Aetherweb's Blog

I used to try to remember every day to log in to my server and check if there were any manual updates needed (these can be kernel updates etc etc) by running this command: This outputs the list of mirrors and then a list of any packages with updates available for them. Problem is it’s a bit of a pain … Read More

In my last post I talked about how to automatically add IP blocks to CloudFlare from your own server. I also talked about the problem that could lead to, which is potentially 1000s of IP blocks mounting up over time (leading to firewall performance issues, and hitting your CloudFlare IP block limit). I mulled over the best solution to this … Read More

Unfortunately, having mod_cloudflare installed on ones server does not mean that the server’s front-end firewall (ConfigServer Firewall in one instance for me) sees the correct remote IP address for requests routed via CloudFlare. It appears mod_cloudflare (which is after all an Apache ‘mod’) works great for applications querying the REMOTE_ADDR server value from within Apache, but in many cases the … Read More

A website I manage has recently been targeted with a DDoS (Distributed Denial Of Service Attack). The PHP code on the site was already logging access (as is normal) but I wanted a simple way to respond to excessive access from any particular IP other than using a coded denial of response in the website’s code because while this does … Read More

There’s a handy way to knock all distributed SMTP AUTH attacks on the head by switching off the advertising of SMTP AUTH to all but specified IP addresses and IP address ranges. It works perfectly. For details on how to achieve this on a WHM/cPanel server, see here: http://sysadmintips.in/advanced/csf/exim Great! However there’s a problem. Many many people like to use … Read More

I’ve been trying to keep Google PageSpeed Insights happy with my new websites at all possible screen resolutions, whilst simultaneously trying to make the sites look good on all devices, while at the same time relying on as little javascript or server-side processing as possible. One problem I’ve had is that although it’s relatively easy to switch in a different … Read More

I decided to implement Aetherweb’s own site using WordPress partly as a learning experience (it’s my first play with WordPress 4+) and partly because it made things quick and easy. As soon as I launched the new site live I navigated to Google PageSpeed insights: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ I discovered a considerable number of issues with image optimisation, above the fold javascript … Read More