IT Administration

How to enable EAP-MD5 on Windows 7

A short description how to enable EAP-MD5 authentication for wired 802.1x authentication on Windows 7 since it has been (correctly) disabled for security reasons

DNSSEC (manuell) mit BIND Werkzeugen

How to automate DNSSEC signatures on a manually managed zone

Speicherprobleme bei Android auf älteren Geräten umgehen

A short description of the davlik.vm.* tuneables for memory management tuning on Android devices

Automatic domain validation TLS certificates with acme.sh and let's encrypt with own DNS servers

A tutorial on how to automatically manage TLS certificates for various services with DNS challenges and an zone served out of a bind zonefile that is protected via DNSSEC.

How to setup an TOR hidden service

A short description how to setup a TOR hidden service or an stealth hidden service and why one would want to do that even if one doesn't offer illegal content

Adding tags for indexing webpages with Jekyll

An easy method to add tags to your static Jekyll generated pages and blogs

Wie DKIM und SPF funktioniert (und weshalb Mail-Forwarding eine schlechte Idee ist)

This is an article (in German because of it's specific audience) about SPF and DKIM features that prevent mail spoofing and it's effects on mail forwarding

The Blogsphere - How pingbacks work

The blogsphere is a web of interconnected websites. As usual websites are linked like all pages in the WWW but on the other hand they provide an easy way of notifying each other of being referenced by a third party. Pingback is - besides trackbacks - the (XML-RPC based) technology used for that notification.

What are JSON web tokens any why would one want to use them?

Just a short description of what a JWT is, what it can do for one and how they are realized - and why one would want to use them to identify users in one's web application by using JWTs instead of session IDs.

What is Multifactor authentication (MFA) and how to use a Yubikey on FreeBSD for Web and PAM (Local, SSH, etc.) authentication

This article contains a short tutorial about multifactor authentication, various factors that may be used and a tutorial on how to use the Yubikey hardware token for web- and local as well as SSH (pam) authentication on FreeBSD.

Configuring ADSL PPTP connection (for example with Austrian DSL providers) on FreeBSD with mpd5

A short summary on how to configure mpd5 to authenticate against an external PPP provider for PPPoA usage (via PPTP). This is required for authentication with most Austrian (A)DSL providers when using their modems in single user mode.

Using an IPv6 tunnel broker

How to get an IPv6 network connection working if your ISP doesn't support IPv6 even today. Also includes a short description on how to do this on an connection using dynamic endpoint adresses.

Simple usage of Kerberos for SSH authentication on FreeBSD

A short primer on how to get started using Kerberos for authentication inside your network. This includes setup of an kerberos key distribution center (KDC) on an secure host as well as of the server machines against which one will authenticate as well as the required configuration on the clients.

Using a bluetooth mouse with FreeBSD

18 Feb 2020 - tsp

Summary on how to enable a bluetooth mouse on FreeBSD

Automatic Ethernet and WiFi failover on FreeBSD

28 Feb 2020 - tsp

Short introduction on how to use lagg(4) to perform automatic switching from ethernet to WiFi and back on FreeBSD.

Use an RaspberryPi as UMTS/LTE gateway

06 May 2020 - tsp

Since a friend required this - a short writeup on how to use your RaspberryPi (with FreeBSD) with an UMTS/LTE modem to provide internet connectivity to your local network.

Recovering MySQL or MariaDB database via dump and restore

14 Aug 2020 - tsp

This blog post summarizes the steps for disaster recovery on MariaDB or MySQL in case the database system doesn't start up any more or contains damaged table definitions which might even prevent one from dropping tablespaces or databases.

LoRA WAN stuff often not seen

18 Aug 2020 - tsp

A short summary of LoRA WAN stuff that's often not seen by device and application manufacturers and developers. This blog post tries to give a short overview of network behavior and internals.

LoRA WAN device activation (OTAA and ABP)

19 Aug 2020 - tsp

Minimal description of the two possible activation procedures of LoRA WAN device activation and the meaning of device activation for the network. This article has been written since the difference between OTAA and ABP as well as the reasoning seems to be a problem for some developers.

