Mind of Matt

Category: [All]

  • How to configure HTTPS securely?

    Wait, the *Secure* Socket Layer in HTTPS can be insecure? Yep, in the age of total surveillance, it can. Good news: To the best of our knowledge, there is also secure SSL still. (But don't trust me on these instructions with your life or the life of your website users – you have to become […]

  • Hiding ham in spam: Deniable communication under total surveillance

    This is an intellectual challenge: how to design a generic, many-to-many communication system that prohibits surveillance entities from proving that you (1) read some website or (2) contributed content to some website, even if they do (1) capture and analyze all traffic on the Internet and (2) can break all encryption that is used for […]

  • It all. Nothing short of it all.

    In your twenties, you were a visionary. You wanted to learn it all, and fix it all. All the world. Ever realized that you cannot do everything that is meaningful in your life? When you dedicate your life to help people with HIV, you can't go find a cure for HIV. Or find the quantum […]

  • How to fix “530 Login authentication failed” for ISPConfig FTP logins?

    Symptoms You have installed the ISPConfig server admi panel (in my case, version 3.0.5.3), all according to their guidelines called "The Perfect Server". In this case, I used the setup instructions for ISPConfig 3 on Debian 7.0 Wheezy with Apache2, BIND, Dovecot. Then you create a website in ISPConfig, create an FTP account for it […]

  • How to fix the login loop in ownCloud?

    Symptoms This happened right after the installation of ownCloud 5.0.13, when trying to log in for the first time. This failed, and the login page was simply served again (without any error message or explanation). The URL of that login page was then something like http://example.com/index.php?redirect_url=%2Findex.php%2Fapps%2Ffiles. During installation, I also had to create an xcache […]

  • How to disable open_basedir for one website in ISPConfig?

    Edit the website record in ISPConfig 3, there go to the options tab and in line "PHP open_basedir" set the value "none". Save, wait a minute for the job to disappear from ISPConfig's job queue (Monitor -> Show Jobqueue) and confirm that your change made it into the configuration with a command like cat /etc/php5/fpm/pool.d/web3.conf […]

  • How to fix that ISPConfig 3 does no longer process its job queue?

    There are two main reasons for this: the next job causing an error, or a stale lock. How to fix a job queue stuck with a job that causes an error Check for errors. Go to "Monitor -> Show System Log" and check if there is a message of loglevel "Error". If yes, proceed below; […]