phpMyAdmin being the most used tool for managing MySQL databases comes as a package with Debian and works out of the box with “apt-get” along with apache, php and mysql.

But, when switching over to suPHP from the apache mod_php plugin, even if every other things work, phpMyAdmin fails.

The error looks like:

File does not exist: /usr/share/phpmyadmin/navigation.php<, referer: http://localhost/phpmyadmin/

This is because its configured to work only for mod_php. The configuration file is located at “/etc/phpmyadmin/apache2.conf”, which is symbolically linked at “/etc/apache2/conf.d/phpmyadmin.conf”

The easier option is to enable “mod_php” by typing in “a2enmod php5” as described at Sysadmin World.

Everytime, when I do a fresh installation of Debian, I come across the issue of mounting USB drives. Since all the USB drives I connect are of NTFS partition, spends time on searching issues related to NTFS and finally sorts out the issue, which has nothing to do with NTFS.

The error is caused by an entry in the “/etc/fstab” file, which contains the configurations for mounding drives. Since I use Pen drives for installation, an entry is created for the device during installation, detected as “/dev/sdb1”, which is the second disk after the internal hard disk.

The first partition of all usb devices plugged in first will be detected as “sdb1”, and the entry in “fstab” file prevents mounting it. To get rid of the issue, just delete the line starting with “/dev/sdb1” in the “fstab” file.

For a long time, the issue with uploading files to Media Library was there in the blog. Since I wasn’t updating it frequently, it wasn’t bothering me much

When I tries to upload a media file, everything goes smoothly, but finally the file won’t be there in the uploads directory. I played a lot with file/directory permissions, but without success. The same configuration works in other wordpress blogs too.

Figured it out today that the issue was with the Media Path where files are to be stored, which can be found at <wordpress url>/wp-admin/options-media.php or the direct database entry “upload_path” in “options” or “wp_options” table depending on the table prefix.

I might have forgot to update the upload path when the site was migrated to the new server.

Being a netizen, its a long time ambition for me to be self sufficient to run the basic online services needed. Basic services for me on internet include:

• Mail
• Website / Blog
• Storage / Data Sync
• Contacts
• Calender
• IM

Earlier, these were distributed over multiple providers, but now mostly revolves around Google. GMail for Mail, Google Analytics in Websites, Google drive for cloud storage, again Google Contacts, GTalk/Hangouts, Google+, etc. So, its also an effort to get out of Google services with minimum effect on usability.

Fail2Ban is an intrusion prevention framework written in the Python. It ban IP’s that makes too many failed attempts or performs any other unwanted action within a time frame defined, using iptables, thus helping the system admin to prevent attacks.

Though its very helpful, in an office network that has only one public IP and multiple users accessing the same server, there are chances that IP’s gets blocked more frequently. For Eg, let the setting be like 3 failed attempts on ssh port in 60 mins will block the IP for 2 hours. If 5 systems in a network access the server and any 3 of them makes one failed attempt, the IP gets blocked.