Common Server issues – FAQs and answers from those in the know
Can Azure Front Door be made to work with Apache HTTPD?
18 April 2025 @ 9:39 pm
I have a pool of Apache servers with appropriate Subject Alt Names in the certs for all the local host names as well as the virtualhost names.
But Front Door causes errors in the Apache log saying "AH02032 [...] no compatible SSL setup" indicating that Apache won't accept differing names in SNI and the HTTP Host header.
Front Door seems to always send the local DNS name of the origin server in the TLS handshake, but sends the "desired" host name in the Host header.
Have I missed some other configuration option?
get-appxpackage : Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation
18 April 2025 @ 6:03 pm
When I run get-appxpackage from an administrative powershell window, I get the below error. So far, I have only seen this problem on one system, but I have not found a solution for it. I tried the usual: sfc /scannow and dism /online /cleanup-image /checkhealth. These did not show an issue with the system.
**get-appxpackage : Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation. At line:1 char:1
get-appxpackage
CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [Get-AppxPackage], TargetInvocationException
FullyQualifiedErrorId : System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException,Microsoft.Windows.Appx.PackageManager.Comman ds.GetAppxPackageCommand**
Unexpected Benchmark Results: AlmaLinux vs. Windows 11 VM Performance
18 April 2025 @ 5:48 pm
I'm seeing some unexpected results in my VM disk benchmarks and was hoping to get some insight.
First off, why are the benchmark results for the Crucial BX500 SSD significantly higher than the official specs? According to Crucial, the drive supports up to 540 MB/s read and 500 MB/s write speeds, but I'm seeing much higher values in CrystalDiskMark under my Windows 11 VM.
Secondly, the AlmaLinux 9 guest VM is showing much slower disk performance compared to the Windows 11 guest—even though both guests are configured identically. What's causing this discrepancy?
Host detail
CPU: Intel i7-14700F
Motherboard: Gigabyte B760 Gaming X AX
RAM: Kingston DDR5 Fury Beast 32GB 6000Mhz C46 (2x16GB Kit)
Disks: Crucial BX500 500GB SSD (CT500BX500SSDI)
Hypervisor: qemu-kvm-9.0.0-10.el9_5.2
Guest details (Windows 11)
CPU: 4 cores
RAM: 16384 MB
OS: Win
net use stopped working April 17, 2025 for no reason - System error 67
18 April 2025 @ 4:17 pm
I cannot access NAS via SMB shares on a Samba share on a Raspberry pi from on one Windows 11 Pro 23H1 laptop. All other Windows and Chromebook hosts are able to access shares without issue.
On the Windows 11 Pro laptop the following errors occur. The shares worked prior to April 17, 2025 at 10 am EST. Now they do not.
net use X: \\192.168.68.112\SSD /user:mysmbuser mysmbpasswd
System error 67 has occurred.
The network name cannot be found.
net use X: \\raspberrypi\SSD /user:mysmbuser mysmbpasswd
System error 67 has occurred.
The network name cannot be found.
New-PSDrive -Name X -PSProvider FileSystem -Root \\192.168.68.112\SSD -Credential (Get-Credential)
cmdlet Get-Credential at command pipeline position 1 Supply values for the following parameters:
New-PSDrive : The network name cannot be found At line:1 char:1 New-PSDrive -Name X -PSProv
Strongswan VPN server in my network: Getting rid of double NAT
18 April 2025 @ 11:32 am
I have a machine running Proxmox in my network. This machine hosts various VMs and containers, including my PiHole and a StrongSwan-based VPN server. My router is a UniFi UDR, and I use a zone-based firewall.
My VPN clients are all Mac and iOS devices, and I want the phones to automatically establish a VPN connection when connected to a Wi-Fi network other than my home network or when using 4G/5G. I opted for a configuration using IKEv2, and after some fiddling with mobileconfig files, it’s now working well. My phones have both IPv4 and IPv6 connectivity through the VPN and properly use the PiHole, reducing the amount of ads. So far, so good, and I’m generally satisfied with this setup.
