Certbot and Let’s Encrypt errors on creating a certificate

I was having failures creating new certificates in certbot due to a change in their code. I previously ran the following command to create a website certificate for an apache server running on Debian 8 Jessie.

# certbot run --verbose --text --apache --rsa-key-size 4096 --email your-email.com --agree-tos -d your-domain-name.com,alternative-domain-name.org,third-domain-name.com

This used to work but now (2018-0226) it doesn’t. Here is the output of error:

Performing the following challenges: 
Client with the currently selected authenticator does not support any combination of challenges that will satisfy the CA.
Exiting abnormally:
Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "/usr/bin/certbot", line 11, in <module>
 load_entry_point('certbot==0.10.2', 'console_scripts', 'certbot')()

I found the answer here: https://github.com/certbot/certbot/issues/5405

The following command worked, substitute working values for “your-email.com” and “your-domain-name.com”.

# certbot certonly --standalone --verbose --text --rsa-key-size 4096 --email your-email.com --agree-tos -d your-domain-name.com --pre-hook "systemctl stop apache2" --post-hook "systemctl start apache2"

This is for the following version of certbot.

# certbot --version
certbot 0.10.2

The end 🙂

Add SSL Certificate to Postfix and Dovecot with Let’s Encrypt

I am running a Debian 8 Jessie email server with postfix and dovecot. I wanted to change from self signed certificates to certificates from Let’s Encrypt. It was easy to do and I wish had not waited so long to change. This blog post, https://www.shivering-isles.com/lets-encrypt-free-trusted-certificates-for-postfix-and-dovecot/ explained it perfectly for me, so there is no need for me to document the commands.

https://letsencrypt.org/

Nextcloud 12 Internal Server Errors after Login

When I upgraded from owncloud 9 to Nextcloud 11, my web interface was broken and I could not login to Nextcloud with the web interface. I was able to sync files to the server. I then upgraded to Nextcloud 12 through the command line interface. I still could not login to the web interface. The cause of the problem was that I moved the location of the webserver files from /var/www/owncloud to /var/www/nextcloud. I made the appropriate changes to my apache “sites-enabled” configuration file to redirect to the new location at /var/www/nextcloud. I was receiving “Internal Server” errors and the web interface was broken and unusable. I fixed the problem by following this thread https://help.nextcloud.com/t/solved-nc12-internal-server-error-after-login/13256 on deleting the data the in the database table oc_filecache. My steps were to:

  1. stop the apache2 webserver
  2. delete everything in “oc_filecache”
  3. restart the webserver

I used phpmyadmin to remove the contents from “oc_filecache”. I think “oc_filecache” contained information pointing to the old location of my files in the owncloud directory instead of the new nextcloud directory. Below are the steps to delete the information in “oc_filecache”.

  1. Login to phpmyadmin.
  2. Select your “nextcloud” database. Your database may have a different name that “nextcloud”
  3. Select the table “oc_filecache” listed on the far left of the page
  4. Select “Operations” from the tab at the top of the page.
  5. Select “Empty the table (TRUNCATE)”
  6. Select “Ok” to confirm you will be deleting the data in “oc_filecache”.
  7. Finished.

Do not order checks from https://www.walmartchecks.com/ with firefox

I tried to order checks from https://www.walmartchecks.com/ twice and never received my order. I called customer service and was told you have order online with internet explorer and firefox was not compatible. Here is the feedback I left them.

“Poor Service. I have tried twice to order checks online and the order looks like it goes through, but then I never received my checks. I called customer service and was told I have to use internet explorer for this website. This is not mentioned any where on the website. What a waste of my time. I use firefox web browser. How about designing your website to support industry standards for web browsing instead of  programming for Internet explorer which is not following w3c standards.”

Here is there Feedback:

Dear Valued Customer,

Thank you for contacting Walmart Check Printing.

I’m sorry that the site is not to your liking.  We are constantly working to improve our site, but at this time, Internet Explorer is still our main platform for the site.  That being said you always have the choice to place the order through a live representative at no extra cost.

Please let us know if we may be of further assistance. We appreciate your business!

Thank You!
e-Servicing Team, Chris
Order Number:  40-
******************************************************
Thank You For Choosing Walmart Check Printing!

