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FreeBSD PHP and mariadb localhost failures: mysqli_real_connect(): (HY000/2002): No such file or directory

Posted by faded on December 2, 2022
Posted in: Development, OS. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a Comment

Going through and updating systems to newer versions of PHP8.1 and mariadb on a newly installed FreeBSD 13.1 system. When attempting to connect to the default “localhost”, I was being greeted with:

mysqli_real_connect(): (HY000/2002): No such file or directory

Any php database connection attempts to localhost were failing, which is the default for a variety of code out there, including phpMyAdmin and WordPress. Changing the connection host to “127.0.0.1” instead of “localhost” allowed it to connect, but I didn’t find this to be an acceptable solution as it should work for both. After doing some searching, I found the following solution to be the best option:

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Let’s Encrypt – Free SSL Certs!

Posted by faded on December 21, 2015
Posted in: Development, Security, Software. 1 comment

What’s better than SSL everywhere?  Free SSL everywhere!  I first heard about the letsencrypt.org project at Defcon 23 in July (you can watch the same presentation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya6t8nMclos).  The concept was great, and I agreed with many of the points that were made, although the difficulty of setting up TLS was quite overblown, it really isn’t that difficult.  I was interested in the concept, but at that time the project was not available for use, but now it is, and it’s fairly easy to use, though does have one minor drawback.

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Slingbox and Chromecast: Cord Cutting Without Losing Content

Posted by faded on September 30, 2014
Posted in: Hardware, Software. Tagged: , , , . Leave a Comment

In an attempt to fix some service issues that I had been experiencing with Comcast, I contacted them on the phone to swap out my cablemodem with a new DOCSIS v.3 model that I had picked up.  The rep on the phone insisted that I was paying too much, and proceeded to make changes to my account to fix how much I was paying.  Long story short, my cable bill shot up to over $300/month.  This fed me up enough to find a way to finally join a growing number of people and “cut the cord”.  My issue was that I wanted to find a way to cut the cord, without losing access to the content that my family enjoys.  This is where I turned my attention to the SlingTV.

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Converting from MovableType to WordPress

Posted by faded on September 14, 2014
Posted in: Development, Software. Leave a Comment

Hadn’t updated my blog back-end in a couple years, so decided to take a look at what was new with MovableType, my choice of back-end software for blogging needs.  Unfortunately, it seems that sometime last year sixapart decided to move away from even providing a single blogger account level license.  I’ve loved working with MT over the years, but that change is enough to make me jump ship, so I started looking for alternatives.  WordPress was an obvious choice.  The process I followed to convert my site content is as follows:

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OBi with Google Voice and 911 Working

Posted by faded on December 23, 2012
Posted in: Hardware, Telephony. 5 comments

I was in search of a low-cost VoIP provider to use as a home phone replacement, when I thought about Google Voice. The plus side of Google Voice being that all calls are free within the US, making for a fairly cost-effective phone service. The other factor that I needed to account for was that I needed a solution where 911 service functioned correctly. Google Voice alone will not terminate 911 service, so additional service was required.

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FreeBSD PPTP Server

Posted by faded on February 16, 2009
Posted in: OS, Security. Tagged: , , . 1 comment

I had previously setup a few FreeBSD systems to act as PPTP servers for places that I had them acting as firewalls using mpd. However, I was constantly running into problems with “No buffer space available” and packets would drop, connections would be sluggish, etc.
I was just doing some system upgrades and decided to look at other options. I found a port called poptop “the pptp server for linux” in the ports distribution, and even a howto online detailing what my configs should look like. So I gave it a shot:

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FreeBSD buildworld benchmarking

Posted by faded on June 11, 2008
Posted in: Hardware, OS. Tagged: , , . Leave a Comment

Having just acquired some new hardware at work, I decided to do some tests to see how well this system would run. Here are the specs of the system running the benchmark:

  • Supermicro X7DA3+ MB w/Intel 5000X (GreenCreek) chipset
  • (2) Intel Xeon Quad-Core E5450 (3.00GHz/1333FSB/2x6MB) CPU
  • 3Ware Escalade 9650SE-16ML PCI-E 256MB w/16 PORTS + BBU
  • (8) Kingston 2GB PC2-5300 DDR2-667MHz FB ECC CL5 (16GB)
  • (12) Western Digital Raptor X WD1500AHFD 150GB 10000 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 1.5Gb/s Hard Drive (RAID 50 array)

To test it out I installed FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE AMD64. Install completed flawlessly, so it was time to do some compiling.
A vanilla make buildworld: 48 minutes
Not bad.. but not amazing either. So I decided to do some threaded compiles to stress the system a little bit. Since it’s an 8 core system, I used the following:

time -h make -j8 buildworld

The resulting time of: 12m 33s was nothing short of impressive.
Following up with a:

time -h make -j8 buildkernel KERNCONF=GENERIC

Resulted in: 52s
Quite impressive.

Gentoo 2007.0 Installation

Posted by faded on October 26, 2007
Posted in: OS. Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment

Gentoo 2007.0 has been out for some time, but I just now got a chance to setup a few new Gentoo systems. Previously I’ve always installed via the 2006.1 installation media, either the LiveCD or LiveDVD, and used the GTK installer. While the 2006.1 GTK installer was certainly buggy, I was able to get a process worked out that allowed the system to be loaded fairly consistently each time. However, it was *much* more difficult with the 2007.0 LiveCD and DVD.
Here are some of the trials that I ended up going through..

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Google GrandCentral Review

Posted by faded on July 15, 2007
Posted in: Telephony. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a Comment

There has been much buzz recently about google buying Grand Central, which was started as a free service that helped people organize their phone numbers, route calls, record messages, set distinctive ring tones, and much more… for free. Upon hearing the news, I immediately signed up for an account and began to test things out…

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