@dbeato said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/11/sennheiser-discloses-monumental-blunder-that-cripples-https-on-pcs-and-macs/

But unlike Lenovo, they attempted to patch it. They failed, but at least they tried.

Also, they didn’t deny anything, or actually inject anything.

The end result was bad, but not with intent.

It is able to be upgraded.

I had a test system installed last year running FreePBX 12 with Asterisk 11. Current at the time.

Prior to nuking it (as I no longer need it) I wanted to look at the upgrade path, if one existed.

Well it does.

First, from a command line I switched from Asterisk 11 to 13.

asterisk-version-switch

Then You go into Modeul Admin, find the PBX Upgrade module, and enable it.

Then you get a new link in the admin menu to start the upgrade.

A few clicks, and away it goes.

This weekend will be like last weekend. Working on the Kitchen. But hey, at least I gots fire now.

Likely not much until Sunday as I will be leaving on the inverse Amtrak route at about 11pm Friday night.

Windows 10’s “Check for Updates” Button Just Got Safer

Microsoft promised to stop installing unstable updates when you click “Check for Updates” and now it’s delivering. Rather than automatically installing such updates, Windows gives you a “Download and install now” button. The button started appearing on PCs today.

@s.hackleman said in Best Practices:

My problem is we have several critical DB servers gathering data 24/7. I have to be vague, but bear with me. So we have a server and we will call it History1. There are tons of small apps, spreadsheets, web pages all over the company that look at the data on History1. It has a single IP, and is added into Active Directory with the name History1. Now with all this traffic eventually we have to upgrade our old History1. So what is the best practice here?

1. We make a History2, then track down every item that pointed to History1, and update it to point to History2. However user apps, and spreadsheets become overwhelming.

2. We make History2, then wile trying to have 0 downtime, rename it to History1, and hope that active directory propagates the name change right.

I have tried it both ways, and both ways suck. Is there a better way?

Make History2, then when you offline History1, add a DNS entry for History1 as a CNAME that points to History2

Just finished initial technical documentation for installing FreePBX on Vultr.

Rough draft here: https://obelisk.daerma.com/category/7/jared-personal-stuff

It will eventually show up here after review and editing

Private equity firms are known to fuck things up.

Not looking forward to this.

Client network is currently 10.202.0.0/23 (was 10.202.1.0/24)
Their wireless is on 10.202.2.0/24
I setup ZeroTier on 10.202.3.0/24

Once I can flatten the wireless into the /23 I will test out bringing them up to a /22 and then just letting everything work over ZeroTier.

The next IoT device to add to the botnet

What is eerie is how similar @Bundy-Associates is to @NTG in some ways.

We are an ITSP as NTG is. We are not a reseller of a damned thing. If I recommend something, it is because I think it is the right thing for the client's business need. Not because we get a damned thing for it on the backside. I don't know how many vendors get all confused when they call me and ask me to sign on as a partner for this or that and I tell them to go fly a kite.

I live and work in Chicago normally. The rest of the employees are in the St Louis region, but that is a legacy of before we gained the ability to truly handle things remotely. I also work from Japan for a few weeks most years.

While NTG may be a Cloud of Support (btw I am so stealing that too...) because of the number of employees and people they have access to at any given time, we are more of a fog bank with only 6 permanent employees at the moment. But even then, the Cloud of Support metaphor works.

It does not matter if I am working form my desk at home, driving down the highway, at a desk at a client, or at my kids' swimming lessons. When a call comes in, it gets triaged and handled. One of us is always available to handle anything that comes in until the appropriate resource can be arranged.

@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:

@JaredBusch said

If it is your job, you should be getting paid.
In order to get paid, you have to bill people.
In order to bill people you have to not do things for free.

Agree 100%. I mean, a 5 minute discussion is OK, I think, but anything more needs billing.

NO one said sell them something they do not need. It was stated that they came to you for a server. So sell them the server they asked for, verify the basics, yes. You are a VAR, that is your job.

So if a 3 person non-profit church comes in and wants a $5K server. No questions asked you just sell it to them? Not me. Because I know they do not know what they need. They know the term server, but have no idea what it means, and what it is for. And how for 1/100th or less of the cost they can have a much better solution.

No one comes to me just to buy a server, so I am never in this position, but if I was, I would tell said church person, that they have no idea what they need and they need to hire someone to actually figure that out. Me or another company I don't care, but hire someone who knows wtf they are doing to make sure you are not getting jipped.

@Minion-Queen said in MangoCon...Thank you:

Next year the heavy night of drinking will be FRIDAY NIGHT not Thursday

Like you have any control over that.

@Dashrender said in Microsoft update KB3159398:

@ntoxicator said in Microsoft update KB3159398:

I think its because I GHOST the machines rather than use SysPrep

This is definitely your problem with WSUS.

call me old school.. But sysprep is waste of time -- much faster to get baseline machine and create images...

What's wrong with Sysprep? You create your base image, then run syspre, capture that image, and deploy. Are you calling the walkthrough of the OOBE a waste of time that you don't get when you deploy images of non Sysprep'ed machines?

Maybe, but you're breaking the way things work. So either 'waste' the time time, or have broken things.

You can use Ghost all you want, but you still have to use sysprep to bring the image down prior to ghosting. When you skip that, the systems all retain GUID information and AD will just be hosed to hell.

Rewarding myself for letting my 6yo (7 tomorrow) have a birthday party.

@mary said in 802.11 Wireless Standards - CompTIA A+ 220-1001:

Is there anything out there that needs up to 6.8 gigs per second?

Porn.. Always Porn. This is not a joke.

The porn industry is one of the leaders of adopting technology into actual business use.

@NerdyDad As long as you are not misleading the vendor on your interest in their product, then there is no moral ambiguity at all. It is simply their marketing trying to convince you to change your mind.

Obviously, you will need to create an account and fund it. I leave that exercise to you.

Click the big + to create a new server.

Choose a location relative to your primary users and your SIP provider.

Choose Custom ISO and select the FreePBX ISO you previously uploaded.

Select the smallest server size, it is more than enough for hundreds of extensions.

Leave the additional features alone and give your server a host name. If you want a space in the server label you have to manually add it. No space in your hostname please.

Click deploy and wait for the system to tell you it is ready.

Connect to the console, and select the second option Full Install -- No RAID

Part of the FreePBX 13 Setup Guide

@LAH3385 said in SSL Certificates Wildcard... where do you get it from? $$$?:

@scottalanmiller said in SSL Certificates Wildcard... where do you get it from? $$$?:

@JaredBusch said in SSL Certificates Wildcard... where do you get it from? $$$?:

Without a very good reason you should never buying a wildcard SSL cert

And those "good" reasons are far less common now with LetsEncrypt as you can get as many non-wild ones as you need.

Can you enlighten me on the LetsEncrypt?

Our certs are expiring soon so we need a new one. That's all. We currently have both EV and Wildcard cert.

EV is a marketing scam. No one I know cares about the green bar. Though, that said, no one I know pays attention to the padlock either. Users just know if the page loads or not.

Wildcard certs are useful only to those with a lot (and I mean a lot) of subdomain names setup. Or the lazy, take your pick.

Youtube Video

This is what we currently do for hourly phone system jobs.

Basically as long as you schedule it, you get the normal rate. Time of day doesn't matter.