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Messages - norman

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Miscellaneous / Google Mail & SMTP password issue

« on: June 14, 2022, 11:35:12 am »

If using Google for SMTP mail and all of a sudden it says your username or password is wrong then this is down to new enhanced security by Google.

Go into Settings and Enable two-factor authentication. Now find the App Password entry underneath and ask it to create a password.

Use this password in your SMTP settings.

Norman

Windows / Google maps - turn off internet explorer compatability mode

« on: May 14, 2022, 09:27:36 pm »

This just shows a message on the map telling you to turn off internet explorer compatability mode. It is annoying but not harmful.

The only way to resolve this is to add registry keys in Windows using Regedit.

At two locations add a DWORD called iexplore.exe with a decimal content of 11000

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\MAIN\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION

Right-click the key and select New > DWORD.

Give that DWORD the decimal value of 11000. This will make all sites render without compatibility view.

To prevent the notice coming up in a particular program add a DWORD in the same location as follows -

Zipsys - add ZIPSYS.exe with a decimal content of 11000
Loadmaster - add Loadmaster.exe with a decimal content of 11000
Sameday Express - add Same Day Express.exe with a decimal content of 11000

Norman

General discussions / Office moving 01/07/2022

« on: May 11, 2022, 11:35:58 am »

Please note that on the 1st July, 2022 we will be changing our Registered Office address to :-

310 Wellingborough Road, Northampton NN1 4EP

Our contact emails and phone numbers will remain the same as now.

Our banking details will remain the same as well.

Norman

Operational Status / Broadband down 11/05/2022 - and up

« on: May 11, 2022, 11:33:19 am »

The broadband went down this morning for a couple of hours (BT connection). It did not affect websites or emails as these are hosted elsewhere, just the Bulletin Board.

It just goes to show how we rely on an internet connection - probably too much.

We do have mobile broadband so nothing else was affected.

All back to normal at 11.15am.

Norman

Operational Status / Email and Website down 11/01/2022

« on: January 11, 2022, 11:50:23 am »

Our servers at Freeola are currently down due to a fault at the data centre main site. This affects our web sites and emails. It actually started with drop-outs at 7.45pm on 10/01/2022.

Was expected to be fixed by 12 mid-day 11/01/2022

3.45pm Still down

7.45pm Everything operational.

We were able to continue to receive and send emails all the time because we had set up 'relaying' using Outlook in a resilience exercise we performed some time ago.

Our main office systems are based on Windows and Linux servers that we maintain ourselves. We also use two distinct duplicated sites on different IP addresses, rather than rely on one.

Norman

Miscellaneous / Let's Encrypt web site cert will not renew

« on: January 09, 2022, 08:00:04 pm »

On Linux to see certificates type -

sudo certbot certificates

To renew manually -

sudo certbot renew --force-renewal

If you just have one site try -

sudo certbot certonly --force-renew --cert-name sitename.com

Or more than one site -

sudo certbot --force-renew -d sitename1.com -d sitename2.com

And check .htaccess redirects http to https

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Norman

Sameday Express / Outlook - problem 'bounced' emails using SMTP

« on: December 21, 2021, 01:39:04 pm »

It seems that it is Microsoft is deliberately causing the 'bouncing' of a percentage of emails if using Microsoft Outlook under SMTP - all other email clients are currently unaffected. It is a security restriction that they have created to get Windows TLS email security pushed to a later version (TLS 1.2). Note that this ONLY affects the use of SMTP button and not the Outlook one.

"Exchange Online will begin rejecting a small (unspecified) percentage of attempts to make SMTP connections using TLS 1.0 or 1.1 and issue this error message -

421 4.7.66 TLS 1.0 and 1.1 are not supported. Please upgrade/update your client to support TLS 1.2. Visit https://aka.ms/smtp_auth_tls

This is a temporary error and clients can retry the connection. Exchange Online will block only a small percentage of connections it?s likely that the next attempt to connect will succeed. However, that small percentage of declined connections will increase over time to gradually make it more painful for clients using the older protocols to connect to Exchange Online. As Exchange Online declines more connections, clients will experience delays in transmitting email. In some cases, depending on the client?s error handling, email might not get through until someone updates the client to handle frequent retries (or upgrade the client to TLS 1.2."

The source code of the sent emails from Sameday Express indicate that they have ALL been sent under TLS 1.2

Until this annoying situation is resolved we suggest using ?relaying? to get around the issue.

We opened up a Google gmail account then linked our email address to it. We then used the gmail SMTP server settings instead of Outlook and not a single email ?bounced?.

Other relaying systems should work as well, such as smtp2go.

See our PDF on how to use gmail in Downloads on our web site - Outlook_SMTP_TLS_1_2.pdf

Norman

Loadmaster / Outlook - problem 'bounced' emails using SMTP

« on: December 21, 2021, 01:38:10 pm »

It seems that it is Microsoft is deliberately causing the 'bouncing' of a percentage of emails if using Microsoft Outlook under SMTP - all other email clients are currently unaffected. It is a security restriction that they have created to get Windows TLS email security pushed to a later version (TLS 1.2). Note that it ONLY affects the use of SMTP button and not the Outlook one.

