Posts made by NashBrydges

I also ran the NGINX test and all looks good.

Here is the only entry in the NGINX error log for the last time NGINX stopped.

2021/01/08 22:34:03 [error] 847#847: *195 access forbidden by rule, client: 195.154.63.222, server: plextrack.jpslconsulting.ca, request: "GET / HTTP/1.1", host: "plextrack.jpslconsulting.ca"

The Let's Encrypt log shows no activity immediately before the outage.

Syslog also shows no errors. It has entries from 3AM to 3:155AM and 9:59PM to 10:02PM on the day of the last incident however the outage occurred between 7:06PM and 10:00PM so the only related entries in this log are at the time the outage was discovered and Ubuntu restarted.

@Obsolesce Yes, all packages are up to date.

Sorry, running out the door for a client. I'll grab the logs and post the contents this weekend.

I am running certbot for Let's Encrypt.

I have NGINX running on an Ubuntu 20.04 instance. It runs nothing but NGINX and is hosted on hyper-v server. Everything is running with all updates applied.

The issue is that NGINX will randomly just stop routing requests. Websites and services are going offline and looking at the NGINX logs (/var/log/nginx) as well as the syslog doesn't show any errors but when I check to see if the NGINX service is running, it shows as stopped. All I have to do is reboot the Ubuntu server and everything works again (restarting NGINX service doesn't always fix the issue but a server reboot works every time). No other change required, just a reboot.

It's proxying for only a dozen sites and services and traffic is not that high. Looking at resource utilization doesn't indicate there are problems there.

I'm already running auto reboots every night but these random stops continue to happen (before someone asks, no, the issues are not correlated with the reboot schedule). Before I enable debug logging, I thought I'd reach out here to see if anyone else had experienced this before and how you might have fixed it. Should I be looking elsewhere for details on what might be causing this?

@JaredBusch said in Sangoma Ransomware:

@NashBrydges said in Sangoma Ransomware:

@JaredBusch said in Sangoma Ransomware:

Chris had only one actual goal by making that video when he did and as he did.

Revenue.

Opinions are like assholes...everybody's got one.

He has a monetized YouTube channel. He puts out a YouTube video with nothing but rampant speculation.

You want to tell me it was not revenue?

Not at all. Go back and read my comment to confirm. What I am calling out is that, you offer your opinion freely even when you're being an ass about it. Often times it's warranted but it's still your opinion. Just because Chris has a monetized YT channel doesn't necessarily mean that what he presented was incorrect. Watch someone's YT channel...read their posts in a community, same thing. I seek out others' opinions to help inform mine. Your feedback as well as Chris' is valuable if it produces valuable discourse.

@JaredBusch said in Sangoma Ransomware:

Chris had only one actual goal by making that video when he did and as he did.

Revenue.

Opinions are like assholes...everybody's got one.

Thought I would provide an update.

I setup and tested Piwigo and it looks like I will need to abandon that product. There are simple things I would expect (like being able to download an entire album without having to select every single photo and downloading them one at a time) that are missing. While there are some plugins to address some of these shortcomings, these are developed and maintained by the community so there's a risk that a particular add-on may no longer work or stop being developed/supported. The interface is also a bit lacking, confusing and unimaginative.

Will move to test something else soon.

For those of you here who support photographers or you are an amateur photographer yourself, I'm wondering what you use to store and share your photos. I know I can use Nextcloud but it's not really designed for things a photographer might want. I'm aware of 2 open source products...Lychee and Piwigo. Wondering if others use these or if you would recommend something else. This is just for me so FOSS is always my first option. Let me know if you have any recommendations.

As for features...
Needs to allow for albums
Filters for either file names or photo attributes like shuter, location, date...etc, maybe also allow me to add tags
Ability to share via links (secure). A bonus if I can set expiry dates and force passwords.
Must have mobile app so I can upload directly from mobile and view via mobile app

In full transparency, I've not fully tried either Lychee or Piwigo but will likely do that along with other recommendations here.

