Replication failure

This has happened to me a couple of times now, so I thought I’d document it. TrueCommand has indicated that replication is failing on my main server for a particular dataset. Now, I know I’ve been messing around quite a bit with WordPress, rebuilding jails and associated datasets. The UDance WordPress site has been problematical …
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Securing phpMyAdmin in a WordPress Jail

This post assumes you’ve run at least version 1.3.0 of the Scripted WordPress Installation. In the post WordPress Script: Post-Installation Tasks, I suggest that a way of securing phpMyAdmin in a WordPress jail is to disable it when not in use. One way to disable phpMyAdmin is to unlink it in the jail rm /usr/local/www/wordpress/phpmyadmin. This …
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Wordfence: Site Compromised

So, while I’ve been busy hardening my blog site blog.udance.com.au, by stealth, hackers appear to have been busy on the WordPress site attached to the main domain udance.com.au. The tell-tale signs suggest that the site appears to be compromised. As there’s no content yet on this site, the easiest thing to do is blow it …
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Wordfence: “You keep on knockin’ but you can’t come in”

Here’s a little something to listen to while you read this post. It’s appropriate for this post. Wordfence is effectively blocking blocking attempts to log in using invalid usernames. Refer to the post WordPress Plugin: Wordfence logging lots of failed login attempts for further details. However, there’s someone sneaky who is quietly trying to log …
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Incident Management

Gone are the days when I could shout out to the family ‘I’m just going to reboot the server. Get off now!’ Since exposing several LAN resources such as Nextcloud and WordPress to the internet, I’ve come to realise there’s a whole customer base who have to be considered prior to causing any disruption to …
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WordPress: A Disaster Recovery Strategy

The infographic below describes a streamlined approach to WordPress disaster recovery that minimises the room for error, and maximises the chances of fully restoring a WordPress site under a wide range of WordPress disaster scenarios. I’ve tested the approach against my own blog site and apart from a minor tweak of WP Super Cache, a WordPress …
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WordPress Plugin: Wordfence logging lots of failed login attempts

It’s scary to see a WordPress site being probed for vulnerabilities Dashboard > Wordfence > Tools > Live Traffic Most are for invalid users blog and admin. As part of tuning Wordfence, block these immediately Dashboard > Wordfence > All Options > Brute Force Protection Activity detail reflects the change:

WordPress Plugin: A Marriage made in Heaven for UpdraftPlus and FreeNAS

The goal here is to use FreeNAS storage to store UpdraftPlus backups of WordPress sites. Local user authentication is assumed for FreeNAS. Outline of the basic steps: A. Set up the UpdraftPlus storage root. Set aside storage space on FreeNAS for UpdraftPlus. Create the UpdraftPlus user and group on FreeNAS. Configure and start the FTP …
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Scripted WordPress Installation

If the statistics are to be believed, in 2020: WordPress powers 35% of the internet. Around 60% of CMS sites are WordPress. Around 28% of WordPress sites run e-commerce. Around 75% of hacked CMS sites were built on WordPress 😢 There are few current guides in the iXsystems Community Forum for setting up WordPress and none …
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WordPress Plugin: WP Super Cache

When installing and activating, you will see the following errors: Assuming your jail name is wordpress, enter the jail from a terminal iocage console wordpress. To resolve the first issue, enter the following commands in the terminal: cd /usr/local/www/wordpress/wp-content cp plugins/wp-super-cache/wp-cache-config-sample.php wp-cache-config.php chown www:www wp-cache-config.php Refreshing WP Super Cache on the dashboard: Edit wp-config.php ee …
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