By:
On:
In: General

This was my first visit to Harpers Ferry. Before coming, I tried to find some brief information about the area, but most of it wasn’t very helpful. So, I decided to write this short note to share my experience: What’s the main spot to visit?The highlight of the trip was the overlook point I marked on the map. From there, you get a great view of the bridge and can walk across it toward Maryland Heights. It’s definitely worth seeing. Parking OptionsThere are three main parking areas: Parking Fee:The fee is $20 for 3 days. If you’re at the visitor center, you can pay there.Read More →

By:
On:
In: General

mkdir /opt/splunkforwarderuseradd -m splunk cd /opt/splunkforwarder wget -O splunkforwarder-9.4.2-e9664af3d956-linux-amd64.deb “https://download.splunk.com/products/universalforwarder/releases/9.4.2/linux/splunkforwarder-9.4.2-e9664af3d956-linux-amd64.deb”dpkg -i splunkforwarder-9.4.2-e9664af3d956-linux-amd64.deb chown -R splunk:splunk /opt/splunkforwarder /opt/splunkforwarder/bin/splunk start cd etc/system/local/nano outputs.conf nano inputs.conf sudo systemctl restart SplunkForwarder.service sudo systemctl status SplunkForwarder.serviceRead More →

By:
On:
In: General

In the past, hosting a website from your own home required a fair amount of technical know-how and came with significant security risks. Traditional setups involved several key steps: While effective, this approach exposed your home network to the internet. Opening ports on your router made your physical location traceable and increased the risk of cyberattacks. A Safer, Simpler Way: Cloudflare Zero Trust Cloudflare Zero Trust has transformed how individuals can host services from their homes by offering a much safer and more straightforward solution. With Cloudflare’s free tunneling service, you no longer need to expose your home server directly to the internet. Here’s howRead More →

By:
On:
In: General, Monitoring

1. Avoid Relying Solely on Email for Alerts Email is not a reliable alerting mechanism. Alerts can be delayed, filtered as spam, or ignored due to cluttered inboxes. From a user experience perspective, email-based alerts are often messy and ineffective. Recommendation: Use a dedicated alerting app or platform that supports webhook integrations. Azure and most modern monitoring tools offer this functionality. These solutions provide more reliable and timely alerting mechanisms. 2. Be Selective and Strategic with Monitors Not all systems or services require immediate alerts. It’s important to evaluate the criticality of each component before creating alerts. Example: If a non-business-critical website goes offline atRead More →

By:
On:
In: General

We mostly care about the cpu/memory/storage metrics for mysql. I found another interesting metrics, it’s the aborted clients. What is it? It’s the number of the client is unable to authenticate to your servers. Why does it matter? There are a few reason why the client is unable to connect: your server is reaching the maximum connections, the user is using wrong password. If this value is showing, it means we are not fully operational. It’s good for proactive action on this.Read More →

By:
On:
In: General

We recently got a spike in the requests, all the requests are coming from Alibaba IP address space. We are not sure what the purpose of this request is, the user agent does not identify what tool it is. The request is also coming from many IP addresses, blocking individual IP is challenging as there are so many IPs. After checking some properties of the IP, we see it’s coming from the AS number. Luckily Cloudflare WAF supports the rule condition based on AS number, applying the new rule based on the AS number helped us mitigated the issue in a few minutes. Cloudflare hasRead More →