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MySQL Hostname does not resolve to…

So, you looked in /var/log/mysql/error.log and you found something like: Hostname ‘visit.domains.com’ does not resolve to ‘1.1.1.1’. (that domain and IP are made-up) But you’re running the CSF/LFD firewall and you have port 3306 blocked and bind-address is 127.0.0.1 in your [mysqld]. What is going on? You may have opened ports 30000:50000 in CSF for […]

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General Tech

On the Importance of Decent Passwords

Nothing really new here, but I thought this was interesting and maybe someone will learn from this. If you think “P@$$w0rd” is a good password, you should definitely learn from this (and change your password). There’s a botnet that’s been particularly active recently trying to bruteforce passwords. As in, many, many times more active than […]

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General Tech

Outlook 2016 Account Creation

Can’t stand the new simplified Outlook account creation? Want to add two accounts with the same email address to outlook (maybe if you’re switching IMAP servers)? Microsoft, are you listening? Unbelievable that you removed this. In regedit: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Setup Add a dword:00000001 (1) titled “DisableOffice365SimplifiedAccountCreation” Restart outlook, and you can go back to the old account […]

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General Tech

Mouse sticking between monitors?

If you’re using Windows 7+ with more than one monitor and your mouse pauses when you try to move between them, go into display resolution settings and make sure that in the little monitor alignment screen the two monitors are actually touching. If they aren’t touching, your mouse will stop at the edge of one […]

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General Tech

Windows 10 can’t find Office365 applications

I installed Office365 over my old Office 2013 installation. O365 removes Office 2013, but I noticed after I was done (and had rebooted) when I pressed the start menu and started typing (for example) “Word” the only thing that came up in search results was “Word 2013”. The icon did nothing, and I couldn’t find […]

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General Tech

Recent increase in spam from SPF authorized domains

Recently I’ve noticed a huge increase in spam from domains that are SPF authorized. They’re shilling everything from mesothelioma attorneys to home stairlifts. After looking at the headers of a few messages I noticed something common to all of them that you can use to filter them out in Postfix (or any mail server, really): […]

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Who’s Who spam

UPDATE August 2016: Obviously non-US email senders/subjects may use UTF-8 encoding, so there’s a risk here. Personally this doesn’t affect my server or business, so the rule below was doing well for me. However, legitimate mail services (looking at you, Paperless Post) are sending emails with UTF-8 encoding on the subject line. I scanned my […]

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General Tech

Didn’t get a password reset email from the Franchise Tax Board?

So you clicked the “lost password” link on the California Franchise Tax Board web site and didn’t get the email you were supposed to get with a temporary password? Here’s why. From the mail log of the receiving mail system (mine): Jun 15 22:47:53 dallas postfix/smtpd[14986]: NOQUEUE: reject: RCPT from smtp.ftb.ca.gov[168.240.17.20]: 550 5.7.1 : Recipient […]

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General Tech

imap.gmail.com is not responding

Did you start getting this message out of the blue from an iOS device like an iPhone that was working fine just a few hours ago, and you haven’t made any changes? Before you use the nuclear option of removing and re-creating the account, try this suggestion from faridbe on the Apple Support Forums. Sign […]

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Tech

Testing postfix header_checks with postmap -q

This post makes some assumptions, for example that you use Postfix, Ubuntu, and regexp format for your header_checks, etc. but I find that testing new rules isn’t all that well documented and I always forget how to do this. Testing header checks with postmap -q: For a single line: postmap -q “From: my spammer” regexp:/etc/postfix/header_checks […]