Common Server issues – FAQs and answers from those in the know
MS365 + 2FA + Laravel SMTP mail settings
4 January 2026 @ 9:10 am
I have a quite interesting problem and I need your help please.
I have a Laravel 12 project fired up, all working beautiful. However, I have problems enabling mailing via SMTP using an MS365 account. The MS account is managed by somebody else trusted by the client, so I can't really add any other information what he told me. He is saying that he enabled 2FA and XOAUTH2 for the account we are trying to use for mail sending in the project. Already gave me the generated password (not the one used for login), but the one that bypasses the 2FA (presumably). My settings are:
MAIL_MAILER=smtp
MAIL_HOST=smtp.office365.com
MAIL_PORT=25
MAIL_USERNAME="[email protected]"
MAIL_PASSWORD="supersecretpassword"
[email protected]
MAIL_FROM_NAME="My Clients Name”
In my log I see the following:
[2025-12-22 12:34:43] production.ERROR: Failed to authenticate on SMTP server with username "info@myc
IPA-Server-Install CA woes
3 January 2026 @ 2:24 am
This installation errors with "Connection refused" on Rocky Linux 9 on a Raspberry Pi 4B.
This is a Python issue which I don't easily understand.
DEBUG: NSSDatabase.get_cert_info(caSigningCert cert-pki-ca) ends
INFO: signing cert already exists in NSS database
INFO: Reusing signing cert request in /var/lib/pki/pki-tomcat/conf/certs/ca_signing.csr
INFO: Creating request ID for signing cert
DEBUG: Starting new HTTPS connection (1): flash.aronetics.com:8443
ERROR: ConnectionError: HTTPSConnectionPool(host='flash.aronetics.com', port=8443): Max retries exceeded with url: /ca/rest/installer/createRequestID (Caused by NewConnectionError('<urllib3.connection.HTTPSConnection object at 0x7f969ac490>: Failed to establish a new connection: [Errno 111] Connection refused'))
File "/usr/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pki/server/pkispawn.py", line 594, in main
deployer.spawn()
File "/usr/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pki/server/deployment/__i
Domain controllers system drive exhausted free space [closed]
2 January 2026 @ 2:46 pm
We have six domain controllers that exhausted their system drive free space on 12/31.
The source was user access logging, but I am not sure what would cause it to completely fill the drive. Drive size is 100 GB.
We have alerts setup to page out when the system drive reaches 80% usage.
So, for what occurred to happen, it would have gone from around 79% or less to 99% system drive usage. The files generated by user access logging are text files so it would take several of these to fill the space.
Can I automate pushing a new certificate to an asustore NAS? [migrated]
2 January 2026 @ 1:48 pm
On Asusstore (FS6706T), Asus provides a wrapper app around acme.sh, but it is minimal; it does not allow configuring plugins such as dns_cf (that is, using the CloudFlare DNS API). My goal is to automate certificate management for the NAS box itself. I maintain no web sites on this NAS, let alone any with port 80 exposed to the public internet, so using the DNS challenge rather than HTTP is necessary.
As of now, I have acme.sh running on another system, obediently renewing the certificate on a schedule. The gap is deploying new certificates without manual intervention. I can set up SSH/SCP to the NAS, but I don't know where to put the file or how to activate them as the default. Perhaps there is no way to do this, but I pose this question in case someone else has solved this problem.
How can I set up a proxy to route traffic based on URL?
2 January 2026 @ 12:29 am
I want to set up a proxy that routes traffic for specified urls and leaves the rest to the system
My main goal is to bypass censorship with minimal impact on pc resources with minimal complexity. I only intend to reach blocked content on browser, so it is ok if solution is browser-only.
Below is an example diagram:
Internet --> Router --> PC --> example.com -----> 127.0.0.1:4533
|
|-----> other traffic bypass
AlmaLinux 9, Firewalld not blocking incoming IP addresses
1 January 2026 @ 10:23 pm
I have an issue with Firewalld on AlmaLinux 9.
It seems the IP addresses I have set to reject or drop are still able to access the HTTP server.
This is my output from firewall-cmd --list-all:
public (active)
target: default
icmp-block-inversion: no
interfaces: ens3
sources: 87.253.155.96/27
services: cockpit dhcpv6-client ssh
ports: 20/tcp 21/tcp 25/tcp 53/tcp 80/tcp 110/tcp 143/tcp 443/tcp 587/tcp 993/tcp 995/tcp 2703/tcp 35000-35999/tcp 9080/tcp 10000/tcp 2222-2232/tcp 12998/tcp 3000/tcp 3000/udp
protocols:
forward: yes
masquerade: no
forward-ports:
source-ports:
icmp-blocks:
rich rules:
rule priority="-32766" family="ipv4" source address="155.94.163.245" drop
rule family="ipv4" source address="155.94.163.245" reject
rule family="ipv4" destination address="213.163.75.188" drop
rule
Unable to remove firestore database - it turned into Schrodinger's cat
1 January 2026 @ 3:43 pm
As you can see, the firestore database exists, but I'm unable to query nor delete it. It is listed but when I try to do any operation on it it says that the entity was not found.
How can I delete it and recreate a good one without deleting the entire cloud project?
How can I delete it and recreate a good one without deleting the entire cloud project?How can I configure a GCP (Google Cloud Platform) account so that one cannot spend more than some given amount of money on it?
31 December 2025 @ 9:01 pm
How can I configure a GCP (Google Cloud Platform) account so that one cannot spend more than some given amount of money on it?
For example, https://openai.com/ allows users to set a hard limit:


How can I access "Stored Completions" from Azure OpenAI (Microsoft Foundry)?
30 December 2025 @ 11:59 pm
I've activated "Stored Completions" in my Azure OpenAI Resource Instance:
How can I access "Stored Completions" from Azure OpenAI (Microsoft Foundry)?
How can I access "Stored Completions" from Azure OpenAI (Microsoft Foundry)?Linux policy routing VLAN -> OpenVPN tun0 not working
27 December 2025 @ 5:55 pm
OS: Ubuntu 20.04
OpenVPN client (tun0): 10.8.0.0/24
LAN: eth0 -> ISP local (must stay default)
VLAN20: vlan20 -> 192.168.80.0/24 (gateway 192.168.80.1)
Goal:
Only traffic from 192.168.80.0/24 must go through OpenVPN (tun0).
eth0 must continue using local ISP.
Current state:
VLAN20 is reachable locally
tun0 is up and reachable
net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1
policy routing breaks connectivity from VLAN20
Routing policy database:
# ip rule
0: from all lookup local
100: from 192.168.80.0/24 lookup vlan20vpn
32766: from all lookup main
32767: from all lookup default
Routing tables:
#ip route
default via 192.168.0.1 dev eth0 proto dhcp src 192.168.0.50 metric 100
10.8.0.0/24 dev tun0 proto kernel scope link src 10.8.0.10
1
Current state:
VLAN20 is reachable locally
tun0 is up and reachable
net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1
policy routing breaks connectivity from VLAN20
Routing policy database:
# ip rule
0: from all lookup local
100: from 192.168.80.0/24 lookup vlan20vpn
32766: from all lookup main
32767: from all lookup default
Routing tables:
#ip route
default via 192.168.0.1 dev eth0 proto dhcp src 192.168.0.50 metric 100
10.8.0.0/24 dev tun0 proto kernel scope link src 10.8.0.10
1