useful network-related tools
internet-wide scanners: https://censys.io/ https://www.shodan.io/ ssl: https://www.ssllabs.com/ smtp: https://www.mail-tester.com/ dns: http://dns.squish.net/
unimportant
upgrading firmware on Intel’s SATA SSD drives behind Dell’s h730p RAID
fetch Intel_SSD_Data_Center_Tool from here. the zip archive contained, among other, .deb for 64 bit OS – that worked for me under debian stretch. to see drives run: to upgrade the firmware where 0 corresponds to the Index of drive returned by the first command the same likely works for other LSI/Avago cards – no matter ... Read More
iostat -x 1 reporting 100% utilization of nearly-idle NVMe drives
after an upgrade to debian buster i’ve noticed that both iostat -x 1 and munin’s diskstats_utilization report that NVMe drives are busy most of the time. some empirical tests showed that disks are actually idle, performance did not drop. upgrade to 5.2 kernel resolved the miss-reporting issue.
openvpn – “OpenSSL: error:1408518A:SSL routines:ssl3_ctx_ctrl:dh key too small” after upgrade to Debina Buster
another thing to adjust after upgrade to Buster. on openvpn endpoint that in it’s config – /etc/openvpn/whatever.conf – had: dh dh1024.pem the vpn service did not start. tail -f /var/log/syslog showed: apparently the new version of openssl no longer accepts 1024 Diffie Hellman group. solution: and change in /etc/openvpn/whatever.conf – from dh dh1024.pem to dh ... Read More
bind9 fails to start after an upgrade to Debian Buster
i’ve done a routine upgrade to Buster on some server and all went fine… except bind9 no longer started. every attempt to restart it ended up with long waiting and an error message: logs did not contain anything interesting – actually they showed that bind would start and then after ~ a minute was shut ... Read More
allowing custom file extensions to be uploaded to wordpress
WordPress restricts types of files you can upload. it not only checks the extension of what you’re adding to the media library but also its mime type. so you cannot fool it by uploading .exe renamed to .jpeg – if you try it, you’ll get an error saying: “Sorry, this file type is not permitted ... Read More
“error: internal error: unable to execute QEMU command ‘transaction’: Could not create file: Permission denied” when creating a snapshot under KVM
debian buster brings apparmor. apparmor brings problems – eg it’s too restrictive for libvirt KVM guests and does not allow KVM to create snapshot-related files in VM’s folders. so far i did not find a clean and generic way to address it so i had to disable apparmor for libvirt by adding security_driver = “none” ... Read More
let’s encrypt via proxy server under debian
i prefer to have strict DROP policy for the outgoing traffic from production servers. let’s encrypt API endpoint is behind Akamai’s CDN and IP address to which acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org resolves changes frequently. i don’t like playing whack-a-mole every 3 months so i’ve: set up a squid-based proxy server that allows for filtering based on domain names: ... Read More
“Your IT department has turned off signup for Partner Center” when migrating to new Action Pack / Microsoft Partner Center
i got stuck on that one while trying to migrate action pack account to the new MS Partner Center. without the migration it would not let me renew. after 3 attempts i ended up talking with someone competent who found that this error might occur for users who have o365-hosted mails for domain used in ... Read More
kvm: disabled by bios
does your kvm VM feel sluggish? mine did feel pretty slow.. as it turned out virt-install quietly overrode ‘hvm’ preferences and created a fully emulated qemu vm when it failed to make use of hardware-assisted virtualization.
bios upgrade on Dell PowerEdge T20 via AMT
prepare the floppy image file that later can be mounted via AMT, include in it just the bios update file – in my case it was PET20A18.exe from here. once the file is ready use the Manageability Commander Tool > Remote Control > Take control mount such img file as a virtual, oversize floppy. Using ... Read More
idrac upgrade failures
idrac gives you “RED006: Unable to download Update Package” and plenty of headaches during updates? it happened to me while jumping over few updates and going straight from 2.41.40.40 to 2.52.52.52. no amount of racadm racreset would help. upgrading first to 2.50.50.50 and only then to 2.52.52.52 did the trick for me.
Windows 10 client cannot anymore access public samba share that does not require any login
i’ve run into an issue where windows 10 desktop could not anymore access a simple samba share on a linux server; that linux server did not have any type of authorization put in place. Windows would randomly give errors ” might not have permission to use this network resource” or “Windows cannot access \\Server\ShareYou do ... Read More
E5-2643 in r620 stuck at a very low cpu frequency
few weeks ago i’ve done a general firmware upgrade of 2 identical Dell Poweredge r620 servers. a while later i’ve noticed that one of them had really sluggish performances. i’ve noticed that /proc/cpuinfo has shown CPU frequencies of hundreds of MHz rather than thousands. cat /proc/cpuinfo |grep MHz gave me 16 rows of values between ... Read More
lxc broken after upgrade from linux-image-4.12.0-0.bpo.1-amd64 to linux-image-4.13.0-0.bpo.1-amd64
lxc containers no longer start after i’ve upgraded debian stretch server from 4.12 kernel from stretch-backports repository to 4.13 also from backports. symptoms in /var/log/syslog: that was resolved by creating /etc/systemd/network/99-default.link with: via this comment. then there was nothing interesting in syslog but the lxc guest still would not start – lxc-start -F -n serverName ... Read More
btrfs and nfs dont play nicely together
i use ghettoVCB to take backups of vmware esxi 6.5 vms. data is copied to a nfs share hosted on Debian Linux. for over a year i used btrfs partition as an underlying datastore for the nfs share. and i just could not get it to work for backups which size larger than available RAM ... Read More
ucarp and vmware esxi
i’ve moved a linux router from 9yo physical box to a vm running under esxi 6.5. it’s a designated master in pair of master / slave managed by ucarp. it took me a while to figure out why it was not working – why didn’t the slave ‘see’ the master machine? as it turned out ... Read More
firewall entries needed for active FTP connections for linux hosts running recent kernels
after upgrade to debian stretch i had to add the following firewall entries: for the FTP servers: for the nat-routers between FTP servers and FTP clients: for the FTP clients: related articles: https://home.regit.org/netfilter-en/secure-use-of-helpers/
opendkim failing to start after recent routine debian update
on 2017-10-12 i’ve done a routine apt-get update; apt-get upgrade on a debian stretch vm that, among other services, runs opendkim service that adds a digital signature in the headers of the outgoing mails. during the update i was asked weather to keep or replace the /etc/opendkim.conf; as usual in such cases i’ve answered no ... Read More
“out of range” on drac console when booting debian stretch
i’ve installed debian stretch on an old dell poweredge 2950. after booting it i saw grub, few lines from kernel and then green screen with “out of range”: reboot, on the grub menu select “*Debian GNU/Linux”, press e, hilight a line with linux /boot/vmlinuz-4.9.0-3-amd64 root=/dev/sda1 ro quiet, add there vga=normal fb=false nomodeset and press ctrl+x ... Read More