Month: July 2019

Now that I've explained some about SSH and the concept of a jump server (a secondary machine that takes requests and proxy forwards them to other machines on the LAN that are not exposed to the Internet) I'll continue by explaining how to conceptually configure a jump server.  I'll start by reiterating a little about how one works and why we'd use it. A jump server provides extra layers of protection from the bad guys and script kiddies on the Internet.  What you may not know, understand, believe is that someone is attacking your computers (including your phones -- whatever has an OS they are probing and trying to exploit) at your location all the time from all over the world.  There's a whole computer discipline (field of study) about…

SSH means Secure SHell.  It is a method of connecting to remote systems.  You use a terminal program to connect and login to that remote system.  If you are familiar with Linux you know you have a terminal prompt that you can access through a program like Konsole or gnome-terminal.  In the terminal you issue commands.  You issue commands by typing them at the prompt, just like in the old days of DOS. What makes SSH special is that you can use it to connect to a remote computer and issue commands as if you were physically sitting in front of that computer itself. Connections consist of using the SSH command with the terminal program open.  With it you connect to the remote system by issuing the SSH command.  You…

This is kinda a pet peeve with me.  I hate spam.  I have my own email servers hosted locally at my shop because I dislike other entities contacting me without my explicit permission.  If I suddenly get spam from some entity I want to ensure I have full control to block everything from their domain.  That is what I thought I had done and it seemed to work for some time, however, I started getting spam from several entities that I thought I had blocked, and after checking found that I had blocked them. I went looking for answers and found the answers were in the details.  I read posts pretty fast and sometimes just exclude them from the solution due to how little detail or how much detail they…

This has been an ongoing for some time and various things have been done in an attempt to resolve it.  Much of that consisted of swapping out cables and switches, testing hardware, doing a test install, and disconnecting VLAN segments,  I also bought an inexpensive replacement cable modem just in case thinking that it may be the issue.   I didn't test that as I hadn't eliminated the pfsense setup as the cause, nor for that matter any of it except some specific hardware such as switches and cables.  All told, I had swapped out multiple cables and switches, some a couple of times.  After eliminating those I put everything back to the way it was and went onto the next step. At times I thought I had narrowed it…