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…
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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…
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