Oh, I should mention, I don't want to rely on either Apple One or Google One. Must be separate from mobile device manufacturer.

I ran 2 different subject lines but each of the 2 emails had the same pre-header.

Subject Line 1: Employees Can Remain Productive, Even During A Pandemic
Subject Line 2: Don't Let The Pandemic Stop Your Business

Pre-header: Employees can remain productive even while working from home. You do not have to abandon and redesign everything. Simple tools are available to allow secure, remote work.

The rest of the email content was kept short, with the call-to-action being a "Contact Us" button located above the fold in the email. Clicking the button took the recipient to a form on my site (since taken down) where they could enter their contact info and I would call them, and provided them with a phone number to call. Interestingly enough, no one chose the form (which is why I took it down). They all chose to call (could have been a result of the urgent nature of the prep work to allow employees to work from home).

The results between the 2 subject lines didn't indicate any statistically significant different because responses were so low and both quite similar.

I suspect that the combination of timing of the email and its salient content (I recognized that allowing employees to work from home wasn't something that small businesses were likely used to, depending on the sector). I kept it informational, positive, addressing the current facts along with promising solutions that would be designed specifically around their unique needs.

The email results were quite good and while I don't have a comparison with other email campaigns (this was my first) I was quite happy with the results.

The follow-up email to those who didn't call but had clicked had the following sent to them about 10 days after the initial email...

Subject Line: It's Not Too Late To Enable Your Staff! Call Us!

Pre-header: Your business success is dependent on your ability to address your clients' needs. You're not expected to be an IT guru. That's our job. There's no obligation. What do you have to lose? Answers are a phone call away.

I located an email HTML template that I could customize, was mobile optimized, and could be easily integrated into Mautic. Quite a number of free email templates out there so I'm sure you can find one that fits with your design goals.

The one thing to call out is that because this was a marketing email, I needed to integrate opt-out process (in Canada, CASL rules dictate how marketing emails are to be handled). Luckily, no one opted out so I couldn't have been too terribly annoying Mautic allows for the management of opt-outs within the tool so any future emails would automatically exclude those who have opted out.

Hope this helps.

Interestingly enough, the clients I picked up were 2 real estate brokers and 1 construction company. You'd think the real estate folks would be used to remote work because of their road warriors but not the case with these two. Their office staff wasn't at all setup for this kind of work.

This year was the first year I started using mail marketing. I setup Mautic, and beginning in Feb and Mar, I sent a total of ~ 2,000 emails to local small businesses. These were the results...

• Total emails sent = 2,031

• Emails opened = 809 (39.8% Open Rate)

• Clicks = 60 (3% CTR)

• Calls = 7

Since Mautic tracks who opened the email and who clicked, I was able to see who clicked and DIDN'T call so I sent a follow-up email to those 53 who clicked but did not call which resulted in another 8 calls, so 15 calls in total.

As a result of the email, I picked up 3 new clients. To date, I've billed >$ 23,000 from those 3 new clients. Considering it took me only a few hours to setup Mautic and to setup and send the emails, and that these clients continue to be clients, I figure the effort was really worth it.

In my case, the email content was directly related to how small businesses had to adapt their operating models because of the pandemic and in all cases, they reached out specifically because they needed to understand their options for enabling employees to remote work. While this was the initial engagement, all 3 new clients have continued to seek support from my team and I.

Ask me if I plan on using email again? Absolutely!

https://www.itnews.com.au/news/solarwinds-orion-monitoring-platform-may-have-been-tampered-with-by-attackers-558948

SolarWinds said monitoring products it released in March and June of this year may have been surreptitiously tampered with in a “highly-sophisticated, targeted and manual supply chain attack by a nation state.”

