Adding 4G/LTE Back Up Internet Link to pfSense VM…

Posted on by dk

Updates Fartdates…

So, my Ubuntu LTS 18.04 decided to have a brain fart during a “routine” system update just past midnight on Saturday morning… Rebooted the modem, switches, VM, VM host… nada…

Wither Thou Internet…

With the ‘net down, I could not seem to see the list of update details, nor try and roll anything back… Worst yet, I was actually doing work (which needs a ‘net connection)… So the troubleshooting ensued…

Troubleshooting using my work laptop via my handphone hotspot was no fun… So, four-and-a-half hours later, I retired, disgruntled at not solving the issue (and also having to do three rounds of laundry, get woken up a mere 15 minutes later by my young daughter who wet her bed, and get awakened again 30 minutes after that due to one inconsiderate neighbour’s noisy pet birds – but that’s a totally different story and I digress)…

Saving Grace…

Just a few days ago, I had applied for a free 12-month trial from TPG (Singapore’s fourth telco), so at 10AM in the morning, I dragged myself out of bed, went to church, and then picked up the TPG SIM card… All this to use in a Huawei E3372-607 USB LTE/4G modem (together with a high-gain indoor antenna) purchased nearly two years ago that was meant to fix this exact situation (i.e. be a back-up Internet link).

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Unifi Controller vs. MongoDB Debacle

Posted on by dk

Ubiquiti’s Motto: If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Won’t Fix It

After my upgrade of my Ubuntu LTS 16.04 to 18.04, I discovered some things had broken, including the Unifi Controller used for my UAP-HD. Apparently, the entire /usr/lib/unifi directory disappeared (alongside with MongoDB)!

Rooting around the Internet turned this thread up… And accordingly, there is a work-around, with some “clean-up” work.

The “official” fix is relatively useless, but that is another shouting match argument with another idiot person for a different time…

Anyway, on to the fix!

NOTE

The “fix” offerred below is not really one – it does not restore your data, although you could conceivably do so if you got creative in restoring some data files before re-installing MongoDB version 3.4 as per below…
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Upgrading Ubuntu Server LTS 16.04 to 18.04 (aka GDM and x11vnc)

Posted on by dk

So, the time has come to upgrade my Ubuntu Server LTS 16.04 to the latest LTS 18.04…

It’s a straight-forwards upgrade, easy-peasy, right?

The Triumph Defeat of Hope Over Reality

Compared to what Linux used to be in the recent past, the upgrade via the stock 16.04 UI went fairly smooth…

I already knew that I had to do the standard ZFS pool upgrade:

sudo zpool upgrade <poolname>

But after the whole upgrade was done, I tried to VNC into the machine again after it rebooted… and failed.

2018/12/25 Update:

I suddenly noted that my Unifi Controller was no longer working… I later discovered that it was due to the Ubuntu LTS upgrade… Another day, another battle…

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When Firefox Does A Microsoft… (aka Forcing Firefox To Listen To YOUR Settings And NOT Update…)

Posted on by dk

So, Firefox decided to drop support for “old technology” plugins… Since I could not find web-extension updates for some of my required plugins or they are not ready yet (e.g. Tab Mix Plus, now called Tab Mix – Links)…

Easy-peasy: install ESR 52.9.0, then disable auto-updates… Done!

Not quite… I booted my PC this morning only to find Firefox, flicking a big middle finger to all its advanced users, had ignored my settings to not auto update – and proceeded to update itself to ESR 60.2…

Obviously, this got me royally pissed as I had to waste time rolling back and setting it up as I originally chose (i.e. no updates); and so I wasted some time to track down and neuter their update capabilities once and for all.

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My PC Is Suffering From Insomnia…

Posted on by dk

Quite a while back, my Windows 10 PC installed malware updates mandated by Microsoft, and it subsequently failed to resume from S3 sleep, for reasons which I did not have the time to investigate. I skirted the issue by disabling S3 sleep in BIOS, leaving only S1 sleep states available, which still worked…

About a week or two back, I started realising that my computer would not go to sleep at all…

I needed to find the root cause and cure its insomnia; something was preventing Windows from going to sleep…

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Microsoft: All You Beta Testers Belong To Us… (or “The Case of The Useless Drive”)…

Posted on by dk

With the shift to a more “app-like”, “force an update down your throat whether you like it or not” attitude from Microsoft, they have also seemingly shifted their testing stance and shafting their customers, taking from Xiaomi’s playbook: You are now our beta tester.

You Have a New (largely useless) Drive!

One of my family members have been complaining that an “E” drive suddenly appeared out of the blue. Navigating to it using Windows Explorer or via the command prompt shows it as empty, but, Windows Explorer shows the drive as “nearly full” (red bar), and Windows 10 continuously complains that the “E” drive is “full”…

Nothing in the Disk Management Microsoft Management Console “applet” could allow me to remove the drive letter, showing the partition type as an “OEM Parititon” – one of two that Microsoft littered on the already-small SSD like so many rabbit droppings (two other partitions are by the laptop manufacturer).

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Securing pfSense SSH2…

Posted on by dk

So, as exposing the HTTPS administration page of pfSense to the big, bad, Internet is a big “no no”, the only proper way should be to set up SSH2 and allow port forwarding.

Now, there are already articles out there telling you that using username+passwords to secure SSH2 is not the way to go… Using certificates is. However, I wanted more… I wanted both… Why is it that pfSense will only allow one or the other when sshd already allows enforcement of both?

So, once again, rolling up my sleeves, I dived into the murky waters of the pfSense shell…

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Software Firewall…

Posted on by dk

The Problem

I have been using an Asus RT-AC68U, followed by an RT-AC87U, running Merlin’s firmware with customised firewall scripts for the longest time. However, both units had a persistent issue with some (not all) sites being inaccessible, total resets and re-configuration from scratch regardless.

Having confirmed it was an issue with the router(s) and not the firmware nor firewall rules nor server-side blocks, and not being able to find a solution, I decided to just utilise a software firewall. One that I knew well and trusted was/is pfSense.

The Other Problem

At the very same time, I finally discovered that the boot failures of my server was actually due to the PSU (read other Amazon reviews citing similar fan-spin-up-then-dies failures). Having not had time to look at the frequently (and randomly rebooting server), I finally purchased whatever SFX module that was in stock at the local “IT complex” – another Silverstone SST-SX600-G unit… Crossing my fingers that the PSU was the culprit…

2018/06/04 Update: Nope, false hope again… Server is still rebooting rather “randomly” despite using a brand new Corsair SF600…

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Server Upgrade

Posted on by dk

Ever since the idea of setting up my own reliable server had me thinking “I need ECC”…

So, over the period of some 6 months, I finally bit the bullet (not to mention the credit card) and purchased an Asrock C236WSI, Intel Xeon E3-1225v6 and 2x Kingston ValueRAM ECC DDR4 2400MHz 16GB UDIMMs… Culminating in final receipt of all the items in July 2017 (I purchased the two sticks of RAM within a day of each other, but Amazon shipped the wrong item for the second stick… twice).

So yes, this post is long overdue… And basically explains the long gap between the last post mid-2017 till now – I have been fighting with this new server hardware and the original draft was first drawn up in September 2017 (refer to date in the URL/permalink).

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