Linux – Jim Blaich

14May 2020 by Jim Blaich

Proxmox Mail Gateway rejections from some domains but not others, aka “my last post if full of shit”, sort of.

computers, dovecot, email server, Linux, Postfix

It is really hard to test some of this stuff out. In my last post I did certainly cover the effect but I thought I understood the cause as well. That is not the case, so I was full of shit, so to speak, and sort of. The problem was, if my customer sent or forwarded from some domains both related to one company the emails were rejected. A reject email was sent back to the originator of the email. I thought this had to do with configuration of the Proxmox Mail Gateway (PMG). That was partially correct. Those things I spoke about in my previous post were problems, and I did correct them, and that is a good thing. There was more wrong. I needed to resolve that as…

23Apr 2020 by Jim Blaich

Server Maintenance and Upgrades.

computers, Linux

The file server has been running for years without issue. It still is. The other day I thought I’d do a disk test on the drives in the raid array. In order to have enough drives in the system I had to add a raid card. These are the cards found in Dell servers that can be modified to turn on IT mode allowing SATA drives. When you get them you modify the firmware in DOS of all things, but it is super simple. And then you buy 1 or 2 cables with 4 SATA ends for the drives. I say 1 or 2 because there are two ports on the card where you can plug in a 4 port SATA cable enabling 8 total. With a 2nd card you…

08Apr 2020 by Jim Blaich

Netgear R8000 VPN travails

Android, Linux, Netgear, Port Forwarding, ports, VLAN, VPN, Windows

Lots of problems using this router for VPN services. They don't allow accounts and they all use the same cert. If you have to withdraw a cert from someone you do it for everyone. Not a good idea. Here's the issue. VPN was turned on, and configured as default -- using default ports for both TCP and UDP. Normally you'd use 1194 but this defaults that you use 12973 and 12974 respectively for protocols. Not sure why. Why would you need two ports for this when frankly openvpn uses UDP by default? Anyway, nothing we did would make this work. Multiple checks against settings. Testing from remote locations with multiple clients. A sifting of the openvpn configuration files. Ensuring certificates and keys were in place. Nothing would work. I attempted…

06Apr 2018 by Jim Blaich

Moving WordPress from One Server to Another

.htaccess, aliases, Apache, certbot, computers, DNS, dovecot, email server, firewall, Internet, letsencrypt, Linux, mysqldump, NAT, permissions, pfsense, ports, Postfix, prosody, registrar, Web Server, wordpress

As a network administrator there comes a time when we need to reconfigure our server network(s) to some degree. We do this in order to be more efficient and solve important issues. In the computer server world that means moving things such as hardware and services around. I have a couple of projects I found where I needed to move services from one computer server to another. Part of this need to consolidate services onto a single machine was spurred on by the need to demonstrate to my site's visitors that server security is important. Besides, when hosting web sites and email accounts for others, those users want to know that where they are going is actually secure. We've seen cyber security in the press a whole lot more, so…

16May 2017 by Jim Blaich

Last post to date (5-16-2017)

Asterisk, computers, Linux, Raspberry Pi

I've neglected posting for numerous reasons. I've wanted to come back and post on several occasions. Things just keep popping up or I feel lazy. Since there are a lot of things that have happened during that time I thought I'd update some. Going way back I've been working with getting the pihole working. This is an amazing tool. Integrating it with my network is a bit tricky. Each time I do something like adding stuff to my network I learn what doesn't work and hence I learn new things. That's really why I am in this field and stay at this level. The pihole provides a LAN wide blocking of ad and tracking sites. How it works is pretty simple. It's based on the concept of DNS. That's domain…

21Jun 2016 by Jim Blaich

China builds world’s most powerful computer

Linux, Super-computing

The 93 petaflop Sunway TaihuLight is installed at the National Supercomputing Centre in Wuxi. At its peak, the computer can perform around 93,000 trillion calculations per second. It is twice as fast and three times as efficient as the previous leader Tianhe-2, also from China, said Top500 which released the new list on Monday. This unit runs Linux. China builds world's most powerful computer

15Jun 2016 by Jim Blaich

KangarooPC and Linux.

Asterisk, Linux, Pico Computing, Raspberry Pi

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="1500"] Kangaroo PC, an Intel SOC quad core 1.44ghz (turbo to 2.24) with 2gb of RAM, 802.11ac, 1 USB 3 and 1 USB 2. No ethernet.[/caption] Been doing the Raspberry Pi thing for a long time, actually from the beginning. Been working on many different projects with them. I have a history and a set of expectations from other devices to stand up to the RPI. I was hoping this one could. After about a week of use where I'm trying to do similar things that I do on a Pi I have come to some conclusions. Some good, some bad. This is a PC. It can have any number of OSes installed on it. It is after all an amd64 based chip. One should expect that…

14Jun 2016 by Jim Blaich

After a slow start, Dell turns up the dial on Steam Machines

alienware, gaming, Linux, steamOS, valve

From the article: "Dell had high hopes for the Alienware Steam Machine after its delayed release last year, but it did not become as popular as its twin, Alienware Alpha, a Windows-based PC gaming console. The viability of Steam Machines, a family of Linux-based PC gaming consoles with SteamOS, has been questioned, but Dell isn't giving up yet. With better hardware and an expanding list of gaming titles, Dell is hoping that interest in Alienware Steam Machines will grow." After a slow start, Dell turns up the dial on Steam Machines

10Jun 2016 by Jim Blaich

My Purpose for this Site

Asterisk, domestic surveillance, Google, Internet, Linux, Microsoft, Postfix, Virtual Web Servers

I've decided to host my own servers and to do all the setup and maintenance myself for hosting this site and other services. I've been working up to this for years with most of that time just having thoughts in passing about it. In the past couple months I put together the infrastructure. The servers, the software, the security, the maintenance tools the development tools, the backup tools and such to get it running. I also put together a plan to hold it together. I decided to do it because I can. I decided to do it to test my knowledge. I decided to do it to integrate it into much of what I already have. (more…)

06Jun 2016 by Jim Blaich

Who am I

Asterisk, History, Linux, Postfix, Virtual Web Servers

My experience with desktop computing goes back to the early years of PCs. I began working with desktop computers in the early 80s. I worked on some terminal based systems in the USAF and in college, yet any computing interest never took hold. They seemed costly (expensive) and impersonal. (more…)

Category: Linux