I ended up ordering checks from http://www.costcochecks.com/home and their site works with firefox. Their prices are good also.

 

 

Rotate your Rsync Backups with rotate-backups, similar to Time Machine

I use rsync on gnome-ubuntu 15.10 to back up my data to my server running Debian 8. This creates incremental backups similar to Apples Time Machine. The backup runs every 2 hours so this creates more backups than needed at the expense of hard drive space. I used to manually delete the files from the server and would try to save a monthly backup, 8 weekly backups, 30 daily backups, and 2 weeks of every 2 hour backups. This was a time consuming process of manually selecting the files and thus I was not consistent about removing the extra backups. My backup scripts are written in python and I was going to write a script that would delete old backups that were not needed any more. Even better than writing your own script is finding one that has already been written such as https://rotate-backups.readthedocs.org/en/latest/#rotate-backups-simple-command-line-interface-for-backup-rotation. This script will automatically delete your old backups and you can configure it for many backups you want to keep.

This script is well documented and easy to use. I give it my highest recommendation.

Rename File with Current Date in Debian 8 Linux

I had a need to rename a file with the current date after running a backup script. This was done on Debian 8 Linux. The backup script would make a file name called “/mnt/backup.chadchenault.com/backup/server.cc.com.webmin/webmin.tar.gz“. I like my backup files with year-month-day at the front of the filename for easy sorting by date. My format is 2016-0422 for the date of April 04, 2016. I am using the date command to insert the current date and this is command that runs automatically after the backup command is run.

mv /mnt/backup.chadchenault.com/backup/server.cc.com.webmin/webmin.tar.gz /mnt/backup.chadchenault.com/backup/server.cc.com.webmin/$(date “+%Y-%m%d.webmin.tar.gz”)

This results in a new filename of “/mnt/backup.chadchenault.com/backup/server.cc.com.webmin/2016-0422.webmin.tar.gz”

Here are an example of testing the date command from the command line.

Create a file “delete.txt”

touch delete.txt

Copy the file to a new name with current Year-MonthDay.delete.txt format

cp -v delete.txt /root/$(date “+%Y-%m%d.delete.txt”)

The output of the command on 2016-0422 was:

‘delete.txt’ -> ‘/root/2016-0422.delete.txt’

The command was run successfully.

 

MythTV Hardware Video Accleration with VDAPU

OS: Mythubuntu 14.04
Hardware: AMD E-350 APU, 8 GB DDR3 1066,AMD Radeon HD 6310 graphics

Playback of video was choppy and CPU utilization would reach 100% without hardware acceleration. I am using default radeon open source video drivers. I installed VDPAU drivers with

 sudo apt-get install mesa-vdpau-drivers
Enable VDPAU through the MythTV frontend settings:
“Utilities -> Setup -> TV Settings -> Playback -> Playback Profiles (3/8)”
I selected “VDPAU High Quality”

Reference

https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/VDPAU

Smoked Brisket 2015-1211

Brisket: grade choice, 14.1 lbs, cut in half to fit on Brinkman Gourmet Charcoal Grill and Smoker.
Brinkman_Gourmet_Charcoal_Smoker_and_Grill
Outside Temperature 37-55 ° F, wind South 5-10 mph
0900 Brisket put on smoker. Coals used with oak wood chips for smoke. Cooking temperature ranged from 200 to 250 ° F.
1300 Meat was 155° F
14:30 Wrapped meat in two layers of foil and put in convection oven at 350° F. Meat was 153° F
1600 Meat was 165° F
1700 Meat was 180° F. Liquids leaking out of foil because foil was too small to adequately seal the meat. This caused on piece to be drier than the other.
1800 Meat was 194° F.
1900 Meat was 202° F
Brisket was very tender and not to smokey.

Update Evolution Mail Client to 3.16.0 on Ubuntu Gnome 15.04

I updated the Evolution Email Client from 3.12 to 3.16 on Ubuntu Gnome 15.04. Version 3.16 has an archive feature I wanted to use that is not found on 3.12. I followed this blog, http://linuxpitstop.com/how-to-upgrade-evolution-email-client-to-3-16-on-ubuntu-15-04/#comment-3070, that had the installation instructions.