I just did what was documented here but added in case they go away ever.

1 – get the installed packages

dpkg -l | grep php | tee packages.txt

2 – get php 7

sudo apt install php7.3 php7.3-common php7.3-cli 

3 – get the rest of the packages that you got in step 1

4 – uninstall php5

sudo apt-get purge php5*

5 – if you have fpm for web serving point all the things that used to point to

/var/run/php5-fpm.sock

to

/var/run/php/php7-fpm.sock

To block ads using Squid is simple.

Get the list of ad urls:
## get new ad server list
curl -sS -L --compressed "http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/serverlist.php?hostformat=nohtml&showintro=0&mimetype=plaintext" > /etc/squid/ad_block.txt

Then add this to squid.conf to reference the file and block the urls:
## disable ads ( http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/ )
acl ads dstdom_regex "/etc/squid/ad_block.txt"
http_access deny ads
#deny_info TCP_RESET ads

Then, for Mac Ports at least, do this:
sudo port reload squid4

Or for a recent Linux it’d be something like:
sudo service squid4 restart

This may not make much sense to others but it’s all the things for setting up Exim4 in Debian that weren’t obvious.

• Add all the names and ip address to /etc/hosts
• Add ip address to exim4 files. Copy the other things added from the old server..
• Edit just the main folder after doing the exim4 dpkg
• Update /etc/letsencrypt to allow execute on /etc/letsencrypts/archive and live to get rid of the /var/log/exim4/mainlog pem related errors
• Remember the sasl stuff from Debian’s exim4 setup to let the user login.

Easy to ad block with your own DNS server if you don’t want to trust adblock or other plugins.

1 – you need a web server to host a blank image

2 – Get blacklist

Get the blacklist from http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/

Choose for the bind 8 config format.

I had to change the file so that the records read like this:

zone "101com.com" IN { type master; notify no; file "/etc/bind/null.zone.file"; };

by adding the “IN” between the domain name and the “{ type master ….” part. Use your vi-skills for this.

Give this file a easy name, like ‘blacklist’. Now create a line in /etc/bind/named.conf.local:

include "/etc/bind/blacklist";

Create the null zone file

Create a file /etc/bin/null.zone.file with the following contents:

$TTL    86400   ; one day

@       IN      SOA     nds.example.com. hostmaster.example.com. (
            2002061000       ; serial number YYMMDDNN
            28800   ; refresh  8 hours
            7200    ; retry    2 hours
            864000  ; expire  10 days
            86400 ) ; min ttl  1 day
        NS      nds.example.com

        A       192.168.1.100

@               IN      A       192.168.1.100
*               IN      A       192.168.1.100

and replace example.com by your internal domain name and replace 192.168.1.100 by the name of your web server. The above format allow for the use of wildcards. This means that you do not have to care about the subdomains.

Restart bind (Ubuntu version)

service bind9 restart

2 is copied from here for posterity: https://box.matto.nl/dnsadblok.html

3 – use a different DNS source if you want

If you want to use a different DNS server (say you don’t trust your ISP or Google to know every site you query) you can find others here:

https://www.opennic.org

And then in /etc/bind/named.conf.options add the forward to the dns servers:

 forwarders {
 69.195.152.204;
 96.47.228.108;
 96.90.175.167;
 };

Google appears to update it’s SSL cert nightly which breaks my fetch mail script nightly as well. Here’s a simple python script in case this happens to you!

import ssl
import socket
import hashlib
import sys

addr = 'imap.gmail.com'

sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
sock.settimeout(1)
wrappedSocket = ssl.wrap_socket(sock)

try:
 wrappedSocket.connect((addr, 993))
except:
 response = False
else:
 der_cert_bin = wrappedSocket.getpeercert(True)
 pem_cert = ssl.DER_cert_to_PEM_cert(wrappedSocket.getpeercert(True))
 #print(pem_cert)

#Thumbprint
 thumb_md5 = hashlib.md5(der_cert_bin).hexdigest()
 #print("MD5: " + thumb_md5)

wrappedSocket.close()

cnt = 0

thumb_md5_d = ''

for letter in thumb_md5:
 if cnt%2 == 0 and cnt!=0:
 thumb_md5_d += ':'
 thumb_md5_d += letter
 cnt += 1

thumb_md5_d = thumb_md5_d.upper()

infile = "//home//user//fetchmailrc.tmp"
text = open(infile)

outfile = open('/etc/fetchmailrc', 'w')
outfile.truncate()

textToSearch = 'GOOGLE_FINGERPRINT'

for line in text:
 if textToSearch in line:
 line = line.replace( textToSearch, thumb_md5_d )
 outfile.write(line)

Where fetchmailrc.tmp is this (in addition to whatever else in your fetchmailrc):

poll imap.gmail.com protocol IMAP user "login@gmail.com" there with password "password" is blah@blah.com here nofetchall ssl sslfingerprint 'GOOGLE_FINGERPRINT'

Then you setup a cron job to run it nightly and now you’ve got up to date Google fingerprints!

