My name is Jan. I am not a hacker, coder, developer or guru. I am merely a systems administrator, doing my daily thing at Vevida.
You can use this Bash function in your .bashrc file to generate a random alphanumeric string. This comes in handy when you need to generate a long, secure password for example. Adjust to your needs.
This post contains some example WMI filters for you to use in Group Policy Objects (GPOs) to target and manage specific Windows Server versions like 2012R2, 2016 and Windows Server 2019.
Read More »WMI Filters for Group Policy to manage Windows Server versions
Basic Authentication managed HTTP module for IIS with virtual users support
In my pursuit of a basic authentication alternative in IIS, other than the built-in Basic Authentication module or Helicon Ape, I came across Devbridge AzurePowerTools. It’s apparently one of few HTTP managed modules for IIS that enables HTTP Basic Authentication with support for virtual users.
Read More »Basic Authentication module for Windows Server IIS
How to create an IP restrictions allow list for your IIS FTP Server with Powershell.
When you set up a new public facing FTP server in IIS, it is important to properly secure it. Of course there’s authentication and authorization, but in this post I’ll show you how to configure an IP allow list for FTP using PowerShell.
Read More »IIS 10.0 FTP IP Security allow list Thank you Ronald as I needed exactly this today. Here is how to remove phantom application folders from websites in IIS using PowerShell.
Read More »Removing phantom application folders from website configuration in IIS
Here is how to change Akismet interval to three days instead of 15 days for deleting spam comments using the akismet_delete_comment_interval filter.
Read More »Delete spam comments after three (3) days Backup and restore IIS configuration with appcmd
If you are using Windows Server IIS as your web server software, it is important to make regular backups. Luckily, using appcmd this is quite easy.
An System.Collections.Generic.KeyNotFoundException “The given key was not present in the dictionary” can be the result of using a too old MySQL Connector/NET version in your ASP.NET web application. A KeyNotFoundException is thrown when an operation attempts to retrieve an element from a collection using a key that does not exist in that collection. An unsupported character set like utf8mb4 can be such a key, if your Connector/NET doesn’t support this character set. Luckily there is an easy workaround for this.
Read More »How to fix System.Collections.Generic.KeyNotFoundException “The given key was not present in the dictionary” Exception with MySQL Connector/NET and utf8mb4 character set Whenever WordPress is using a lot of CPU and you have Wordfence Security plugin enabled, it is recommended to double check some settings. Unfortunately the Wordfence “Live Traffic Options” (“Traffic logging mode”) feature can cause high CPU usage and load issues for WordPress websites. Therefore, I recommend you disable this feature to improve the performance of your WordPress website.
Read More »Reduce Wordfence CPU usage, disable Wordfence “Live Traffic View” This might be specific to my Windows Server environment and PoSH scripting, but using -SeachBase with PowerShell’s Get-ADComputer gives me faster results. You can use this for your own advantage, here is a little example to speed up AD DS queries.
You can install Servicing Stack Updates (SSU) for Windows Server 2012R2, 2016 and Windows Server 2019 using PowerShell, without downtime. Because they must be installed prior to your normal Windows Server security updates, you can install them anytime you want to during the day. Here’s a small PowerShell example to do so.
Read More »Install Windows Server Servicing Stack Updates (SSU) using PowerShell In a previous post I explained that clearing PHP opcode caches before WordPress Updates helps in streamlining the update process. WordPress updates no longer fail because of cached file locations. Did you know you can automatically flush opcode caches like Redis when you publishing a post or page in WordPress? Doing so ensures you and your visitors see the newly created content immediately.
Read More »Automatically flush Redis cache after publishing a WordPress post
A couple of years ago, I wrote a blog article about setting up Monit monitoring on an Ubuntu VM on Hyper-V. Now it’s time to do the same, but then in Windows Subsystem for Linux, or WSL. So, without further ado, here is how to install and configure Monit monitoring in Windows 10 WSL.
Read More »Setting up Monit monitoring in Windows Subsystem for Linux WSL To add a .reg file silently to your Windows registry, you can use the regedit command. As almost always, the /s parameter is for silent and /q for quiet.
Ever wondered why Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) offers Flash updates for Windows Server? Adobe Flash Player is installed on Windows Server 2016 / 2019 if you have the Remote Desktop Session Host (RDSH) role installed. Yikes! I can imagine you want to delete Adobe Flash Player without deleting the RDSH role, and here is how.
Read More »How to uninstall and remove Adobe Flash Player in Windows Server