Ugo's Blog

We did a lot of research to get Joomla! CMS to work behind an Apache httpd reverse proxy.  It looks like Joomla! needs to know how you called the site in your browser's address bar, so this directive must be used: ProxyPreserveHost On There might be othe tweaks that I can't think of that were necessary, but I do remember that this one gave us a lot of headaches.

My laptop will celebrate his 7th birthday in a few days (Dell D800).  It is not very powerfull, but has been quite reliable (I change the hard drive once, that's it).  I've always used Kaspersky to protect this computer, but I knew it was expensive on resources.  Since this laptop is limited in cpu power, and, especially, memory (1 GB RAM), every upgrade made it worse.  And I recently updated Kaspersky Internet Security to the 2012 version and it killed my laptop.  Well, not totally, but made it almost unusable.  And I had a few problems in the upgrade.  I think I had problems with all my Kaspersky upgrades.  This time, it cut my network connection (Wow, now it's secure, but useless!), so I had to uninstall it and reinstall.  Once this problem solved, my laptop started hanging for no reason.  So one night I had enough and decided to uninstall it and try Microsoft Security Essentials.  I don't like Microsoft that much, but this solve...

I just started using No Support Linux Hosting .  It is cheap, but you must have a minimum of knowledge to be able to use this hoster.  Since I don't need hi-performance, redundant servers or super support staff, I thought I'd give it a go.  It looks nice up to now.  Here are the details: It is 1$ a month and that gives you access to the cpanel control panel One domain name hosting (you have to register it, though) 1 GB of disk space 10 GB of monthly bandwidth transfer 25 mail accounts 1 mailing list 6 sub-domains 3 MySQL databases Daily backups DNS management 2 easy-install packages: phpBB and Wordpress Shell access via SSH! Just for the shell access, it is worth it for me, as I often have to do some http or smtp testing from "outside".  I'll probably post again in a few weeks or month to comment on this hoster.

Plutôt comique... Je viens de recevoir un appel d'une personne anglophone (# Privé), qui voulait me parler de mon ordinateur Microsoft Windows. Elle voulait parler au propriétaire de l'ordinateur, disant que son entreprise est certifiée en tant que techniciens professionnels par Microsoft. Après quelques questions, elle commence son processus (qu'elle lisait, évidemment): Saviez-vous que votre ordinateur pourrait être infecté par des virus, des trojans, et d'autres programmes malicieux qui ne sont pas détectés par des anti-virus conventionnels, blablabla...? L'ordinateur en question est-il allumé? Oui Je vais vous fournir des directives que vous pourrez faire avec moi qui vous permettra de vérifier l'état de votre ordinateur et constater à quel point il est infecté. Ahhh, là ça commence à être intéressant. Je décide d'inverser les roles... cette dame n'est pas tombée sur le bon gars cette fois-ci: D'où appelez-vous? Elle a marmonné le nom...

Very funny... I just got a call from someone (Unknown #) who was interested about our Microsoft Windows computer. She wanted to talk to the owner, saying that they were certified Microsoft Technicians. After a few questions, she entered in her process (that she was obviously reading): Did you know that your computer could be intected with malware, virus, that can be undetected by conventionnal anti-virus... blablabla , then a series of questions/answer: Is the computer on at the moment? Yes I'll give you directives to scan your computer and you'll see how infected your computer is Ahhh, now, it's getting interesting! At this moment, I decided to switch roles: Where are you calling from? She mumbled the name of the company, I could't understand even after two repetitions What is your phone number? We don't have one, we operate on the internet Well, you're talking on a phone, you must have a phone number right? Our phone number is for our technicians on...

I got my results for both RHCSA and RHCE exams: pass! I've done the RH300 training earlier this months and it was a great experience.

Have you ever wondered "I want to do this command on an BrandX switch, but I can only remember the BrandY way". Since I've been playing with switches from these 3 manufacturers, I was glad to find this document .

