Root Login Permission Denied on CentOS7

admin •

A system that was a fresh installation of CentOS 7 Linux was just completed. After all the updates, the user began to install an application. After some time, the user logged out of the system and could not log back into it. As a root user, the administrator was unable to access the virtual machine even via console. This eliminated…

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Add a GUI to Microsoft Windows 2012 R2 Core / Standard

admin •
There was a server with Microsoft Windows 2012 R2 Standard installed with GUI, for some unknown reason the GUI was uninstalled along with PowerShell.  To reinstall or install these "features", the install.wim file is needed.  Using a mounted Windows 2012 R2 Standard ISO is one such way. These are the steps to "recover" the GUI and PowerShell.  Since PowerShell is...Read More »

SELinux: Compile a policy package

admin •
You have generated a SELinux human readable .te file and want to compile it into a .pp policy file.     Create a policy The first command will read through the audit.log file to generate both a .te and .pp file. The .te is human readable. The .pp is compiled. The second command installs that policy. ausearch -c 'avc' --raw...Read More »

Apache Tomcat 9 – SSL/TLS Configuration HOW-TO

admin •
In this exercise, Tomcat 9 will be installed with OpenJDK 8 using a self-signed certificate in a PKS12 keystore on a clean CentOS 7 Linux server.  These are the steps. Enjoy Tomcat Check the Cert You can check the cert by using your browser. Conclusion This is a basic Tomcat install, future considerations should include log rotation and SeLinux.Read More »

keytool -list displays “JKS” for a PKCS12 keystore [work-a-round]

admin •

A server with Tomcat powered by OpenJDK 8 is using a keystore that is PKCS12 and not JKS. However, the keytool shows that the keystore type is JKS. I have accidentally discovered a work-a-round to this. The JAVA version openjdk version “1.8.0_191” OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_191-b12) OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.191-b12, mixed mode) The Test Keystore type: jks…

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Are you a robot? Epic Fail!

admin •

That age old and yet annoying reCAPTCHA question, “Are you a robot?” is one that must be answered before you, a human, can continue along your merry way.  As one would expect, the reCAPTCHA process evolves.  The other day, I had to navigate through intentionally blurred and obscured images; but today’s image is a new one for me, Select all…

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Install Elastic Stack 5.6 on CentOS 7

admin •
By combining the massively popular Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana (what was the ELK Stack is now the Elastic Stack), Elastic has created an end-to-end stack that delivers actionable insights in real time from almost any type of structured and unstructured data source. There are many resources that offer installation procedures from simple to complex configurations. This is my take on...Read More »

CheapSSL is NOT so cheap anymore!

admin •
I don't remember the specific dates or versions of the applications, but what I can state is that somewhere in recent years, Internet browsers and search engines, specifically Google, Google Chrome, and Firefox started to enforce the use of SSL certificates on websites. Websites will have higher page rankings with an SSL against those who do not. Chrome and Firefox...Read More »