Common Server issues – FAQs and answers from those in the know
Apache fails to start in FreeBSD 15 with an error can't find files
14 December 2025 @ 12:17 am
I'm having issues getting Apache to start.
If I run apache -t I get this output: httpd: Syntax error on line 526 of /usr/local/etc/apache24/httpd.conf: Could not open configuration file /etc/apache/extra/httpd-ssl.conf: No such file or directory
Which is wrong I can go to the extra folder and open the "missing' file.
I'm stumped, Apache 2.4, FreeBSD 15, on a VM (If it matters)
Strange directories under /tmp/ - thoughts?
13 December 2025 @ 9:11 pm
I suddenly saw under /tmp the following directories which made me a bit suspicious, thought that maybe i have a hacker that push things out via some job running on my Mac
total 8
drwxrwxrwx@ 7 myself wheel 224 Dec 2 20:45 .
drwxrwxrwt 28 root wheel 896 Dec 4 14:30 ..
drwxr-xr-x@ 2 myself wheel 64 Dec 4 14:40 attachments
drwxr-xr-x@ 2 myself wheel 64 Dec 2 20:45 completed
drwxr-xr-x@ 2 myself wheel 64 Dec 2 20:45 new
drwxr-xr-x@ 2 myself wheel 64 Dec 2 20:45 pending
-rw-------@ 1 myself wheel 56 Dec 2 20:45 settings.dat
/tmp/dumps/
├── attachments
├── completed
├── new
├── pending
└── settings.dat
So I run the following program in order to "catch" changes in that directory that might explain it
$ fswatch -o /tmp/dumps/ | xargs -n1 -I{} ~/tmp/whoisthis.sh
# After 1day
5 directories, 1 file
total 0
drwxrwxrwx@ 3 myself wheel 96 Dec 7 00:00 .
drwx
Trust anchor for certification path not found [closed]
13 December 2025 @ 5:05 pm
Windows Server 2012 R2 running IIS 8.5 and Plesk.
PositiveSSL Certificate for www.vetinorder.gr issued by Sectigo. The request CSR was created in IIS 8.5. Response zip file contains:
Root CA Certificate - USERTrustRSACertificationAuthority.crt
Intermediate CA Certificate - SectigoPublicServerAuthenticationRootR46_USERTrust.crt
Intermediate CA Certificate - SectigoPublicServerAuthenticationCADVR36.crt
PositiveSSL Certificate - www_vetinorder_gr.crt
Even though the certificate has been installed the SSL Certificate Checker reports:
TLS Certificate is not trusted The certificate is not signed by a
trusted authority (checking against Mozilla's root store). If you
bought the certificate from a trusted authority, you probably just
need to install one or more Intermediate cert
Automate KVM image creation for testing purposes
13 December 2025 @ 2:49 pm
I'm trying to clean up the testing workflow for a project I'm working on, a database built on top of io_uring and NVMe.
Right now I'm using KVM and its NVMe device emulator to power the dev environment, but the developer experience is poor: I have a script to recreate the KVM image but it requires some manual steps, and I don't want to commit the KVM image itself for obvious reasons
My questions are:
Is there an alternative to dockerfiles for KVM images?
If not, what are my best options for my use case?
Things I tried:
Running an nvmevirt device emulator, but it's not suitable for my test environment because it requires to load a kernel module
Mocking an NVMe device with some code and a memory backed file, but it's not real testing
Windows 10 ESU machines not updating using WSUS
13 December 2025 @ 12:28 pm
I have Windows 10 22H2 PCs that are activated for the commercial Extended Security Update (ESU).
When the devices are configured to update using WSUS, they do not update.
I can see them in the WSUS console, and it detects that a cumulative security update needs to be applied, but nothing happens.
If the devices are configured to update directly from the Internet, the update is applied.
WSUS can update minor things like defender signatures or Edge updates on these PCs, but not security updates.
Kea DHCP: HP Thin Clients do not accept Option 137 (HP-EZUpdate) — Kea encodes FQDN differently than Windows DHCP
12 December 2025 @ 8:54 pm
I’m migrating DHCP services from Windows DHCP to Kea DHCP, and I need to deliver DHCP Option 137 (HP-EZUpdate) to HP Thin Clients (for example, HP t420).
