Tag Archives: troubleshooting

Hello php8.1, thank you for breaking things.

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This server runs Debian’s Testing release. Yes, Testing changes a lot and is not meant for long-term production servers. But I like to be a little more up-to-date on the software packages, and there are times when Debian Stable is too far out of date for what I need or want to run on this server. I do use it as a shell server too. And yes, I know bastion hosts, one “process” per server. That assumes one has a budget for multiple servers.

Anyway, I updated the server, and it pulled PHP 8.1. Previously I was running PHP7.4. Well, something interesting happened during the upgrade. I rebooted the server to get the new kernel loaded, and when everything came back up, I had the “White Page of Death” on the WordPress page. This is a self-hosted server, no CPanel, phpAdmin, or anything like that. If I have to fix a problem, it’s the command line and me.

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Rebuilding my Chromebook’s Linux Envionment

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My regular travel laptop is a 15-inch Lenovo running Gnu/Linux. A couple of years ago, I decided to get something a little smaller, lighter, and cheaper. I didn’t want to take the 15-inch laptop if I didn’t need to. I use it mostly for conference presenting and running VMs. Replacing it would be a pain.

I ended up getting an Acer Chromebook 11, the C740 model, for vacation and easier travel. I liked that model because you could replace the original storage with something larger by swapping out the SSD. I also like dit because I could install Debian to it with Crouton.

I set up the device up to Debian Buster and the xfce4-desktop. Other than not using the device enough to remember all commands to launch the chroot Linux environment, it worked well. To help remember how to launch Linux, I have the following saved

to a text file on the device.

Since it had been a bit since I used the Chromebook, I thought I would upgrade it. Heck, it was going to get an update from Google anyway. The upgrade started ok but went off the rails.

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Raspi-NAS rebuild and data recovery

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Shortly after rebuilding my Raspberry NAS last year, it stopped working again. The system wouldn’t boot right, even after changing the micro-SD card with a new build of Raspbian. A few weeks ago, I bought a new Pi 3 b and rebuilt the NAS again. When the system powered on, one of the USB drives wasn’t working. It looked like the file system was corrupt. During attempts to recover the USB drive, it stopped being readable. Both my Windows and Linux computers could see the USB drive, but not the file system, or the data. I re-formatted the disc drive, and it started working fine, it just had no data on it.

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SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and ADSP

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For a while now, I’ve been having problems with DKIM. It wasn’t working. My logs always had the same error:

And I’d look for a fix but never find anything useful.

Today I decided to go through my mail quarantine folders. In them I found several emails from a friend who is having problems with spammers using his email address. None of them are going through his mail server, they’re all spoofed. We’ve compared our SPF records and they look right. So I went and looked up why I’m seeing all these mails.

Turns out that not all mail admins have set up their servers right to look at SPF and block. That was my problem.

So I went and found a howto for my operating system to fix SPF with my Mail Transfer Agent (MTA). The document, provided by my VPS hosting provider, had how to set up SPF, how to configure my MTA to quarntine emails that fail SPF, a DKIM walk through, a ADSP howto, and a DMARC howto, all on the same page.

First things first. I fixed the SPF inbound. Now it should do the stuff it needs to. Then I figured since I still had time, I’d go after the DKIM problem.

So I backed up my existing files and followed along. AND NOTHING WORKED!. Still the same problem. Heck even the same error message.

So an

later and I started completely fresh. Nothing old, not even the old backup files.

And it still didn’t work. sysctrl status -l opendkim.service and journalctrl -xe were not much help either. Neither one gave enough information on what was wrong.

I did some searching through the logs, and found that even after changing the port to a local socet for Milter it still couldn’t work. But this time I found that it couldn’t see the files, and searching the directory that local socket should be in, it wasn’t there. After much googling I found an old bug report for Debian (my OS of choice). If the socket and pid files were missing, do this:

And suddenly everything was working. I sent test emails to test services, and they seem to be working. At least they told me that everything works.

Then I went why not and set up the ADSP and DMARC stuff in DNS.

Really just happy to get past the problem where dkim isn’t working. Now to go finish clearing out the quarantine files.

Why I don’t have a lab

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An industry mailing list I’m on recently had a conversation that started asking about Master Degrees but had some hiring managers chip in. They said a question they tend to ask is to have the candidate tell about their home lab.

I’ve been asked this question a few times in the past, and I’ve asked people this question in job interviews. I know it’s to find out what kind of passion the candidate has for the job, but I think it’s starting to become a bad question to ask.

Here is why I don’t have a home lab.

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Raspberry Pi WPA_Supplicant setup taking way longer than it should

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—- TL/DR —-
If you want to connect a raspberry pi to a hidden access point your wpa_supplicant.conf needs to have the following in the network statement.

Don’t put a ” or a ) in your ASCII PSK it causes problems. I couldn’t get it to work with the hex psk using wpa_passphrase but I broke the rules of troubleshooting making multiple changes at a time instead of one and resetting it.

—– End TL/DR —-

I got a new phone. Nexus 5x.  But this isn’t what this post is about. My SO got a new phone last August. It was an unplanned by after the last one went for a porta-john swim. Again. not what this is about.

A co-worker suggested setting up a NAS to back up the pictures to. Being a poor college student, yes still grad school isn’t cheap, that really isn’t an option. Then he said well if it’s just the phones, why not use one of your Raspberry Pis?

The problem is getting the wpa_suplicant.conf file talking. It has taken me 2 days. Mainly because I don’t mess with that file much.

it hated my passphrase because of the ” and the ) in the middle example:

I tried wpa_passphrase with the file, but it didn’t like that either. (although I kind of want to go back and test it again, in case I missed something.

Which I couldn’t find out until after I set the AP to broadcast. So after more digging I found that

scan_ssid=1 has to be in the config.

Sigh. This is taking way longer than need be, and I’d just wire it, but it’s going to not be near the cables, because of power.

It’s all about the pcaps baby

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So my android phone as an interesting problem, granted it’s an S4, running not the latest build so I don’t know if that problem still exists. Apparently the way the default mail application is set up, it can’t sync the mailboxes unless the Sync button is turned on. But that doesn’t stop that the mail application from trying to sync on a schedule.

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Why is useful documentation hard to find?

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I just finished reading The Linux Journal’s “Geek’s Guide to Enterprise Monitoring Success“. It was good, talking about how to leverage the monitoring to work for the IT department in an organization. This also talked about some business problems you can face, which I’ve seen first hand. I’ve been in the “metrics from another group’s monitoring tools” meeting before. Trust me, you need to be sure of yourself and what you’re doing for the company before that happens. I’ve also seen monitoring systems destroyed because the wrong people had too much access and trying to  tune the system for their needs only.

For what it was, this was a good guide. From the title though, I expected something different.

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