Don't forget that the 29th of July will be this year's sysadmin day! http://www.sysadminday.com/

I discovered last week that since RHEL/CentOS 3, the recommended way to generate CSRs or self-signed certificates is the 'genkey' command, provided by the crypto-utils. It allows you to graphically choose the key size, and if you simply want to create a self-signed certificate, just answer no when it asks if you want to send the CSR to a certificate authority. It shows at the beginning the destination of the created files, but I'll give you a hint (if my memory is good...): /etc/pki/tls/private for the key /etc/pki/tls/certs for the certs

I made many good contacts helping & getting help on the MailScanner mailing list. This is where I got to know Michele Neylon from http://www.blacknight.com/. It mostly started when I shipped him Linux cds to Ireland, but don't think it would have been necessary to start by a favour. Recentely, one of my contacts had a problem with their domain name and even tough Michele must be very busy, he took the time to send me some advice pretty quickly. Thanks Michele! By the way, his blog is at http://blog.blacknight.com/

I decided to stop using my own mail server and migrate my accounts to Google Apps. Fairly easy and now I get many features... Website, docs, mail (with good anti-spam/virus system, and gmail webmail interface), etc. The migration was quite easy as I configured Gmail to get email in my inbox via POP3s, so as the MX propagates, I get all my mails in the Gmail account, even if they reached my old server. I copied my sent items folder via IMAPs. I should have done that a long time ago... And I installed Gmail for BlackBerry, so I have my e-mails in a separate interface. Google Apps even manage the abuse@ and postmaster@ addresses!

Everybody in computing know APC, American Power Conversion, and they are probably the #1 seller for UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply). I like APC's hardware, and I like the chat on their website, but there are a few thigs that bothers me. First, I hate their magazine promotions, . Why? First, have you ever tried entering one of their 100 contests (win an ipod, win an UPS, whatever) or try to download one of their whitepapers? You have to get on the web, put in a code, then answer like a million questions. I've never been patient enough to complete the process. Next, they claim being "Green" and they are still sending me two copies of their magazine, "Currents" at home, and we get 4 at work. They don't provide an easy way to unsubscribe, and they subscribe you in a very subtle way... I can't remember asking to receive that... Well, that is about it.

Here is the method I've used to upgrade OTRS from 2.2 to 2.3 (2.2.7 to 2.3.2, in fact) I did a full backup of my MySQL data. I backed up 2 files, /opt/otrs/Kernel/Config.pm and /opt/otrs/Kernel/Config/Files/ZZZAuto.pm I upgraded the RPM using rpm -Uvhf otrs-2.3.2-01.i386.rpm Then the Database migration: cd /opt/otrs/scripts/ mysql -uotrs -phot perl DBUpdate-to-2.3.pl mysql -uotrs -phot Restarted httpd, MySQL and OTRS service That's it... You can now log in in the new version (2.3)!

Hi, I just learned about the existence of this... an ethical Google . All searches that produce revenues are going to charities. Comments welcome.

BarricadeMX 2.0 is now out! I had the chance to work a lot with it and here is a little review/announcement: New Features (by category): Flexibility Now available in more formats Binaries (yum repository, rpm, FreeBSD package, etc) VMware Appliance (soon) ISO self-install CD (installs CentOS and BarricadeMX 2.0) Combo Tags This allows rules with more than one criteria. Before, you could only say, for example, skip all tests for this IP address. Now you can say, for example, "skip all test for this IP address, then the recipient is user@domain.com". The same can be said for creating more targeted black list entries. Improved spamd support: Can now tag and add headers In the previous version, it could only reject when the SpamAssassin score was above the configured level. Now it is also possible to deliver the message, but adding a tag in the subject or add headers for client-side filtering smtp-delay-checks This feature is very helpful for 2 reasons: Whitelising: In the pre...

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[root@svr~]# vzdump --snapshot 101 /dev/cdrom: open failed: No medium found starting backup for VPS 101 (/vz/private/101) Thu Jul 12 06:53:52 2007 creating backup for VPS 101 failed (0.00 minutes): unable to dump into snapshot (use option --dumpdir) at /usr/bin/vzdump line 450. What is going on? Here is the answer

Situation: - Stock Centos 4 system with OpenVZ kernel + utilities installed. One big /vz partition, using LVM. Trying to make a backup using: vzdump --dumpdir /var/ --snapshot 101 Error message received: Insufficient free extents (1) in volume group VolGroup00: 16 required What does that mean? It means that you don't have enough free space in the VG (Volume Group) to create an LVM snapshot. What is the solution? Reduce the size of one partition, then resize one LV (logical volume). This is easily done if you don't have only one big / partition. I usually always make a separate partition for /var and for /vz. To determine what logical volume needs to be resized, you can use the df -h command. Mine showed: /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol05 119G 16G 99G 14% /vz To resize it: Make backups of your VM to be sure Stop the vz service (service vz stop) umount /vz e2fsck -f /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol05 Use resize2fs /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol05 110G Use lvresize to r...

I was trying to debug someone by e-mail and I think he was a little "slow". Then I thought, silently: His brain returned "452 4.3.1 Insufficient system resources"