debian · Talk About IT!

SSH Agents

Summary: SSH Agents hold your SSH keys while you traverse to other SSH targets, without revealing your private keys. Longer Explanation The concept of SSH keys should not be lost on you; if it is, check out my post about SSH keys made easy. However, if your ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file is getting long, and especially if you’re the only user, then you could use an SSH agent to help out.

hugo

Hugo Update

It’s happened - Wordpress is gone, and Hugo is now powering my blog

best practices

Setup BIND9 with ISC-DHCP-SERVER dynamic host registration

Having a decent DNS system is mandatory if you have more than a few devices on your network. If WINS fails (or becomes obsolete), or Bonjour doesn’t fit your needs, try this out on your Linux server!

debian

Growing 2-disk RAID1 array to a 4-disk RAID10 array in Debian

Question: I have a two-disk RAID-1 array in mdadm, and I purchased two more disks. How can I grow the array to use the new disks?

Answer: This took some strategy and time. In short, we install the disks, create a new RAID-10 with two missing disks, copy data over, and replace disks one at a time.

debian

Troubleshooting your Exim Server

In the previous post, we setup a very basic Exim SMTP server for relaying outgoing mail to GMail from your server. Now, we are going to look at troubleshooting your Exim installation, and dealing with issues that may come up.

debian

Creating an SSH Tunnel

So today, I was helping someone with a multi-site WordPress issue, and I linked to my blog. But guess what? It wasn’t coming up! All my external tests seemed to work, including Down for Everyone or Just Me, and even Cloudflare! I could still SSH into my server (as I was watching log files scroll by anyways!), so I knew it was up and accessible. So, what’s next?

debian

Setting up Exim4 with GMail and 2-factor Authentication

Setting up Exim 4 is relatively easy on Debian, especially if you’re only sending mail to yourself (i.e. Server messages, Forget Password requests, etc). Because I have home-level Internet service from my Canadian ISP, I can’t host mail directly on this box - but I also don’t want to rely on Shaw’s mail servers if I ever change service later on in life.

backup

Hello world! We’re back

Welcome back to Talk About IT! We had a bit of a mishap, so all the previous content is gone. Backup, backup backup! Luckily, all the customer data has been recovered, with no loss. The server has been reconfigured, with a proper RAID setup, and off-site backups. It is going to make things a lot easier to recover, hopefully! Once the extra computers I’ve ordered have arrived, I’ll work on setting up haproxy and getting some clustering going.