Common Server issues – FAQs and answers from those in the know
HTTPS+TLS Hawser to Dockerhand connections fail
20 January 2026 @ 5:26 pm
The Hawser I'm using is NOT the git Hawser. That's a different project altogether.
According to the Dockerhand docs I should be able to connect my Hawser host to my existing Dockerhand host as a "standard mode" environment using HTTPS+TLS. So I generated a cert and key file on the Hawser system and left them in /etc/hawser on the Hawser host. According to the official docs and counterintuitively, Hawser acts as a server in that it listens for incoming connections and Dockerhand acts as the client. I copy+pasted the server.crt from the Hawser host into the CA Certificate (self-signed) field and clicked save.
Here's how I ran Hawser:
docker run -d \
--name hawser \
-v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
-v hawser_stacks:/data/stacks \
-v /etc/hawser:/certs:ro \
-p 2376:2376 \
-e TLS_CERT=/certs/server.crt \
-e TLS_KEY=/certs/server.key \
-e TOKEN=4cee0df54g46efae8fc02cef6715d78d50837e6253400vddb38fe67e64d593e2 \
ghcr.io/
Email server - deferred email
20 January 2026 @ 3:24 pm
I have a postfix mail server and one customer does not receive my emails.
A test at https://mxtoolbox.com/
shows me no errors. Everything green and OK.
Looking at my logs, I see a lot of entries like the following.
2026-01-20T15:47:16.213158+01:00 mx postfix/smtp[95123]: 248081FD2CF: [email protected], relay=mx2.europeanmx.eu[149.13.75.27]:25, delay=261698, delays=261695/0.04/2.4/0.46, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (host mx2.europeanmx.eu[149.13.75.27] said: 451-95.179.160.246 is not yet authorized to deliver mail from 451 <[email protected] to [email protected]. Please try later. (in reply to RCPT TO command))
The customer has Microsoft 365 products. I receive E-Mails from the customer, but replies or new e-mails to the customers are deferred.
What can I do? Thanks for any hint concerning this topic.
postfix how to debug failing to start fatal error - where is the cause logged?
20 January 2026 @ 2:22 pm
Postfix version 3.5.25
Postfix had had a header_check added to main.cf .
Postfix was stopped with # postfix stop. Restarting then failed to start:
[root@server ~]# sudo postfix start<br>
postfix/postfix-script: starting the Postfix mail system<br>
postfix/postfix-script: fatal: mail system startup failed
But there is no feedback what the fatal error actually is. Postfix status says:
[root@server ~]# sudo service postfix status
Redirecting to /bin/systemctl status postfix.service
● postfix.service - Postfix Mail Transport Agent
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/postfix.service; enabled; preset: disabled)
Drop-In: /usr/lib/systemd/system/postfix.service.d
└─respawn.conf, rw-usr-dir.conf
Active: activating (auto-restart) (Result: exit-code) since Tue 2026-01-20 14:00:51 UTC; 4s ago
Process: 877074 ExecStart
I can't secure an URL using NGINX SPNEGO module
20 January 2026 @ 12:54 pm
I would like to use the NGINX SPNEGO module to enable Kerberos authentication. For that, I compile the SPNEGO module using SPNEGO's git repository and NGINX version 1.28.1 in a builder docker image, and transfer the
ngx_http_auth_spnego_module.so
file from the builder's objs/ folder to /usr/lib/nginx/modules/.
The compilation works because the file
ngx_http_auth_spnego_module.so
is created. And it looks like the integration of the module is working because if I omit the --with-compat flag, I get a compatibility error.
I have this nginx default.conf file.
server {
listen 80;
server_name localhost;
root /usr/share/nginx/html;
index index.html;
# Location that requires Kerberos authentication
location /secure {
auth_gss on;
auth_gss_keytab /etc/nginx/nginx.keytab;
auth_gss_realm EXAMPLE.COM;
auth
Linux server hangs under heavy mem usage or file I/O despite CPU and memory cgroup limits. SSH becomes unresponsive. How to keep it responsive?
20 January 2026 @ 11:12 am
I have an Ubuntu 24.04 Linux instance with 4–5 users logged in via SSH. Recently we started encountering an issue where the system becomes extremely slow or effectively hangs.
SSH becomes very sluggish and often unresponsive
Even when SSH connects, running new commands is almost impossible
The system does not immediately OOM-kill processes
After troubleshooting, observed the following pattern:
When a user runs a process that reads large files or a large number of files, memory usage rises sharply
As memory fills up, the system becomes unresponsive/hangs and SSH effectively “freezes”
CPU utilization is not particularly high when this happens
To solve this, I implemented resource limits on user processes (user.slice), to control CPU and memory usage as shown below. Despite these limits, the server still becomes unresponsive, SSH cannot be used to identify or kill the process, everytime rebo
Is there a way to get the list of VMs in a datastore in VMWare vSphere Client using REST?
20 January 2026 @ 10:15 am
I am trying to get the list of VMs under a datastore in my vSphere client using REST in PowerShell and i seem to get stuck between the two..
I can only see some basic info about each datastore I have like name, type, free_space, etc..
on the other hand when I query from the VM side i can see info about the VM and not what's hosting it.
Any REST commands to help me achieve this?
I cannot into VLANs, I can’t get them to work, please assume I not know how to computer nor network, as I'm burnt out [migrated]
20 January 2026 @ 10:14 am
I have read guides on this topic and I don't know what is and isn't correct (also for my setup). So please assume I could have made a simple mistake somewhere.
Goal:
have VLANs to separate some Proxmox traffic for some of it's features and for general learning.
both VLAN and non VLAN traffic on all switch ports (give or take VID 1).
Setup:
HP T610 Plus with a Broadcom quad BCM5709 network adapter. Details in the “infos” section, “router”,
Zyxel GS1920-24 HP, FW: V4.50(AAOC.3) | 05/20/2020, “switch”,
two HP EliteDesks with Proxmox (FWIF powering them down changed nothing),
my workstation with two NICs, “workstation”.
Connections:
router eth0 is WAN,
router eth1, 3, 4 are VID 1,
block ip subnet for all vhost
20 January 2026 @ 7:51 am
I have ~50 requests per second coming from Singapore (many different ip starting by 47.79) on a reverse proxy VM. Apache is automatically killed because it exhaust the memory resource...
I am trying to block all these ip (the whole subnet) in apache for all vhost (I have many vhosts which redirect traffic to other VM (with proxypass).
I tried to put this in the apache2.conf without effect.
<Proxy *>
<RequireAll>
Require all granted
Require not ip 47.79.0.0/16
</RequireAll>
</Proxy>
<Directory /var/www/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
<RequireAll>
Require all granted
Require not ip 47.79.0.0/16
</RequireAll>
</Directory>
What is the more efficient way to block these ip?
Samba shares sent machine SID rather than user SID from Windows clients
20 January 2026 @ 2:15 am
I've encountered a weird issue where sometimes some (but not all) Windows clients appear to be sending the device SID rather than the user SID to samba to mount file shares. Naturally, the device does not have a user ID, so samba cannot perform the mapping to provide access to files. Is there a setting which might cause this?
What triggers a "List Keys" entry in the Azure Activity log?
19 January 2026 @ 5:14 pm
I see some "List Keys" entries in the Azure Activity log in my Azure subscription such as:
Field
Value
Resource
/subscriptions/[subscriptionID]/resourceGroups/[ResourceGroupName]/providers/Microsoft.CognitiveServices/accounts/[ResourceName]
Operation Name
List Keys
Time Stamp
Mon Jan 19 2026 05:58:42 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time)
Event Initiated By
[email address]