Solution for servers and services shown as down in Zimbra admin console

But they are actually up and running.

In a multiserver setup, servers and services show as down in admin interface.

FACTS:

  • Rsyslog is not modified by zimbra installer.
  • In order for servers and services to look fine (when they are fine) in the admin console the logger module (syslog) is used.
  • By default rsyslog does not listen on tcp/udp and the Zimbra installer does not provide any changes to its configuration in order to make it happen.

So you need to open /etc/rsyslog.conf and uncomment following lines:

# Provides UDP syslog reception
$ModLoad imudp
$UDPServerRun 514

# Provides TCP syslog reception
$ModLoad imtcp
$InputTCPServerRun 514

Then restart rsyslog.

Also remember that you should check on the servers around (except the one supposed to receive the logs) that the correct log server is set. For this you can run as user zimbra:

zmprov gacf | grep zimbraLogHostname

This should return the hostname of the log recipient.

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Geloso G3227-a vacuum tube amp, revive project

In the '80s a hospital in Den Helder, built in the '60s, was renovated and one of the guys working at that renovation found, removed and took home this amplifier that I bought after almost 40 years. The amplifier was used for announcements on the microphone to be sent to all the speakers in the hospital.

So, I found this beast and I bought it and I'm gonna clean it up and fix where needed (mainly capacitors I guess).

This is a beautiful piece of vintage audio gear. The Geloso G3227-a is a single-ended tube amplifier from the 1960s, all point-to-point wiring, huge transformers. It takes some work to bring back to life but the reward in sound quality is worth every hour.

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Bowers & Wilkins DM22 fix cabinet, filters, grill clothing

Found these speakers for a handful of euros so I bought them with the idea of cannibalising them for the tweeters to use for a pair of tweeterless DM5. But turns out that while the DM5 run a TW20 tweeter, the DM22 run a TW26, so the transplant is not going to happen for incompatible donor.

What is going to happen instead is that I will sand a bit the cabinets because over time they discolored in some places and probably have been toasted by sun rays in other spots making them a three-color thing.

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Docker cheat-sheet

Docker is great for development, but also, it gives you the superpower of extremely small images to easily move around docker containers.

I need this for personal stuff, but I think it can be useful to others, so let's share it.

Here's a collection of the Docker commands I use most often. Not exhaustive, but a handy reference for day-to-day work.

# List running containers
docker ps

# List all containers
docker ps -a

# List images
docker images

# Remove a container
docker rm <container_id>

# Remove an image
docker rmi <image_id>

# Run a container interactively
docker run -it --rm <image> bash
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Letsencrypt is broken on Debian Jessie (and how to fix it)

It does not work out of the box on Debian Jessie. You need backports.

So first add the jessie-backports to your favourite apt source.list:

# Backport
deb http://http.debian.net/debian jessie-backports main

Then apt-get update, and then install back letsencrypt forcing the use of the backports:

apt-get install -t jessie-backports letsencrypt

That's it.

Giuseppe

AKAI GX-260D

Some pictures of the AKAI GX-260D reel-to-reel tape recorder.

It perfectly works, or at least apparently, because once arrived home I tested recording and it was not recording nor erasing anything at all, to the point that monitoring the tape would let you listen to the old content of the tape. So that was solved or temporarily verified as something that can be easily fixed by cleaning the contacts of the recording switches.

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Installing and configuring Bareos (Bacula fork) with web front-end on Debian Wheezy

Bareos is a fork of Bacula, the open-source network backup solution. In this guide I'll walk through the steps to get a working Bareos setup on Debian Wheezy, with the web-based management interface for monitoring jobs and restoring files.

I've been using Bacula for years and Bareos carries the same philosophy forward with a more active development community and some nice additional features.

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