Windows DHCP sends Option 137 as a plain string like:
737.my-domain.local
HP Thin Clients accept this format without issues.
When sending the same value from Kea DHCP, HP Thin Clients do receive the option, but they see it in the following format:
option auto_update 3:37:33:37:7:6b:69:66:72:2d:72:75:5:6c:6f:63:61:6c:0;
This looks like a sequence of DNS-label-encoded bytes (length-prefixed labels), not a raw ASCII string.
Because of that, the HP client does not accept or process Option 137, even though Kea sends it.
So Kea appears to encode Option 137 as an FQDN-style structure, while Windows DHCP seems to send it as plain text.
The problem:
Kea cannot redefine Option 137, because it is a standard DHCPv4 opt
running two instances of rsyslogd via systemd
12 December 2025 @ 7:07 pm
I need to have two instances of rsyslogd running on an ubuntu 2404. One being the systems local syslog server which is locked down to enterprise standards and one for a syslog relay for collecting security logs and feeding them into a siem.
Systemd now uses control groups to manage processed (the are no longer pid files for rsyslogd).
Can I simply clone /lib/systemd/system/rsyslog.service as siem-logging.service and add -f <my conf> to the ExecStart line to have a new, independent, rsyslog instance?
Ensure Hyper-V Host shuts down
12 December 2025 @ 4:16 pm
We generally rarely need to shut-down / restart our production Windows Server 2022 Hyper-V host. But... sometimes it might happen (power failure, updates, etc).
And when it does, we've observed this sort of problem a number of times:
Server 2016 Running Hyper-V Stuck in "Shutting down service: Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management"
The host shutdown process hangs, waiting for the Hyper-V service to stop. And, underneath, one VM refused the shutdown command. Last time it was an (otherwise very stable) Linux-based server.
The problem is very intermittent, and when it does show up it seems it's not the same VM that's responsible for the hold-up.
Figuring out which VM is the offending party is already bad enough if one cannot access the Hyper-V VM list on a particular host... But in the event of power failure time might
LTO tape drive speed issue
12 December 2025 @ 11:59 am
I have one Quantum LTO-5 SAS external drive and one IBM LTO-6 SAS internal drive. With ITDT system test, Quantum reports ~70MB/s whereas IBM reports ~140MB/s for the same IBM LTO-5 cartridge (and not only this cartridge, I have also other examples.). The HBA adapters the tapes are connected to are even the same model, one with the internal ports, the other with the external ports.
What could be the reason for Quantum's slow speed, what should I check ? I cleaned it recently and it was working at normal speed a month ago or so.
Kubernetes controller stuck at 0/1, no new pods can be scheduled
12 December 2025 @ 11:05 am
I changed the Immich image version number in my manifest files (synced and deployed via ArgoCD). However, the pod was still showing up as "terminating" and didn't delete until I forced its deletion. Now it's stopped, but no new pods are scheduled and it stays "Progressing".
I tried deploying a small test instance (no PVC, etc.):
poca@pocas ~ % kubectl -n pro describe deploy test
Name: test
Namespace: pro
CreationTimestamp: Sun, 07 Dec 2025 00:18:51 +0000
Labels: app=test
Annotations: <none>
Selector: app=test
Replicas: 1 desired | 0 updated | 0 total | 0 available | 0 unavailable
StrategyType: RollingUpdate
MinReadySeconds: 0
RollingUpdateStrategy: 25% max unavailable, 25%
I tried deploying a small test instance (no PVC, etc.):
poca@pocas ~ % kubectl -n pro describe deploy test
Name: test
Namespace: pro
CreationTimestamp: Sun, 07 Dec 2025 00:18:51 +0000
Labels: app=test
Annotations: <none>
Selector: app=test
Replicas: 1 desired | 0 updated | 0 total | 0 available | 0 unavailable
StrategyType: RollingUpdate
MinReadySeconds: 0
RollingUpdateStrategy: 25% max unavailable, 25%