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Let’s Encrypt + Nginx: Three Months Into Beta
Nginx Plugin During Early Beta When Let’s Encrypt started their closed beta, their documentation warned that their Nginx plugin was experimental. Using it as the authenticator to obtain certificates seemed to work, but using it as the installer would almost certainly guarantee that your Nginx configuration would become a jumbled mess. But that automated installation […]
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Configuring Nginx for CiviCRM
For almost a year now I’ve been hosting CiviCRM instances for a couple clients. This has resulted in quite a bit of troubleshooting and experimentation with file permissions and Nginx configuration. Unfortunately, most of the documentation I’ve been able to find out there seems to assume you’ll be using Apache and the source is full…
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LEMP stack installation scripts for Ubuntu 14.04
This weekend I overhauled my quick-lemp scripts for automating part of the server setup and LEMP stack installation process. The basic functionality is the same: standard new server setup is performed and a fully functioning LEMP stack is installed along with a sample Flask applications. What has changed is the way the scripts are divided and how…
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Poodlebleed exploits SSL 3.0
Despite being 15 years old, and theoretically replaced by TLS, SSL 3.0 is still in widespread use. As luck would have it, yesterday Google researchers revealed a vulnerability in 3.0 which allows for the decryption of secure connections. Poodlebleed is a vulnerability in the design of SSL version 3.0. Poodle is actually an acronym for Padding Oracle…
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A LAMP stack with Nginx is a LEMP stack
LEMP stack not LNMP stack For years I’ve referred to a stack consisting of Linux, Nginx, MySQL/MariaDB, and PHP/Python/Perl as a LEMP stack. While using LEMP might seem odd at first, it actually makes a lot of sense given that Nginx is pronounced “engine x.” While I knew from my own searching that the term wasn’t heavily used, I didn’t…
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Update Bash on Linux and Mac machines to protect against ShellShock vulnerability
If you have any Linux or Mac machines, you’ll want to update Bash due to a vulnerability announced by RedHat called ShellShock. This vulnerability allows an attacker to inject their own code into Bash using environment variable assignment. You can check if your machine is vulnerable by running the following at a Bash prompt: env…
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First Look at Google Domains
Google Domains A month and a half ago Google announced their new domain registration service, Google Domains. It’s still in beta so you need an invitation code to try it out. Luckily, I received an invitation just a couple days ago and it even came with a free one-year standard domain registration. Search and Registration…
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Domain WHOIS privacy variations among registrars
I registered my first domain in 1998 when Network Solutions was the only option and domains could easily be hijacked by spoofing an email. Back then, WHOIS privacy didn’t exist and personal details could easily be scraped for marketing/spam. This resulted in me getting a load of junk mail to my home that I didn’t…
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Rackspace and DigitalOcean VPS Comparison
For the past year I’ve been a Rackspace customer. I don’t have anything major with them, just a lower end virtual private server running Ubuntu that I primarily use for hosting personal projects and hobby development work. I’ve been happy with their service, but lately I’ve started to pay more attention to some of the…
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VirtualBox bug causes display problems in Chrome and Chromium
VirtualBox bug freezing display While working on a virtual machine running Ubuntu 12.04 recently, I encountered some behavior in Chromium and Chrome that made me start to regret uninstalling Firefox. When links or menu items were clicked, the browsers would appear unresponsive as if they were frozen. If the browser window was moved or minimized,…