Undoing osTicket’s staff alert email change in 1.9.5
I’ve unpleasantly noticed that osTicket 1.9.5(.1) changed functionality and is now sending staff alert emails from the department email (if one is set). Old behaviour was to sent these alerts from the (configured) alerts email address. Some may prefer the new way better (this is most likely why it got …
AWstats stops updating stats for one domain
AWstats updates work fine for all other domains on the server. The cron task is there and is correct. Manually running from command line completes very fast (2-3 seconds).
Among a ton of other reasons, AWstats may fail to run if a previous collection crashed while running and…
Alert via SMS on power failure and hibernate the system
When using a system to host your important (or critical) operations, being able to get informed of issues while you’re away is a very handy function. Email is good for notifications, but it isn’t always fast enough (and constant checks drain battery power).
SMS on the other hand, is an almost instant alert method and although length-limited, should do the job just fine for those very important, must have alerts. For this setup you will need…
Quickly limiting access to php scripts using .htaccess
Sometimes one needs to quickly block access to offending scripts – like for instance when a site has been hacked and malicious files have been uploaded to the account and are used to send out spam emails.
Apache provides a simple way to block out files from being accessible to visitors. And as most intrusions involve directly access hacked php files, the bit below will do wonders at blocking out those direct calls while leaving the main site fully functional (sort of).
Running VirtualBox headless via web interface on CentOS
I’ve been searching for a headless VM manager for running and managing virtual machines on Linux.
VirtualBox seems the best solution for the task so far, as it is capable of running headless on Linux and has an (unofficial but great) web interface to manage it.
Upgrading MySQL databases after a software update
Sometimes MySQL changes its internal database structures between versions. When that is the case, you might get errors after updating it and trying to start it back up or when trying to perform particular operations on the databases (dumps for example).
The solution is rather simple and involves…
Rooting the nJoy Devi B700 tablet
The nJoy Devi B700 is a budget tablet, running Android 4.2.2 on a dual-core Actions ATM7021 at 1.2Ghz and 1 Gb of RAM; other specs are 8 Gb of storage and a 7 in. screen.
It seems to be using the same firmware – gs702c – as a P706 tablet, one that is a bit more heard of on the internet, so the same method of rooting works.
SpamAssassin fails to start on CentOS 5.10
If you’re still running a CentOS 5.10 machine, you may notice that after recent updates SpamAssassin no longer works on your system. Trying to start it manually will get you a puzzling error:
Starting spamd: child process [12345] exited or timed out without signaling production of a PID file: exit 255 at /usr/bin/spamd line 2588.
Manually running sa-update also triggers an error (albeit more detailed)…
Full and differential backup with 7zip on Linux
Backups are a must! I’ve said this time and time again and I’ll say it every time backup are the topic: One can never have enough backups.
There are a lot of advanced / dedicated backup programs out there, but for the simple task sometimes simpler programs are simpler… Here is where 7zip comes in.