Automatic Jenkins udpate using Shellscripts and Jenkins

13 Oct 2020 - tsp

This article describes a simple and working solution to automatically upgrade jenkins running on a local servlet container such as Apache Tomcat by using a simple POSIX compliant shellscript (working on Linux, Unices, etc.) as well as a simple Jenkins job itself.

Automatic sitemap generation with Jekyll

14 Jan 2021 - tsp

A short summary on how to generate a sitemap for search engines automatically when using the Jekyll static site generator

Windows 10 recovery from damaged registry hive files

04 Apr 2021 - tsp

One approach to recover a Windows 10 system from damaged registry hive files in case of missing restore points and registry backups.

ISC-DHCPD events triggering native hooks from within a chroot

15 May 2021 - tsp

Mini blog post that shows how I integrated DHCP events into my automation solution by pushing commit, release and expiry events into my message broker infrastructure

Accessing Jenkins RSS/ATOM feed programmatically

16 Jul 2021 - tsp

In case one wants to push one's Jenkins RSS feeds to some internal devices or publish them with different credentials than are needed to access the Jenkins server this is a simple scripted solution on how to do this.

Building a TCP console server for Windows and FreeBSD

25 Jul 2021 - tsp

A common problem in industry and laboratories - accessing a serial port via the network to allow multiple machines or VMs access the same physical serial port. This blog post explains how to build such an console server on a FreeBSD host offering physical serial ports an FreeBSD as well as Windows clients who are able to access the ports like local ones.

Adding Grafana annotations using HTTP API

28 Jul 2021 - tsp

Sometimes it's convenient to add annotations to Grafana dashboards and panels using Grafanas flexible HTTP API instead of writing them into a database and fetching them from there using Annotation queries. Since I lacked a complete example and it took me some minutes to find out how this works this blog post summarizes the process.

Configuring VLANs and bridges on FreeBSD Xen Dom0

01 Aug 2021 - tsp

A short summary on how one could configure network bridges on a FreeBSD dom0 for Xen

Bridging networks (VPNs)

02 Aug 2021 - tsp

A mini tutorial on different approaches to bridge networks

Router and switch mode in tinc - the difference and how to use tinc on Android

06 Aug 2021 - tsp

Mini article that explains the difference between switch and router mode and some of their applications when using the tinc VPN client

A short story of the migration process for The-Things-Network v2 to v3

13 Nov 2021 - tsp

This article is a mini summary of the steps that have been required to migrate from the v2 to the v3 stack of the things network, a community driven LoRA-WAN backend solution.

Recipe how to recover Jenkins plain secret text credential via the web user interface

13 Nov 2021 - tsp

This short recipe explains how one can recover a Jenkins secret text credential directly using only the web interface

How to use fetchmail to collect mail from different mail servers

27 Sep 2022 - tsp

A mini tutorial on how to configure fetchmail to collect E-Mails from different mailboxes on various remote servers onto a single local mail server on FreeBSD

Simple DHCP failover with ISC-DHCP

02 Oct 2022 - tsp

Mini summary on how to configure DHCP failover or load balancing when using ISC-DHCP for legacy IP networks. This is not a full explanation of all details, just a quick sample on how to get up failover in a few minutes.

Triggering Jenkins build from locally hosted git repository using the post-receive commit hook

11 Jun 2023 - tsp

A short summary on how to trigger Jenkins jobs by executing a post-receive commit hook in a git repository

Assigning unique device names for CP2102N serial port devices on FreeBSD

26 Jun 2023 - tsp

Just a short recipe on how to get unique device names for CP2102N serial or RS485 to USB adapters even when they're renumbered by the operating system.

Using ancient PHP versions from FreeBSD ports with suphp

04 Jan 2024 - tsp

This concise article provides a detailed guide on installing and running multiple outdated PHP versions on a FreeBSD system using suphp. It covers essential steps such as retrieving specific ports tree revisions, configuring distinct installation paths to prevent version conflicts, and setting up suphp for handling different PHP versions. Emphasizing strict security precautions, the article strongly advises against using this setup in public-facing systems and suggests its use solely for isolated, non-public applications.


Data protection policy

Dipl.-Ing. Thomas Spielauer, Wien (webcomplains389t48957@tspi.at)

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