My first frustration with Ubuntu 18.04 came yesterday. I created a template VM with my basic toolkit that any machine in my network should have. I then deployed the VM and asked vSphere to set the hostname to the value of the VM name. Strangely, this didn’t happen: The new machine booted up alright, but… Continue reading Frustrations in Ubuntu 18.04
Category: HowTo
DNS/DHCP issues in modern Windows versions
Static IP addresses are a solid way to configure machines if you have few enough of them to manage them manually. But the more ability you want to have to change things on the fly, the more limiting such a configuration scheme becomes. Unfortunately I’ve had severe problems with getting servers with DHCP leases (or… Continue reading DNS/DHCP issues in modern Windows versions
Transport security with Postfix
I had a “Face: Meet Palm” moment today, and as usual when that happens, I learned something new: What happened was that I noticed that mail from a Postfix server I use for sending mail from a couple of domains was marked with the red “no encryption” label rather than the expected grey “standard encryption”… Continue reading Transport security with Postfix
Resizing the system volume on a Linux VM
Background With LVM, the preferred way of adding storage space to a computer running a Linux-based operating system seems to be to add disks, judging by my search results. Naturally, this is a great way of minimizing disruption in a physical machine, but what if you’re running your machines virtually? Adding virtual disks tends to… Continue reading Resizing the system volume on a Linux VM
When the French attack…
A consultant working with our Alcatel phone system encountered a weird issue that caused us some problems the other day. When attempting to install an Open Touch Media Server (used for receiving fax, for example), the entire vCenter client environment froze, and a reload of the page resulted in the following error message: 503 Service… Continue reading When the French attack…
FTP server on IIS
I recently had cause to set up an FTP server for internal use on a Windows server, and I bumped into an issue that took me a little while to figure out, since I had never done it before: I wanted to give a domain user account an isolated directory, and started out by creating… Continue reading FTP server on IIS
Environment variables for services in a systemd-based system
My current config deployment automation project has required me to set up a dev/staging environment for my load balancers, since I don’t want to break stuff by deploying untested configurations. This environment is functionally identical to a single load balancer and can be used along with a hosts file on a client to not only… Continue reading Environment variables for services in a systemd-based system
Continuous Deployment of Load Balancer Configurations
I thought I’d describe some optimizations I’ve made to my load balancers at work, both for the good of the older me, and in case someone would benefit from some of my ideas. Background The load balancers are based on four software packages that integrate to create a powerful whole: Keepalive Daemon provides a common… Continue reading Continuous Deployment of Load Balancer Configurations
SFTP revelations
I got myself into a situation where I had to copy some files from my computer to a server that presented sftp but not scp. Since I’ve never needed to use the sftp protocol from a cli-only machine, I haven’t really thought about how it works in non-interactive mode. Batch mode allows you to create… Continue reading SFTP revelations
Fixing (some) access errors in Veeam
I just spent a couple of hours troubleshooting a stupid problem where I got access errors when trying to backup a VM from a newly-installed Veeam server. Searching forums for answers I got red herrings all over the place, from opening up the Windows Firewall for RPC traffic, to removing Veeam VSS files from various… Continue reading Fixing (some) access errors in Veeam