rootblog

System Upgraded to 4.8-STABLE

Upgraded the system tonight. Sorry for the double bounce for anyone who was on. Expect another short downtime tomorrow for a minor reconfiguration.

Soliciting Donations for Disk

For large amounts of data (such as large galleries, web logs, personal
archives), we continue to encourage people to put stuff in the
not-backed-up /crypt/users instead of the
backed-up-but-expensive-to-download /home partition.

However, Due to a recent re-partitioning to better protect backup space,
/crypt/users has shrunk in size at the same time that many people have
started using it for hosting very large photo sites. This is OK with us,
but we're going to run out of space really soon, and would like to make a
pre-emptive strike against disk wars.

We're shooting to get a 200Gb drive to stick in, which we believe can be
obtained for about $200. Our goal is to solicit a one-time donation of
$20 from the largest disk users on Radix (and from other individuals as
well). Furthermore, we're hoping to collect the money next week as we
have a maintenance window the week after that we can get the disk
installed during.

If you'd like to donate (and I encourage you all to do so), you can send
your pledge to our Treasurer Charles over PayPal (cying@photonfx.com).
It's best to send PayPal donations from an account which can pull either
directly from a checking account or which has a PayPal balance already, so
that we won't lose money to the PayPal credit card processing fee. For
other ways to donate, feel free to contact Charles directly.

Thanks in advance, and as always, mail us if you have any questions.

Certificate Errors in Mozilla

We recently had to create a new certificate for the web server here on Radix which many of you use to access Squirrelmail. One of our users has pointed out a problem with Mozilla though:

I am getting a certificate error when trying to access SquirrelMail using Mozilla 1.3.1. The exact error message is:

"You have recieved an invalid certificate. It contains the same issuer name and serial number as another certificate you are already using. Contact the server administrator from which this invalid certificate came, and urge them to get a valid ceritifcate."

I deleted the original stored certificate in an attempt to get Mozilla to ask me to accept it again but it did not work. It does seem to be functioning fine in IE, which I can use in the meantime.

What you want to do to fix this is the following.

1. In the Preferences window for Mozilla, under Privacy & Security click the Certificates item. Then click Manage Certificates...
2. You'll need to delete two certificates (possibly). First, under the "Web Sites" tab look for a certificate for "radix.cryptio.net". If you see it, delete it.
3. Look for the same entry under the "Authorities" tab. It might be hiding under the title "Cryptic Minds". You'll want to delete the radix.cryptio.net cert under there as well.
4. Now quit Mozilla and restart

Next time you try to access Squirrelmail or any other SSL page on Radix, Mozilla will say that the web site is presenting a cert which Mozilla doesn't recognize the signature for. Just tell Mozilla to accept the certificate forever (until it expires).

The cert we installed is good for three years, so you won't have to do this again soon. =)