Why was I getting “Failed to connect to FTP Server” messages when trying to upgrade a plugin through the backend FTP interface? Well, apparently it wasn’t liking the ftp.domain.com for hostname. So I used “localhost”, and it worked!
Category Archives: Technical
Hardening SSH/FTP
Or what I learned after reading the logs of brute force attacks on our server.
The logs issued by the Logwatch daemon on our server weren’t pretty…they told a grim tale of the attacks that besieged our server daily. I resolved to do something about it
- Securing SSH, a handy guide on the options
- Summarizing the options of securing SSH on CentOS
- A HowTo setup
- Installing Fail2Ban on CentOS by a hosting company
- Installed Fail2Ban
Fail2ban proved to be an easy install. I just followed the instructions on the 2nd link given, ensuring that I configured a local jail.conf file to store my settings in. I’m not entirely clear on how to read/parse CIDR addresses, but I think I got it right regardless. One thing to remember that’s not listed here is to turn on iptables, if it isn’t already.
# /etc/init.d/iptables start
Now I have to determine if I can tie Fail2Ban to Logwatch.
Hotmail…what a pain
I’ve had the joy of trying to figure out why certain domain emails aren’t reaching certain users, especially Hotmail. Granted, SPF records and reverse DNS needed to be set up, but all the research and hard work are not paying off in the case of Hotmail/MSN/Live (all Microsoft brands) using a competing framework. All research points to SPF and SenderID not playing nice with each other…and Hotmail’s response? Starting at a mere $200, you can become a certified sender (Sender Score Certification) and reach over 3 billion inboxes.
I’ve found OpenSPF’s record wizard, Microsoft’s SenderID wizard (which appears to publish the exact same thing) and the SPF Query Tool helpful in setting up the correct DNS content. The following article also made this change easy. Since DNS Stuff went pay-for-service, I’ve had to resort to free DNS check tools like MXToolbox to look up things like reverse DNS and blacklist records.
Why Gmail Manager won’t work
An annoyance with the Gmail Manager addon for Firefox recently surfaced which disallowed auto-login from the status bar tray. Some quirk of the latest Firefox version or a new method of authenticating Gmail logins “broke” the addon. For about a week or two, I’ve been prompted to type in my password every time I check my Gmail. The addon also would not report new messages either. However, a fix finally arrived in the form of Gmail Manager 0.5.7.5 available from the Mozilla addon site. Glad to have my Gmail Manager working properly again!
Domain transfer continued
Things I learned while moving a domain:
- A guide on how to transfer a domain with minimum downtime, which involves reducing TTL of A names.
- Changing the permissions on a cgi counter dat file to get it to work properly. Recreating the dat file in cPanel didn’t work…but changing the permissions to 777 did.
- Adding the favicon html code to pages:
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/folder-name/logo.ico">