Strange networking behavior while trying to access a Linux server via NAT? Does it work from one computer but not another? We may have the solution! We recently ran across a situation where a Linux server was behind NAT (for VPN purposes), and we could access it just fine from a Windows 10 computer, however… Read more »
SOLVED: NextCloud Admin “invalid email address” / User List Not Updating After Add Under PHP-FPM Chroot
We do a lot of NextCloud installs, and use PHP-FPM + chroot for maximum security. This gets tricky though, and one of the more obscure gotchyas we’ve run across is trying to create a new user or set a user’s email address and getting back “invalid email address” despite the address being, well, valid. Another… Read more »
Test memcached Using UNIX File Sockets
We love monitoring things, and we also love memcached! Monitoring or testing a memcached instance that is using TCP is fairly straight forward, but we recently ran into a situation where a client was using UNIX file sockets and had to take a step back. You can’t just telnet to a socket file. … or… Read more »
MySQL Ignoring my.cnf Values / Settings
This is a short one but hopefully it helps avoid some head-into-wall action: You’re setting values in your my.cnf file, wherever that may be, but MySQL doesn’t seem to be picking them up? The most common cause we run across is that there are OTHER my.cnf files on your server, and MySQL only reads the… Read more »
SOLVED: Virtualenv RuntimeError: Package ‘sqlite’ must not be downloaded from pypi
While working with Python Virtualenvs / Virtual Environments we ran into a package that simply refused to install into it: sqlite: (venv) [siteowner@server /share/sites/www.sitename.com]$ pip install sqlite Collecting sqlite Using cached sqlite-99.0.tar.gz Complete output from command python setup.py egg_info: Traceback (most recent call last): File “”, line 1, in File “/tmp/pip-build-USy81K/sqlite/setup.py”, line 2, in raise… Read more »
HOW TO: Windows 10 Under Bhyve /w FreeBSD 11
With FreeBSD 11 comes a new version of Bhyve with a feature that makes installing Windows 10 a snap: a VNC accessible framebuffer driver! This lets any GUI OS, such as Windows, boot into graphics mode on the console. Previously getting Windows working was possible but required a lot of effort to create a custom… Read more »
SOLVED: FreeBSD + pip + virtualenv = file not found
We love python virtual environments, but under FreeBSD we occasionally see issues where pip is not correctly using the /usr/local/include and /usr/local/lib paths to compile installable modules. The Problem This can produce errors such as the below, which we saw when doing a ‘pip install pycrypto’ operation: src/_fastmath.c:36:11: fatal error: ‘gmp.h’ file not found Even… Read more »
NginX “service nginx upgrade” / kill SIGUSR2 results in shutdown() failed (54: Connection reset by peer)
Huge thanks to Ganbold Tsagaankhuu who finally got to the bottom of this issue. NginX is a great web server, and is built from the ground up for high volume, zero down time environments. One of the most basic features of such a service is the ability to restart completely (not just child processes, which… Read more »
ZTE Falcon Z-917 via USB with pfSense and FreeBSD
One of the things on our list has been to setup a proper dedicated cellular backup system setup here at the office. This was harder than it seemed due to the fact that T-Mobile here uses the 700 Mhz band for LTE. This is really an odd frequency and 700 Mhz is not supported by… Read more »
FreeBSD Hangs on “Trying to mount root from zfs:zroot”
There are many reasons this can happen, but this one I believe is unique in terms of searching the internet for the error. We’d see a newly imaged (or restored from backup) ZFS-based server boot fine then hang here: Trying to mount root from zfs:zroot After banging my head into it for some time thinking… Read more »