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/topstories/us-agencies-hacked-in-monthslong-global-cyberspying-campaign/ar-BB1bUcUp?ocid=entnewsntp

U.S. government agencies were ordered to scour their networks for malware and disconnect potentially compromised servers on Monday after authorities learned that the Treasury and Commerce departments were hacked in a global cyber-espionage campaign tied to a foreign government.

The article continues...

The apparent conduit for the Treasury and Commerce Department hacks — and the FireEye compromise — is a hugely popular piece of server software called SolarWinds. It is used by hundreds of thousands of organizations globally, including most Fortune 500 companies and multiple U.S. federal agencies, which will now be scrambling to patch up their networks, said Alperovitch, the former chief technical officer of the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.

@Obsolesce That reminds me of smoking and non-smoking sections in restaurants. LMAO

For less sensitive drives, a good drill and 1/4" drillbit after a full random write works wonders too

As a result of 2020's dumpster fire of a year, most of my clients ended-up moving to remote, work-from-home operations, many have chosen to move their gear to colo so I've expanded my 1/4 rack to a full rack at a datacenter where I now also host all my "home lab" gear, including Plex server. The lab gear consists of a Dell R720XD-SFF that runs all of my VMs, a Dell R720XD-LFF that hosts a VM file server and a Dell R720XD-LFF as local Veeam backup target. Also have a Dell R420 running Blue Iris for my security cams as home. I only have a Dell R230 running at home for Pi-Hole and NGINX, plus a 2 Synology NAS as a remote backup targets for my colo gear.

I wasn't aware I could use RTSP to feed to another NVR. Gonna have to give that a try.

@black3dynamite Thanks, I'll check that out.

@hobbit666 Sadly, they are not. There is no software to replace replace it. Nothing to run on your own hardware. You must now purchase and use their own hardware in order to obtain the latest updates for the NVR.

Looking to pick brains and see what you'd do. This is for my home.

• Currently running Unifi network controller in the cloud that manages my home network as well as my clients' Unifi networks. (17 sites)
• Also have 4 x UVC-G3 bullet cameras installed at each corner of the house. These are all pointing to my Unifi Video controller VM which is installed on a server in the datacenter.
• Backups of all VMs done via Veeam B&R
• The Unifi Video software will be EoL effective Jan 1 2021. UBNT will no longer release any software or security updates for this so I need to move off this platform before then (I know, I've been procrastinating).

Options:
1 - Buy a Cloud Key Gen 2 Plus (I have no need of the Unifi Controller function, single HDD, no built-in backups, while not announced, I'm not sensing this will be supported for long...no evidence of this, just a hunch)
2 - Buy a UNVR (1 to 4 HDDS however if you install 3 or 4 drives, the only array allowed is RAID 5 and I'm told no option to change that, also no built-in automated backup that I'm aware of)
3 - Buy a UDM (but I have no need for the Unifi Controller function)
4 - Replace my UBNT cameras for other cameras and find another NVR (maybe my Synology DS1819+ for example)

• To backup video files I suppose I could use RSync to send files to my Synology for backup but haven't tested that.

I'm leaning towards the UNVR but curious if anyone else is in the same boat and what you've chosen to do.

Also, I'd be interested in knowing which cameras/NVR you use in outdoor settings (remember, this is home use, not business). Looking for...

• some intelligent motion detection (prefer something better than simple motion detection like the UBNT devices do)
• day/night (IR)
• motion zones
• motion alerts
• audio (2 way comms not necessary but a nice-to-have feature)
• must allow for local video storage to NVR (so SD card-only or cloud only devices need not apply so the likes of Ring or others like it are out)
• RTSP a nice-to-have feature
• POE capable
• decent IP rating for outdoor use in southern Ontario, Canada (4 full seasons of weather and temps)
• min 1080p (4k would be great depending on the price)
• PTZ not required

@syko24 said in Remote VoIP Phone Unifi Network:

@NashBrydges - just a couple other thoughts:

Do either locations have a double nat?

Who are the ISPs? Maybe something with the ISP provided hardware?

Both locations use the same ISP and no double NAT either.