 'root' user must make this file runnable.
Therefore any user wanting to use a cgi script must ask the system administrator (root) to activate it.

Cgi scripts used in i-bays are referenced by the path '/my_ibay_name/cgi-bin/my_script' .

I installed SME on my system with SCSI drives. The system asked me to select my SCSI driver, then I get the error message "I can't find the device anywhere one your system". What has happened, and what must I do to fix it?

We have seen some situations in which our installation procedure detects and correctly initializes the SCSI adapter, but does not realize that was done. It therefore asks the user to choose a driver. If you select one of them, you get the message "I can't find the device anywhere one your system". If you see this error, just select "Back" rather than to choose a driver, and the installation should continue normally.

You should check that your SCSI adapter contains a SCSI BIOS. You can check for it by looking for a message coming from SCSI BIOS, at the initial stages of the startup process (Other messages will appear - you must look specifically for messages coming from the SCSI BIOS).

SCSI Adapters on our list of supported hardware are provided with a BIOS. However, some OEM versions of these adapters can have missing functionalities, such as the BIOS. There is no solution for this, except to buy a new SCSI adapter, that is provided with a BIOS.

The heading of e-mail must look like:

'From: Cron Daemon '
'To: root@foo.com '
'Subject: Cron run-shares /etc/cron.daily '
'Body: '
'error: bad line N in state file /var/lib/logrotate.status '

This problem appears when a Windows computer on the network has a computer name with a space. This e-mail can be ignored without problems. This issue was solved starting from version 4.0.1.

These inoffensive messages are progress indicators when fetchmail recovers messages.
To stop 'admin' receiving these messages posted by cron, you must set fetchmail verbose property with -- silent. You can do this by typing the following command (you must be logged in as root). Note that the latest versions of SME Server do not use fetchmail.

'/sbin/e-smith/db configuration setprop fetchmail Verbosity "- - silent"'
'/sbin/e-smith/signal-event email-update'

Several users reported problems using Nero to burn ISO images in mode 1. The reason is Nero software is harder to use than the majority of CD-burning software. This problem seems to be addressed in the recent Nero versions (5 or 6).

Please refer to the manual for more information about SME and multidrop mails.
This problem can not be solved on SME, because the information is already lost by the time SME gets the email. This problem can be solved by one of these solutions:

Use SME smtp server as your email server (as opposed to your ISP's email server).
Use ETRN mode to receive e-mail from your ISP.
Ask your ISP to add a specific header detailing the "envelope recipient" of the message (this is not the field "To:"), and use SME server to distribute the email as multidrop.

This is a visual problem which does not have any known effect on the system. This problem is inherited from RedHat. For more details take a look here .

This is normal, and should occur at each system shutdown. There are tricks to control the RAID system update before shutdown, and sometimes the kernel keeps state informations making it possible to finish the RAID update at next start. You will probably see a message for this purpose with the next boot.

If you start the system from a floppy disk: create another boot floppy disk by using a freshly-formatted floppy, preferably formatted on the target machine. A boot floppy needs to be 100% empty so that the installation/update can be done.

If you start the system from a CD-ROM: generally, this problem is the result of a corrupted ISO file. You will have also similar messages if the CDROM hardware cannot be detected. The image might have been corrupted during downloading, or when burning it to the CD. You can check integrity of the ISO file by using md5sum program included in the most current linux distributions, or available here.

For the RAID functions to run correctly, the two hard disk's geometry must be identical. To correct this problem, backup your system. Then, check that the two discs use the BIOS "NORMAL" mode ("NORMAL" means "Just say the truth about the disk").

If a partition table is found on the disc, this information will crush the geometry information specified by the BIOS. To delete the partition table, execute the following commands, as a root:

The hda and hdc entries below are used with the assumption that the two identical drives are connected/configured as the Master drives on two separate IDE controllers (as they should be), and that any other drives in the system have not been given these designations. Red Hat typically does a good job with this, but of course you should still check.

'dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1'
'dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdc bs=512 count=1'

Install SME again, and check that the disk space is reported correctly. Once this checked, restore your data.

There are many causes for this problem, which is a symptom of failure to load the second level of the LILO bootloader. The usual cause of this problem is a bad disc geometry definition. Many solutions can be found in the Linux Guide for the beginners (Linux Newbie Guide), here.

There is no default password. If you install from a CD pressed by Mitel or a CD created from an offical SME ISO file, you will be asked to create a system password during the installation.