People often talk about security. There are many different types of security. Personal security. Security theater. Physical security. In this post, we’ll talk about securing communications channels so that others cannot listen in, and so that others cannot connect. In this article, I’ll talk about using a toolkit, ssl-admin, to create a certificate authority, create self-signed certificates, and use them for both backups (via Bacula) and for a VPN (using OpenVPN). We will […]
I wrote this some time ago, but never published it. Here we go… Bacula is a fantastic backup solution. It’s open source. It uses a database to keep track of backups. I’ve been writing recently about using ssl-admin as a certificate authority tool. Today, I started using ssl-admin for generating certificates for my backup clients. In this post, I’m using Bacula 5.2.12 and using this reference page as a guide. I started playing
Bacula: TLS Allowed CN Read More »
I found this special idea about banning spammers: echo “select comment_author_IP from wp_comments where comment_approved = ‘spam'” | \ mysql –skip-column-names -u root wordpress_danlangilleorg | \ xargs -n 1 -J % sudo pfctl -t idiots -T add % Anyone care to explain how this works?
Greylisting is an interesting approach to spam. I first started using it in the form of OpenBSD’s pf and spamd tools back in 2007. That said, I now let Google handle my incoming email. Today I was trying to get spamd-setup to run: spamd-setup: Can’t connect to spamd on port 8026: Connection refused I couldn’t figure that one out. But eventually I stumbled upon it… The problem was spamlogd. It wasn’t running. So
spamlogd not running; spamd-setup won’t run Read More »
Yesterday I was setting up a new server for a client / friend. During the setup, we had a brief period wherein mail was delivered to mbox instead of to Maildir. That is, we had mail sitting in /var/mail/USER instead of ~USER/Maildir, for a number of values of USER. At first, I tried using formail and procmail to send it to the local user. I did this using a method I found using
Forwarding mail in mbox to elsewhere Read More »
The PGCon 2013 Call for papers is out. It’s been out for over two weeks. Had you heard about it already? If you have not already submitted, please do so. The deadline for submissions (19 Jan) is just over a month away. That time will fly past. Please don’t leave it to the last minute. If you are doing something interesting with PostgreSQL, please submit a proposal. You might be one of the
PGCon 2013 call for papers Read More »
I use Bacula for my backups. Most of my backups are done to disk, then copied to tape. I have long liked the idea of having multiple backups on different media. On a regular basis, I move the FULL backup tapes to an offsite location. This is standard practice and highly recommended if you can do it. I don’t use the latest and greatest tape drives. I’m using DLT drives. I like them
Adding Nagios checks for tape drives / libraries Read More »
From this morning: $ bconsole Connecting to Director bacula.example.org:9101 1000 OK: bacula-dir Version: 5.2.6 (21 February 2012) Enter a period to cancel a command. *mount storage=DigitalTapeLibrary slot=1 3001 OK mount requested. Specified slot ignored. Device=”DTL01″ (/dev/nsa0) And nothing mounts… But…. *mount storage=DigitalTapeLibrary slot=1 3001 OK mount requested. Specified slot ignored. Device=”DTL01″ (/dev/nsa0) Eh? OK, backups are running again… *m 14-Dec 11:39 bacula-dir JobId 114017: Recycled volume “ETU137” 14-Dec 11:39 bacula-dir JobId 114017: Using
Bacula? Why you no mount? Read More »
I use Google calendar for a number of things. I also have my contacts in Google. I also use Google Mail, but also run a person mail server. So… I want to see my Google contacts on my phone and I want to see my Google calendars there too. There are a number of ways to do this. This documents how I did this on my iPhone 5. I use, and encourage you
Syncing my Google stuff with my Apple stuff Read More »
I use WordPress for three websites: http://dan.langille.org/ (this website) http://news.freshports.org/ http://wp.freebsddiary.org This also mean I have WordPress installed three times. Recently, I looked at moving to multi-site WordPress. I failed. Or rather, I abandoned the process. My goals: have one instance of WordPress for all three website have each blog available via both https Option 1 is to reduce the work required when upgrading WordPress and plugins. Option 2 is to ensure I
Multi-site WordPress installation Read More »