Category: Open Source Software

  • Tableau 2020.2.4: This job failed due to unexpected error: ‘ServiceOperationTimeoutException’

    I was recently working on a problem with Tableau Server where restore operations were failing due to a ServiceOperationTimeoutException. The restore was failing to a new server, that was maintained as a hot stand-by, or passive node. Upon further examination, when trying to stop the service, via the browser control or from the command line […]

  • Running powershell scripts as administrator

    Even though a user is in the Administrators group, when opening a powershell console, or running a scheduled task, even with “highest privileges”, the powershell script does not run with administrator privileges. This usually results in the following error: One way to solve this problem is to refactor the powershell script to check for administrator […]

  • Migrating from Rackspace to AWS

    I finally migrated my web and email hosting from Rackspace to AWS. I have been with Rackspace since the Slicehost days, back in September of 2009. I’ve gone from having multiple clients hosting large, multi-terabyte, applications with 60+ servers on Rackspace with dedicated technical account managers to only managing a few servers (mine and clients) […]

  • Proxy SQL Services Reporting Server with HAProxy

    A common issue with SQL Server Reporting Services is to proxy the server so it is not exposed on the internet. This is difficult to do with nginx, apache, and others due to NTLM authentication, although nginx offers a paid version that supports NTLM authentication. One easy fix is to use HAProxy and use TCP […]

  • Migrating DNS Domain to new Registrar

    A not so common task for most is to migrate a domain from one registrar to another. One of the most important things that you can do to ensure the domain and applications remain available is to migrate all DNS records first and verify that it’s working on the new DNS provider, and only then, […]

  • Windows Server: Create an Alias to Localhost FileShare

    Windows, by default, does not allow the use of a hosts file entry to alias a CIFS share to localhost. The typical error when attempting this would be “Incorrect username or password.” when navigating to the share. To fix this, add a registry entry like the following: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE / SYSTEM / CurrentControlSet / Control / […]

  • puppet: could not retrieve fact fqdn

    On a recent new server deployment, I ran across the error that puppet could not find the fqdn fact: Warning: Could not retrieve fact fqdn Warning: Host is missing hostname and/or domain: $short_hostname This was on an ubuntu 14.04 host running puppet 3.4.3 (ancient). The fix was to ensure that the FQDN was in the […]

  • Script Kiddy of the Day

    I saw this humorous attempt in the apache logs this morning: ==> /var/log/httpd/access_log

  • Enable EPEL Repository on Amazon Linux

    Amazon Linux provides an easy way to install / enable the EPEL yum repository from the command line. Use the amazon-linux-extras command to enable the epel feature, and then install the repository: amazon-linux-extras enable epel yum install epel-release To see which packages are available via amazon-linux-extras, just type the command without any arguments.

  • Rails new fails to create all of the content…

    I recently deployed a Rails app on a CentOS 8 container and was surprised to see that the ‘rails new’ command did not create the entire application directory structure that I would expect, ie: [root@607ebc931c48 app]# rails _5.2.3_ new centos_app_2 create create README.md create Rakefile create .ruby-version create config.ru create .gitignore create Gemfile run git […]