Category: Linux

CentOS server not found in Windows Network Neighborhood

There is a CentOS 7 file server that is accessible and works well; however, the Microsoft Windows Network Neighborhood does not display it. After some digging around, there is a simple fix for that. Edit the /etc/samba/smb.conf file and under the [global] section add/modify the following lines to look like this. Then restart the service. This integer value controls what…

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Bash History without line numbers

The history command is a command that I use daily. It can be used to list Bash’s log of the commands that you have typed. The results of that command include line numbers. Every now and again, it would be nice to execute history to retrieve a list without line numbers. This would greatly simplify the creation of script. it…

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Icinga 2 won’t start after an upgrade

A CentOS 7 server running Icinga 2 was recently updated using yum update killed the service. The service simply did not restart. The reason turned out to be quite simple. The resolution is just as simple. According to the Icinga docs, upgrading Icinga 2 is usually quite straightforward. Ordinarily the only manual steps involved are scheme updates for the IDO…

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Change Forgotten MariaDB Root Password

This article details how to reset a forgotten MariaDB root password. I am not shedding any new light to this, this is here for a quick reference for me.  The source of this excellent article is at the bottom of the page. Stop the service and start MariaDB in safe mode. There may be a slight hang, just type mysql…

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A Kernel Panic and Resolution

While performing yum updates on CentOS 7 minimal install virtual servers, I came across a problem server.  The server needed a reboot after performing a hardware change.  It did not come back up. It had a Kernel Panic error.  I did so many things to that server, I didn’t know what the cause for the panic was, but fortunately I…

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Linux: the System Request Key

Everyday with Linux there seems to be something new to learn or a little tidbit that is worth remembering.  This time, the sysrq. Activates the System Request Key (aka. the Magic SysRq key), if thi value is set to anything other than zero (0), the default. sysrq The System Request Key allows immediate input to the kernel through simple key…

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nginx, Apache 2 and subversion – 502 Bad Gateway error

All subversion checkouts, commits and other basic operations work as expected, but when attempting to copy, move or tag (copy) a (502 Bad Gateway) error presents itself. The error may be similar to the one presented below. Setup There is a machine running nginx on port 80 (and 443 SSL) that serves as a reverse proxy for among other things…

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Reset Root Password on CentOS7

CentOS7 offers a completely different approach to resetting a forgotten root password than the it’s earlier distro of CentOS6.x.  Here are multiple approaches that was tested on CentOS Linux release 7.2.1511 (Core) with success.  The last one being one that I combined from the many different approaches into fewer steps. Reset the Root password (version 1 Reboot the system to…

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nginx: redirect to a new domain except part of the URL pattern

Migrating to newer version of a web application from one domain to another has had it’s challenges. Since this web application has multiple projects, each project may be migrated one at a time. The goal is to redirect traffic to the new projects as they are migrated to the new domain. As part of that goal, the projects that have…

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Install and use pdnsd for name service caching

The man pages describe pdnsd as a dns proxy daemon capable of saving the contents of its DNS cache to the disk on exit. The Install Edit the /etc/pdnsd.conf file.  Under server, change the ip value to your DNS server. Edit the /etc/resolv.conf to point the server to itself. For my test, I commented out everything and only added the…

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Install and use ncsd for name service caching

According to Red Hat, “[t]he Name Service Caching Daemon (nscd) is a service that runs in the background and keeps a copy of /etc/passwd, /etc/group, [/etc/netgroup, /etc/services] and /etc/hosts files in /var/db/nscd/ directory. This can aid performance by reducing disk read overhead on a heavily loaded system dealing with many logins or name resolution requests.” The installation and usage is…

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Unable to update ca-certificates

Working on an early install of CentOS 6 and trying to update the system, the update failed. Even an attempt to update the ca-certificates failed. It turns out that the EPEL repository was the cause of this. To work past the offending EPEL repository and upgrade the ca-certificates, the following command works. Upon completion, a simple, yum update will work….

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MySQL

How to install a specific version of MySQL (or other app) via yum

To install an alternate version of, in this case, MySQL, rather than to accept the version that is available via the base and update yum repositories for CentOS, there are several ways of going about this.  You could install via tar.gz or download RPMs and yum install them directly; however, adding the official MySQL repository will work too.  It is…

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Use an RESL with SpamAssassin to Greatly Reduce Spam

Emailreg.org provides the Registered Email Send List (RESL) as a free lookup to anyone that would like to use it. It is also provided to those who have registered a domain here at EmailReg.org. The RESL is provided using a system that is similar to a DNS lookup. It is even more similar to a DNSRBL lookup. The RESL, however,…

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Add SMTP STARTTLS Support in Sendmail

Configure Sendmail email server to use SSL encryption for sending/receiving email. This is an example of using a CA certificate rather than a self-signed certificate.  This article assumes that the CA certificate is already in place and ready to go. Modify the /etc/mail/sendmail.mc file.  Find the section with similar variables that is commented out and copy this under it. At…

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Add Java JDK 8 Support to Confluence 5.6.1

Since the release of Atlassian Confluence 5.7, Java JDK 8 is officially supported. However, legacy versions of Confluence, in this particular case, version 5.6.1 is only officially supported through Java JDK 7.  From my reading only supported through Java JDK 7 Build 75. From java 7u767 and Java 8 onward, -Xloggc no longer accepts filenames with a “:” in it. …

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Create a logon banner in Linux

One file that may be edited is the /etc/motd file. To create a nice custom /etc/motd using ASCII / ANSI fonts, there is a little gem that can be installed on the local Linux box to allow you create some spectacular fonts, it is called figlet. Once you have added the epel repository to your system, it is as simple…

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