System Administration Solution Vault

  Amazon Lightsail makes it easy to secure your websites and applications with SSL/TLS using Lightsail load balancers. However, using a Lightsail load balancer might not generally be the right choice. Perhaps your site doesn't need the scalability or fault tolerance load balancers provide, or maybe you're optimizing for cost. In the latter case, you might consider using Let's Encrypt to obtain a free SSL certificate. If so, that's no problem. You can integrate those certificates with Lightsail instances. This tutorial shows you how to request a Let’s Encrypt wildcard certificate using Certbot, and integrate it with your WordPress instance using the Really Simple SSL plugin. Contents Step 1: Complete the prerequisites Step 2: Install Certbot on your Lightsail instance Step 3: Request a Let’s Encrypt SSL wildcard certificate Step 4: Add TXT records to your domain’s DNS zone in Lightsail Step 5: Confirm that the TXT records have propagated Step 6: Complete the Le...

Issue: Now that Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is enabled on my account, I can no longer access my email using Apple Mail. Environment: MFA enabled on the account Must have Mojave (10.14) or higher Cause: Some applications are not compatible with MFA, or require an app password to be created. Resolution: If your mac OS X is older than 10.14, you will not be able to access your email with Apple Mail once MFA is enabled on your account. However, you may still access your email from your preferred web browser at outlook.office365.com. If you have Mojave (10.14) or newer, set up an app password in your Office 365 account. Then add your email account as you normally would in Apple Mail, using your app password Important Notice: Microsoft will be ending support for basic authentication for EWS, EAS, IMAP, POP, and RPS to access Exchange Online on 10/13/20. (This change does not affect SMTP AUTH.) This means that the app password will no longer...

Securing Linux Server is essential to protect our data from the hackers. But securing a server doesn’t require to be complicated .We should adopt a method that will protect our server from the most frequent attacks along with efficient administration . However, don’t take things for granted. Even the most hardened servers can be hijacked by exploiting any vulnerable component running on that server. 1. Install what you need The first rule is to keep your server lean and mean. Install only those packages that you really need. If there are unwanted packages; purge. The fewer the packages the less chance of unpatched code. 2. Turn on SELinux Security-Enhanced Linux ( SELinux ) is an access control security mechanism provided in the kernel. SELinux provides 3 basic modes of operation : Enforcing : This is default mode which enable and enforce the SELinux security policy on the machine. Permissive : In this mode, SELinux will not enforce the security policy on t...

Question: On my DELL PowerEdge server, the front LCD displays “ E1810 HDD 1 fault ” error message. How do I fix this issue? Answer: The message itself is self explanatory as it says “HDD 1 fault” indicating that the hard drive #1 failed. Following are my recommendations on what you can do to fix this. Verify the Hard Drive Status If the failed hard drive is part of RAID-1, none of the application running on the server would’ve impacted. View the status of that hard drive to make sure it says “disk fault” or something similar from the PERC controller. If you have installed DELL OMSA or Dellmgr , you can verify the status of the hard disk without rebooting the server. If you don’t have OMSA or Dellmgr, you should restart the system to launch the PERC configuration utility . In this case, don’t bother with the reboot, as hard drive replacement is just a plug and play. Remove the faulty Hard Drive If you have support contract with DELL, call them and provide y...

Question: How do I find out the DELL service tag and express code of a PowerEdge server that is running VMWare ESXi (or VMWare Server)? Answer: Depending on what you are running (i.e VMWare ESXi or VMWare Server), use one of the methods shown below to identify the DELL service tag. Method 1: Identify DELL Service TAG on VMWare Server If you’ve installed VMWare server on a base OS, you can login to the base OS, and use dmidecode to get the service tag as shown below. This is just like how you identify service tag for DELL poweredge servers on a normal non-virtual server that is running a Linux OS. # dmidecode | more Handle 0x0100, DMI type 1, 25 bytes. System Information Manufacturer: Dell Computer Corporation Product Name: PowerEdge 2850 Serial Number: H234567     Refer to View DELL Service Tag and Express Service Code From Linux and Windows for more details. Method 2: Identify DELL Service TAG on VMWare ESXi If you’ve instal...

A Brief History of Linux Operating Systems fShare While 99% of us were going through the ordeal of trying to work with either the Microsoft horizontal monopoly or the Apple vertical monopoly, there has been a third option growing in the weeds. Free open source tools, such as Linux, began in the early 1990s when some very forward thinking computer programmers insisted on freedom from the rigid patent structure imposed by commercial outfits like Microsoft and Apple. The free software movement began in 1984 when Richard Stallman left MIT and founded GNU in order to create free software programs. GNU is an acronym for “Gnu is Not Unix.” Richard Stallman stated that GNU is a “technical means to a social end.” The social end was freeing knowledge from the clutches of private corporate monopolies – much like Thomas Jefferson advocated for our public schools as being an essential foundation of our Democracy. Richard was also following the example of Henry Ford, who challenged t...