From a penetration testing perspective to identify if a Web Application Firewall (WAF) is in place is essential. The next question is, does an administrator need to know this? My view is, anyone who is in charge of any system that has implemented some sort of WAF needs to verify this tool is working, at […]
How to detect a WAF – Web Application Firewall
How to set Apache’s MPM Event and PHP-FPM on FreeBSD
As explained in another article the default Apache’s configuration at compile time sets its multi-processing module (MPM for short) to the pre-fork configuration setting. This is not the best performant configuration for Apache. Out of the box Apache comes compiled in its safest form, from the processing mode perspective since the pre-fork setting will open […]
How to configure Apache HTTP as a reverse proxy on FreeBSD
Apache HTTP as a reverse proxy consists on setting an Apache HTTP server as a frontal access for one or multiple backend servers. In the recent years many have started using NGINX as a reverse proxy since this piece of software really shines for serving static content an acting as a cache server. This doesn’t […]
What is UNIX?
UNIX is an operating system. And your known equivalent is Windows or the Mac. You may even know about Linux. The purpose of an OS is to accommodate programs in order to get some work done. Editing pictures, browsing the web or serving data from a database. It is the thing that lets you operate […]
How to install Redis for WordPress on FreeBSD
I happen to self-host a few WordPress sites on FreeBSD. And as much as one can configure OP-Cache to improve PHP’s performance, object cache is a must for many WordPress sites. This how to install Redis for WordPress on FreeBSD will explain how to install an object cache (Redis) for WordPress (via plugin) on this […]
How to install WordPress on FreeBSD
You can find information about how to install WordPress on FreeBSD somewhere else since there are many tutorials around explaining it. However I thought mine would be a bit more interesting to you. Read on. As you should be aware (and hopefully you already are) installing WordPress requires a stack of other software. Typically you […]
How to set the locale in FreeBSD
The locale is the character set that will be used. And it is very important to match the keyboard you are using. Mind this also matters if you are transferring data to other systems. Different standards as the ASCII, UTF’s and the ISO’s, to name a few, have been put in place through the years […]
How to mitigate Spectre and Meltdown on an HP Proliant server with Ubuntu
As recently announced in a previous article I wanted to write a couple of guides on how to mitigate Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities in GNU/Linux and UNIX environments. It is always a good and I hope a standard practice to have your systems patched and if they aren’t for whatever the reason (that legacy thing […]
How to configure FreeBSD to use a webcam (version 12 and 13)
Introduction. Unlike many Linux distributions the FreeBSD operating system comes quite crude out of the box. What others will interpret as a disadvantage, with some knowledge on the system, others see the power to serve. Anyone willing to have a nice FreeBSD desktop experience with little effort, there are a couple of BSD-based distributions, like […]
How to install software in FreeBSD with pkgng
The pkgng is the package management system in FreeBSD. It is used to install applications, and specific modules, libraries, etc. Nowadays you can select in between more than 25.000 thousand. Yes, twenty five thousand. The syntax to use is very intuitive and simple. As you may be already aware software comes in two forms. Source […]