Partitioning Basics

One of the necessities of a multi-boot setup is partitioning, but the uses of partitioning go far beyond its application to multi-boot setups. The act of splitting a drive into multiple logical parts is known as partitioning; each part is called a partition. A physical drive refers to the actual, tangible device, while logical drives refer… Continue reading Partitioning Basics

AWS Instances with EBS Root Volumes

While instances backed with EBS-root volumes do cost a bit more than the equivalent instance-store images (there is a cost for I/O), they have certain advantages – persistence and ease of replacement being notable. This article will focus on the latter. As a quick side note before proceeding, it is possible to add ephemeral storage… Continue reading AWS Instances with EBS Root Volumes

VirtualBox fails to start

Some of my recent exploration of virtual machines in VirtualBox led me to using a beta version of version 4. After an unsuccessful removal of a virtual machine, VirtualBox continually crashed (error relates to qtcorevbox4.dll) as soon as the interface appeared, and reinstalling the program did not resolve the issue. In order to continue using… Continue reading VirtualBox fails to start

Nginx and W3 Total Cache

With the increasing popularity of the lightweight nginx server, the latest developer build of W3 Total Cache, includes support for nginx. As nginx does not have directory specify files (e.g. .htaccess), the settings are intended to be added to one’s nginx.conf file. Before preceding, I simply cannot pass up an opportunity to extol the virtues… Continue reading Nginx and W3 Total Cache

Apache: Not GET Request

My error logs were recently filled with repetions of the the following line: [Date] [warn] [client IP] Not GET request: 2., referer: As it turned out this was caused by the mod_pagespeed module (from Google). Disabling it has stopped the errors, I will be trying out a newer version of the module shortly. Additional info:… Continue reading Apache: Not GET Request

Setting up TinyDNS on Amazon’s Linux

If you need to setup both a DNS Server and DNS Cache, consider http://www.fefe.de/djbdns/#splithorizon – there are some issues with the points below that need to be resolved (specifically the resolv.conf pointing to the dnscache, without pointing the dnscache at the djbdns). DNS nameservers serve the purpose of mapping a domain name to an IP address. Typically,… Continue reading Setting up TinyDNS on Amazon’s Linux

Using the Hosts File to Test Virtual Servers

As it becomes increasingly easy to deploy servers in a cloud, we often find ourselves wanting to test changes to servers on a running instance. Prudence advices against experimenting on a production server, but there are times when it is necessary to test on a fully functioning instance. For instance, if one wishes to switch… Continue reading Using the Hosts File to Test Virtual Servers

Installing vsftpd on Amazon’s Linux AMI

By default, Amazon’s Linux AMI provides only the amzn repository. While this repository does have quite a selection of packages, there are a few commonly used packages that are missing (e.g. php-mcrypt). On the FTP side, the only FTP server included is VS-FTP (vsftpd). While my personal preference has historically been pure-ftpd, this is a… Continue reading Installing vsftpd on Amazon’s Linux AMI

Decoding a Base64 Email Attachment

I had a few files containing email attachments that needed to be converted into usable files. The following code (which has no checks in it), did the trick: <?php function decode_email_attachment(){ $data= file_get_contents($inputfile); file_put_contents($outputfile, base64_decode(str_replace( “\r\n”, “”, $data ))); } ?>

Basic Email Analysis

Despite ever increasing security, it appears that email accounts are breached more often now than ever before. Quite possibly this comes down to the user as opposed to the email service itself. The focus of this article includes distinguishing between spam sent from an unknown account and illegitimate emails sent from a known account; a… Continue reading Basic Email Analysis