However… before we go further, let me share more details about my configuration:
Swanctl.conf:
connections {
vpn {
dpd_delay = 35s
encap = yes
pools = ipv4,ipv6
proposals = aes256gcm16-prfsha384-ecp384,aes256gcm16-prfsha384
Creating a Windows domain controller in terraform with libvirt
18 April 2025 @ 9:02 am
I want to deploy a windows domain controller and later windows workstations but first I want to get the domain controller to work. It’s the first time I’m using terraform and libvirt so I’m not really sure which parts are required or not. I have this code right now: https://pastebin.com/hectGcdE
I can’t test it right now but will as soon as I fix another thing with the libvirt provider. But if you look at it now, does it look completely off to what it should be? I asked ChatGPT a little bit and it told me that the dc_disk in the end is needed but I’m not sure since my ISO file is not in qcow2 format. Are there other things that needs to be changed as well to get this to work?
HyperV RTC clock not set on boot
18 April 2025 @ 9:01 am
I have an Oracle Linux 5.5 with the BIOS or hardware clock wrong after boot.
What I did:
boot the guest Linux VM with the boot parameter init=/bin/sh
check time with hwclock -r or simply date as the sys time is initialized from RTC
Result:
Time is wrong, about a day in past.
According to references below, Hyper-V sets the RTC on boot to current VM host time.
But in my case this is not happening. Why?
It seems the last set clock value is saved/remembered instead of setting the current correct time. More exactly:
if I store into RTC a date in past (like Jan 1), the on next boot the value will read as Apr 16 (today is Apr 18)
if I store into RTC a date in future (like Jul 7), the on next boot the value will read as Jul 7
Is maybe the initramdisk interfering? I tried to baypass it too, but it seems it is required to mount the root fs.
T
When does connection draining start in ALB?
18 April 2025 @ 5:44 am
I'm using ALB with EKS. During a rolling update, I'm encountering 500 errors. It seems to be related to ALB's connection draining. Under what condition does a pod's state cause ALB to mark it as draining?
Does the ALB start draining as soon as the pod's preStop hook begins?
OpenDMARC is rejecting valid spf record include:
18 April 2025 @ 12:33 am
I'm running postfix and I'm having emails rejected by opendmarc that appear to be valid. Here is an example:
Apr 9 17:51:40 primary postfix/smtpd[517925]: D4FAB20161: client=lg95.mta.exacttarget.com[13.111.200.95]
Apr 9 17:51:40 primary postfix/cleanup[517934]: D4FAB20161: message-id=<[email protected]>
Apr 9 17:51:40 primary opendkim[744]: D4FAB20161: lg95.mta.exacttarget.com [13.111.200.95] not internal
Apr 9 17:51:40 primary opendkim[744]: D4FAB20161: not authenticated
Apr 9 17:51:40 primary opendkim[744]: D4FAB20161: message has signatures from services.barclaysus.com, s10.y.mc.salesforce.com
Apr 9 17:51:40 primary opendkim[744]: D4FAB20161: bad signature data
Apr 9 17:51:41 primary opendmarc[745]: D4FAB20161: SPF(mailfrom): bounce.emails.barclaysus.com pass
Apr 9 17:51:41 primary opendmarc[745]: D4FAB20161: services.BarclaysUS.com fail
Apr 9 17:51:41 primary postfix/cleanup[517934]: D4FAB20161: milter-rej
Make a sound on an Ansible control node during a play
17 April 2025 @ 3:25 pm
I would like to add a task to an Ansible playbook that plays a sound on the control node, so that for a long running playbook I get an audible alert when certain things happen. I normally accomplish this in a shell via echo '\a' so that seems simplest and would be ideal. But if there is a way to play an mp3 file or something instead that would work for my use case. I've tried the following, but they do not create audible signals. I've tried a number of other attempts to escape the \a character, but haven't found anything that works.
---
- hosts: localhost
tasks:
- debug:
msg: "\a"
# result: "msg": "\u0007" -- no sound!
- debug:
msg: '\a'
# result: "msg": "\\a" -- no sound!
- shell: "echo '\a'"
# result: no sound!