Debian 6 and slow DNS lookup & resolving

Just installed a basic Debian 6 server and was amazed about how much time it took to resolve any domain name; at least 4 seconds. But I found the solution: if you don’t use IPv6 then disable it.

Check the IPv6 alias:

grep ipv6 /etc/modprobe.d/aliases

This should give you this entry:

# alias net-pf-10 ipv6

Edit that file and change the line to:

alias net-pf-10 off ipv6

Then reboot. As always, YMMV.

VNCserver with GParted on headless Ubuntu server

I need to grow a disk on my Ubuntu server but only have SSH access to the machine and need GParted to do that.

Here’s how I’ve done it:

sudo apt-get install vnc4server openbox gparted
vnc4server 
vnc4server -kill :1
sed -i -e 's/x-window-manager/openbox-session/g' ~/.vnc/xstartup
vnc4server

Open port 5901 incoming, and access with a VNC client. Right-click to start the terminal within openbox, and you’ll be able to run any GTK+ apps, including gparted.