Open Source

One StartCOM cert works; the other does not

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Following on from the StartCOM verus Apple issues I mentioned yesterday, I have created a new 4K certificate from StartCOM. Apple has no problem with that certificate. I was in the process of setting up some test servers: Dovecot with a 2048-bit cert Dovecot with a 4096-bit cert Cyrus with a 2048-bit cert Cyrus with a 4096-bit cert I started with Dovecot and was testing each one as I set it up. As […]

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Postfix client certificate verification

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I decided to set up some of my mail servers to require certification authentication on the submission port (587). In my case, I want to forward mail from my server at home to my public servers out there on the Internet. I don’t want just anyone to be able to submit mail here, so the easiest way for me do to this was with certification. I could have done it with IP addresses,

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different times despite running ntpd

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Last week, while at EuroBSDCon in Malta, I noticed that one of my servers had the wrong time. It was Bacula who told me, through this message in one of the backup jobs: 28-Sep 21:59 nyi-fd JobId 144899: DIR and FD clocks differ by -5 seconds, FD automatically compensating Fixing the time I connected to all my systems, and ran date(1). One system was by 2 seconds, and another was off by 5

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Things to do

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I have a number of things I want to get done in the short term: remove the mail server on my gateway box at home and start using a mail server on an internal box Configure my external mail servers (out there on the Internet) to use TLS when talking to each other Configure those same servers to accept mail from that new internal mail server Stop using Postfix on servers which only

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ZFS system hits high load during scrub

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My ZFS system hits a high load average every week during its scrub. Here is what top looks like after I pressed i and then S: last pid: 42049; load averages: 3.78, 3.26, 3.42 up 18+13:47:14 11:43:01 220 processes: 3 running, 216 sleeping, 1 waiting CPU: 7.5% user, 0.0% nice, 12.8% system, 1.2% interrupt, 78.5% idle Mem: 765M Active, 236M Inact, 8667M Wired, 17M Cache, 3284M Buf, 22G Free Swap: 8192M Total, 2404K

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named and forwarding

Leave a Comment / DNS, Open Source / By /

In your named.conf, you will find this: I have always turned that on. I like to use my upstream hosts. Today, I turned it of, because of this: $ host lkjsdf lkjsdf has address 199.101.28.20 Host lkjsdf not found: 3(NXDOMAIN) What’s that IP address? That’s not relevant, but it is important. It’s the hostname of a web assistant engine. My upstream has decided to implement what I think is a dirty hack. I

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Creating a FreeBSD jail to run DHCP and DNS

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I’m in the process of setting up a new gateway/firewall. The new hardware will be faster and have more space. At present, the old firewall is also providing DHCP and DNS services. I want to move those off the gateway and onto another server. Why? I want the gateway to run only services that are related to gateway/firewall services. That keeps things simple. At present, the new firewall has just 43 packages installed.

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The new gateway configuration

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Today I created the new gateway machine. It is a ZFS-only system with 3x3TB drives in a mirror configuration. The hardware was my old ZFS workhorse, now replaced by something with more storage. I had a moment of panic, thinking this server had just one NIC, but I was wrong. em0 will be the local 1G LAN. re0 will have to be my upstream connection. That’s pretty sad, given it’s only a 10Mb

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