Somehow a Debian update broke bfs and I was getting this issue:

The ZFS modules are not loaded.
Try running '/sbin/modprobe zfs' as root to load them.

To reinstall ZFS this worked for me – a compilation of many suggestions so not sure all were necessary but it worked:

apt-get clean
apt-get update
apt-get purge zfs*   --get rid of everything ZFS
apt-get remove spl dkms spl-dkms  --get rid of more ZFS
apt-get autoremove
apt-get install -t jessie-backports zfsutils-linux  --change to whatever your distribution uses

--these commands recompile the libraries if they are still having issues
dkms remove -m zfs -v 0.6.5.9 --all
dkms remove -m spl -v 0.6.5.9 --all
dkms add -m spl -v 0.6.5.9
dkms add -m zfs -v 0.6.5.9
dkms install -m spl -v 0.6.5.9
dkms install -m zfs -v 0.6.5.9

First, take a look at the report you received or run (and read):

sudo tripwire --check

If everything is OK, run the following command:

sudo tripwire -m u -Z low -r /var/lib/tripwire/report/hostname-timestamp.twr

I keep looking this up so saving for posterity. This is a good way to get memory info in Ubuntu:

sudo lshw -C memory

This gets all sort of useful info. I needed to get the memory speed since I have too many computers with too many different memory speeds. Doesn’t seem to show that it is ECC memory but I also had to know that. See below for ECC and memory speed.

  *-firmware              
       description: BIOS
       vendor: LENOVO
       physical id: 0
       version: 5JKT50AUS
       date: 09/27/2010
       size: 64KiB
       capacity: 2496KiB
       capabilities: pci upgrade shadowing cdboot bootselect socketedrom edd int13floppy1200 int13floppy720 int13floppy2880 int5printscreen int9keyboard int14serial int17printer acpi usb biosbootspecification
  *-cache:0
       description: L1 cache
       physical id: 5
       slot: L1-Cache
       size: 32KiB
       capacity: 32KiB
       capabilities: internal write-back unified
       configuration: level=1
  *-cache:1
       description: L2 cache
       physical id: 6
       slot: L2-Cache
       size: 256KiB
       capacity: 256KiB
       capabilities: internal varies unified
       configuration: level=2
  *-cache:2 DISABLED
       description: L3 cache
       physical id: 7
       slot: L3-Cache
       size: 4MiB
       capacity: 4MiB
       capabilities: internal unified
       configuration: level=3
  *-memory
       description: System Memory
       physical id: 2c
       slot: System board or motherboard
       size: 14GiB
     *-bank:0
          description: DIMM DDR3 Synchronous 1066 MHz (0.9 ns)
          product: M391B5673EH1-CH9
          vendor: Samsung
          physical id: 0
          serial: FCBB3D85
          slot: A1_DIMM0
          size: 2GiB
          width: 64 bits
          clock: 1066MHz (0.9ns)
     *-bank:1
          description: DIMM DDR3 Synchronous 1066 MHz (0.9 ns)
          product: 18JSF51272AZ-1G1D1
          vendor: Micron Technology
          physical id: 1
          serial: D7172936
          slot: A1_DIMM1
          size: 4GiB
          width: 64 bits
          clock: 1066MHz (0.9ns)
     *-bank:2
          description: DIMM DDR3 Synchronous 1066 MHz (0.9 ns)
          product: CT51272BA1067.M18F
          vendor: Undefined
          physical id: 2
          serial: 00000000
          slot: A1_DIMM2
          size: 4GiB
          width: 64 bits
          clock: 1066MHz (0.9ns)
     *-bank:3
          description: DIMM DDR3 Synchronous 1066 MHz (0.9 ns)
          product: 18JSF51272AZ-1G1D1
          vendor: Micron Technology
          physical id: 3
          serial: 5DC579DE
          slot: A1_DIMM3
          size: 4GiB
          width: 64 bits
          clock: 1066MHz (0.9ns)

To get ECC and speed use this:

dmidecode --type memory
...
Handle 0x002C, DMI type 16, 15 bytes
Physical Memory Array
	Location: System Board Or Motherboard
	Use: System Memory
	Error Correction Type: Single-bit ECC
	Maximum Capacity: 8 GB
	Error Information Handle: 0x002D
	Number Of Devices: 4
...
Handle 0x0032, DMI type 17, 28 bytes
Memory Device
	Array Handle: 0x002C
	Error Information Handle: 0x0033
	Total Width: 72 bits
	Data Width: 64 bits
	Size: 4096 MB
	Form Factor: DIMM
	Set: None
	Locator: A1_DIMM1
	Bank Locator: A1_BANK1
	Type: DDR3
	Type Detail: Synchronous
	Speed: 1066 MHz
	Manufacturer: Micron Technology
	Serial Number: D7172936  
	Asset Tag: NULL
	Part Number: 18JSF51272AZ-1G1D1
	Rank: 2