"Exchange Online will begin rejecting a small (unspecified) percentage of attempts to make SMTP connections using TLS 1.0 or 1.1 and issue this error message -

421 4.7.66 TLS 1.0 and 1.1 are not supported. Please upgrade/update your client to support TLS 1.2. Visit https://aka.ms/smtp_auth_tls

This is a temporary error and clients can retry the connection. Exchange Online will block only a small percentage of connections it?s likely that the next attempt to connect will succeed. However, that small percentage of declined connections will increase over time to gradually make it more painful for clients using the older protocols to connect to Exchange Online. As Exchange Online declines more connections, clients will experience delays in transmitting email. In some cases, depending on the client?s error handling, email might not get through until someone updates the client to handle frequent retries (or upgrade the client to TLS 1.2."

The source code of the sent emails from Loadmaster indicate that they have ALL been sent under TLS 1.2

Until this annoying situation is resolved we suggest using ?relaying? to get around the issue.

We opened up a Google gmail account then linked our email address to it. We then used the gmail SMTP server settings instead of Outlook and not a single email ?bounced?.

Other relaying systems should work as well, such as smtp2go.

See our PDF on how to use gmail in Downloads on our web site - Outlook_SMTP_TLS_1_2.pdf

Norman

Miscellaneous / This network is blocking encrypted DNS traffic

« on: November 01, 2021, 11:40:11 am »

You may get this on iPad, iPhone or Android.

Solution - Delete your current wifi connection and then recreate it.

Norman

Miscellaneous / Nuisance calls from 08456021111

« on: October 28, 2021, 10:02:12 pm »

We have started getting these.

It's BT. Text to speech convertor. Someone sends a text to your phone and this converts it to speech.

It can be a real nuisance and it can be spoofed. Call 0800-5875252 to stop it.

Norman

Miscellaneous / Let's Encrypt web site security cert warning

« on: October 25, 2021, 09:02:12 am »

The root certificate that Let's Encrypt use for the certification path recently expired, meaning that security certificates that were issued using this are now displaying security warnings.

The answer is to force the renewal of the site certificate manually to use the new root certificate.

In a Linux terminal Window type -

certbot certificates

This will show the sites connected with the certificate.

Then try -

sudo certbot renew --force-renewal

or if you have one site -

sudo certbot certonly --force-renew --cert-name sitename.com

or more than one site -

sudo certbot certonly --force-renew -d sitename1.com -d sitename2.com

This should fix the issue.

Norman

Raspberry Pi / Some index files failed to download

« on: October 19, 2021, 09:35:10 pm »

You get this message when performing apt-get update

1. Look in /etc/resolv.conf using nano

Add nameserver 1.1.1.1 to the bottom of the list

2. Look in /etc/apt/sources.list

Alter mirrordirector.raspbian.org to legacy.raspbian.org

Norman

Raspberry Pi / Pi useful terminal commands

« on: October 14, 2021, 09:51:51 am »

free -h checks memory
df -h checks disk space
ifconfig shows network setup
cat /proc/device-tree/model gives Pi model number
sudo hostnamectl set-hostname newname sets hostname

Norman

Raspberry Pi / Booting Pi 3B from SSD

« on: October 14, 2021, 09:23:13 am »

I found a lot of instructions on the internet about how to do this but many were incomplete or were simply just wrong.

The only way I got it to work was to add these lines to config.txt on the existing SD Card :-

program_usb_boot_mode=1
program_usb_boot_timeout=1

Then reboot. This tells the Pi to check for other boot devices.

Once done, in terminal type vcgencmd otp_dump | grep 17:

The output should say 17:3020000a where the 3 indicates that USB boot is enabled.

Now plug the SSD into a computer and using the Raspberry Pi Imager create a new image on it.

Plug the SSD in and remove the SD card. Reboot. It should now work.

I tried to use the SD card copier to copy the SD card image onto the SSD and it didn't work. I kept getting 'Kernel panic-not syncing: VFS: unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(179,2)'

Apparently if you have a Pi 3 (not the B) then you need to format a SD card and just put the file bootcode.bin onto it (available from Pi site). Then put this card in the SD card slot. This tells the Pi to boot from the SSD.

Norman

Windows / Application has failed to start because its side-by-side configu

« on: August 11, 2021, 10:15:42 am »

"Application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect".

This has loomed up following a recent Windows update.

If you download a program from the internet then try to install it then you get a message similar to the above. It does not install anything.

It seems to be caused by a faulty Microsoft Visual C++ redistributable package. The quickest 'cure' is to go into Control Panel then Programs and Features then REMOVE ALL Microsoft Visual C++ redistributable packages.

Then - reinstall them all. I found a single source here - https://www.techpowerup.com/download/visual-c-redistributable-runtime-package-all-in-one/

Norman