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I run my own Postfix email server for my personal mail, and for several other domains via virtual hosts. Between several different software packages, protocols, standards, and 3rd parties involved in email it's difficult to track down problems in certain circumstances.
Read the full post: GoDaddy DNS Records Create Issues For Self Hosted Email Servers
rsync and link-destI use rsync to back up many servers and other machines. Because of my very
different sources and targets, I have a collection of very complex bash scripts
that manage these backups. When I moved one stage of these backups to a new
server, it started behaving strangely - and it was difficult to discover why.
Read the full post: Problems with rsync and link-dest
As an enthusiast of encryption, it always felt a little strange that my servers kept all of their data in the clear. But the problem with encrypting a headless server is that, inevitably, you have to reboot it. So how do you connect to your server and unlock the drive before it boots? It's quite the catch-22.
Read the full post: Headless server and disk encryption
I was a little perplexed when I installed a MariaDB server on my main desktop running Debian Stretch; it didn't ask me for a root password. This is a change from the previous Debians, which always prompt you to set the password during installation.
Read the full post: MariaDB / mysql root password on Debian Stretch
My VPS has lots of different applications residing on it, and many people need to access it in various ways. Sometimes, tightening security for one group can negatively impact another.
Read the full post: Keeping keys for SSH, and passwords for SFTP
It is time to shut down the FragDev GNUsocial instance; it will be taken down on June 30th, 2017. I've thought a lot about this, and due to some new developments in my life and the resources an instance requires, this seems like a good time to call it quits.
Read the full post: Micro.fragdev.com is shutting down
Django assigns permissions to any user-submitted files it saves. If you don't explicitly set what these are, it uses an operating system default - which, in most cases, is 0600. If you're unfamiliar with unix-style file permissions, that means the following:
Read the full post: Better permissions for uploaded files in Django
Now that it is in beta, I decided that I should request HTTPS certificates through the new Let's Encrypt certificate authority. It is free, secure, and provides a unique way of requesting certificates.
Read the full post: My First "Let's Encrypt" Cert
My only beef with the Let's Encrypt process is that, by default, the utility wants you to disable your web server in the process of requesting a certificate, so that it can listen on port 80 (or 443) for a verification challenge. I host lots of sites, many of them high-traffic, and that's kind of a deal breaker.
Read the full post: Unobtrusive Let's Encrypt requests
After the migration to the new server, my old SysV init script for restarting the queue daemons needed to be updated to systemd.
Read the full post: GNUsocial daemons and systemd
With over 50 registered users, the FragDev GNUsocial instance is much larger than I ever expected it to grow. To be honest, I figured it would probably be my own personal instance and not much more.
Read the full post: No Vacancy
GNUsocial is the most demanding services I run, by far. The strain on the database from all of the different GNUsocial, Friendica, etc. instances retrieving their subscribed users' feeds is more than I anticipated. Luckily, this story has a happy ending!
Read the full post: Fixing performance issues in GNUsocial
After running GNUsocial for years, I've chiseled my GNUsocial setup into something fairly fast and respectable (mostly through consistent experimentation and breakages. Sorry, users). Newer configuration changes require Debian 8, or "Jessie", so I thought I'd make a new post explaining things.
Read the full post: GNUsocial on nginx and Debian 8
There have been lots of problems with my GNUsocial instance, starting at the very beginning with Identi.ca and windigo@micro.fragdev.net (which rendered Identi.ca users unable to subscribe to me). I've learned a lot, but now I feel like I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Read the full post: Why micro.fragdev.com is broken
In a previous post (https://fragdev.com/blog/why-micro-fragdev-com-is-broken), I explained what happened to break subscriptions on our GNUsocial instance. Long story short: GNUsocial now forces HTTPS, which broke federation.
Read the full post: How micro.fragdev.com was fixed
Setting date and time options on Debian has been placed under the systemd umbrella with the "timedatectl" utility. While I'm not fully convinced that everything belongs in systemd, I do think that having a single location for all time and date related configurations makes sense.
Read the full post: Setting time, date, NTP, and timezone details on Debian
One of the most irritating aspects of Windows servers are Windows Updates. Simple software updates require a full reboot of the machine, keeping these servers a pale shadow of their Linux/BSD-based counterparts.
Read the full post: Automatically rebooting Windows Server 2008 with task scheduler
UPDATED 2016-04-29: Updated for Debian 8 in GNUsocial on nginx and Debian 8.
Read the full post: GNUsocial on nginx with PHP-FPM
The "fediverse", as we call it, is a collection of self-hosted servers that communicate and federate with each other using open protocols. GNUsocial is one such server, and that's the one I run on my server. Friendica is another piece of software that does a similar job. These servers are designed to work together, unless I mess that up.
Read the full post: I am the problem
I wanted to mention a technique that has been the silver bullet in preventing spam on my email server. When I say silver bullet, I mean we've seen a 98% reduction in the number of spam messages that we receive. I am still a little shocked at how effective it has been.
Read the full post: Simple Spam Prevention
Upon logging in to our backup server this morning, I was alarmed to find our last backup job stuck with a status of "Loading Media". Our backups are backup-to-disk, so there wasn't any media to load. I quickly checked the filesystem, and it still had an enormous amount of free space. So what was holding up our backups?
Read the full post: Backup Exec stuck at "Loading Media"
In a previous post, I mentioned that I was receiving a bizarre error message: "Unable to create temporary work files". It turns out that it may not have been as bizarre as I had once thought.
Read the full post: Bizarre Error, Revisited
Update: The plot thickens!
Read the full post: Bizarre Situation, Bizarre Error
I finally got Postfix configured correctly (if not completely) on my VPS. It took a lot of poking, but now I can send and receive mail in SquirrelMail. While this is only the beginning of the configuration, it's a nice feeling to have something "click" and start functioning. I owe it all to the fantastic Postfix documentation - quality stuff they've got there.
Read the full post: Server Administration for Dummies
For all of us stuck in a Windows Server environment, hopefully this will help a bit.
Read the full post: Troubleshooting: Scheduling Batch Scripts in Server 2003
This maddening issue took quite a while to figure out, so I sincerely hope I can save somebody the time by documenting it here.
Read the full post: Issues with SQL Server 2005 and PHP - Part 1
This blog, the main site, and many of my other sites are hosted by the "colorful" web host GoDaddy. I use them for several reasons, like reliability (100% uptime on their Linux servers) and their reasonable price. In fact, I have been an extremely happy customer – almost a fanboy – but I have run across a dilemma.
Read the full post: Mind Your Versions
One of the perks of my job is the flexible schedule that goes along with it - I come in around ten, and nobody minds too much if I'm a couple (20) minutes late as long as I make up the time somewhere else.
Read the full post: The System Is Down
I'm at work, but I'm not at work. I'm sitting in the Public Safety building, in a meeting room, with other essential staff. Certain public offices, like Public Health and the County Clerk, have a skeleton crew occupying a couple of seats. Computers and phones are set up where they're neccessary, and people come and go like it's business as usual.
Read the full post: Emergency Response
"My, loading that web site was entirely too fast for my tastes. I wish the authors of this page would slow it down a bit!"
Read the full post: Compress Your Content
I've been getting IIS worker process errors lately. I can't really track them down to a certain page or a specific recurring time of the day, and it's driving me crazy. As a last resort, I re-enabled logging on the main Warren County site. It turns out that I still have quite a bit to learn about a server administrator: I should have been doing this for months.
Read the full post: Oh I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay...
A few days ago, the tallest building in Glens Falls caught fire. It was an electrical fire on the 10th floor, and it shut down the building and almost every office in it.
Read the full post: Burnin' Down The House