Apache mod_evasive DDoS prevention on a CentOS 5.x Plesk environment
A couple weeks ago I was asked to implement a DDoS prevention system for a customer who had been suffering some DDoS events. Shouldn’t be too hard. The only catch was that the box was running a Plesk 9...
View ArticleNTFS-3G on CentOS 5
Lately I’ve seen some customers struggle with their external USB drives formatted in NTFS on CentOS servers. Because it’s such a common problem I decided to make a very quick howto on the subject. The...
View ArticleZabbix 1.8 on CentOS 5
For those who want or need to build Zabbix 1.8 on CentOS 5: there is an excellent RPM Spec file available at Andrew Farley’s blog. He’s also been kind enough to host a series of precompiled RPM...
View ArticleZabbix template: Cisco Catalyst 2960-48
And while we’re at it, I might add another contribution related to Zabbix: a monitoring template for the Cisco Catalyst 2960-48. Get it while it’s hot, either on my blog or on the Zabbix wiki:...
View ArticleLooking for open source projects that need help with packaging
In follow up to a friend’s recent blogpost “Bored Java Dev looking for Open Source project” I’m also looking for an open source project to contribute to. I’m not that much of a developer but I’d like...
View ArticleInstall Xen and libvirt on Debian Lenny
This should be an easy to follow guide about how to install Xen on Debian 5. You should be able to copy/paste most parts of on your shell. Please run this only on a clean and up-to-date Debian system....
View ArticleMonitor DNS blacklist entries with Zabbix
One of the smaller projects I’ve been working on lately is monitoring Realtime DNS Blacklists (RBL’s) status with Zabbix. I’m confident most of you are already familiar with RBL’s. For those who are...
View ArticleUsing expect scripts to backup your Cisco configuration
In this short howto I’ll explain how to use expect scripts with Cisco devices. In this example I’m going to use it to backup the current running configuration. Requirements A working tftp server...
View ArticleMonitoring MySQL with Munin on a DirectAdmin platform
Today I’ll be showing you how to monitor MySQL with Munin on a DirectAdmin platform. I’ve tested this setup for a customer on a CentOS box. It should be fairly easy to adapt this to Debian. You...
View ArticleAuthenticated SMTP with Postfix on CentOS, the easy way
This will be more of a future reference than an actual howto. It’s far from feature complete but it will get you started on authenticated SMTP sessions using Postfix. Quick & dirty. Installing...
View ArticleShared hosting attack mitigation, part 1: Apache MPM-ITK
When it comes to shared hosting we often get to see the same patterns and CMS installs over and over again. We have the big guns: Joomla, WordPress, Drupal, Typo3. And then there are smaller guys like...
View ArticleEnabling Multitasking and Homescreen wallpapers on the iPhone 3G iOS4
For those who are still using the trusty old iPhone 3G the recent iOS4 release didn’t really bring much interesting features. Among the list of long-awaited features one in particular wasn’t available...
View ArticleFixing strange device names using Ubuntu templates on VMware ESX or vSphere
If you regularly deploy Ubuntu VM templates on your VMware ESX(i) or VMware vSphere boxes you will probably run into strange network device numbers. This is caused by a udev rule. This problem has been...
View ArticleVeewee 0.1.16: ‘we tried to create a box or a box was here before but now...
A few days ago I ran into a strange error using Veewee 0.1.16 on Mac OSX 10.6.7. Due to this error I couldn’t create a single basebox. No matter what I did. However thanks to @patrickdebois’ speedy...
View Articlepuppetmaster-passenger session ticket A: tlsv1 alert decrypt error
There is a bug in the default puppetmaster vhost that’s included in Ubuntu-10.10′s puppetmaster-passenger package. # puppetd --server puppet.fqdn --waitforcert 60 --no-usecacheonfailure err: Could not...
View Article“Dynamic lookup is deprecated. Support will be removed in Puppet 2.8.” when...
Recently ran into some of these when running Puppet 2.7.x: warning: Dynamic lookup of $variable is deprecated. Support will be removed in Puppet 2.8. Use a fully-qualified variable name (e.g.,...
View ArticleLive P2V migration, on the cheap
Last week I performed a live physical to virtual migration for a customer. Ghetto style. I was actually surprised by it’s simplicity and how well it turned out in the end. Basically what I did was boot...
View ArticleCentOS 6 ignores public keys by default when SELinux is enforced
… which is quite obviously ridiculous. Here’s a quick fix to restore public key login functionality without disabling SELinux: # restorecon -R -v ~/.ssh Also remember to enforce the right permissions....
View ArticleCreating a bunch of Gitlab group projects using a Ruby wrapper
Quick and dirty way to create a bunch of group projects using the Gitlab API.
View Article