The mail, web and DNS server has received new disks. The old 5400RPM 320Gbytes HDDs have been replaced by 1Tb SSD disks. This will allow to use larger quotas on the mail-server side, and will be specially faster for all requests that are ran on the server.

The day after the OS has been upgraded from Ubuntu 14.04 LTS to Ubuntu 18.04 LTS getting through Ubuntu LTS 16.04 LTS.
The main issues have been the passage from upstart to systemd, where some applications (mysql)_ could not b...  

 Since Microsoft has released Windows 10, many things have changed. Notably, you are now almost forced to upgrade your old Windows session (Win7, Win 8 and 8.1). Also, Microsoft now collects a complete set of data - and they call that telemetry and data analysis for cortana. Only, for that to work, all the data needs to be collected all the time, as eventually you can tell cortana to execute an action. Imagine the Microphone always active and listening sending the data out to Microsofts sy...  

 as the kids start getting older, and they tend to test out the limits of the "internet" - I had to do something to prevent them from discovering things they should not see.
As I had already implemented a phishing and add-blocking system throughout the DNS Server I host on my server, what I needed was a way to block the kids access to some by us parents unwanted content.

The answer to this question was Bind9 + views + openDNS.
Bind9 and views allowed me to setup some ACL...  

 Have upgraded the base OS of the Server to 14.04 LTS to avoid having upgrading it all too often. Apart from some little things that needed fixing, it went well. Still don't understand why Ubuntu keeps using ash as sh shell... Also don't try changing it on the fly. dpkg absolutely hates it 

 As script-kiddies from around the world are so keen to probe for any type of existing software etc., I decided to enhance the currently running blacklisting system a little.
Until now, people probing non existing pages on this server had 3 attempts before being blocked by the websites software (put into a quarantine access). However, as soon as they continued probing from the same IP Address - they were locked out hard by the firewall which checks the system on a regular base for adding new...  

 Well - the first one was due to a scheduled Road-Work where I was advised that the power would be disable for 4 hours. What I did not predict though was that the UPS that was running here for some years now wouldn't last for more than 3 Minutes making me order a new one - which I have installed today. And this means, another outage. The new UPS though has a display showing the power-state and details on the battery, and hopefully I will be able, in the future, to predict when the battery has to...  

 Updated all data from the Linux Counter. You can see my linux-counter page here . Note that for some systems, the busybox binary won enable me to automatically update all data, however the manual entered data is accurate. 

 Upgraded the OS on Stargate from Ubuntu LTS 6.06.2 to 10.04 LTS (via 8.04.2). Some small quircks needed to get fix - but all in all it took barely 30 Minutes per OS Upgrade, and the fix at the end, a little bit of googling around, to identify that applications have changed API that needed to be adapted.

A real 2 hours for the upgrade processes, and another 2 Hours for the fixes. Try that with windows - as going from Windows 98 through to Windows Xp then to Windows 7 :) Good Luck ! 

 It is quite amazing. You buy some new hardware, shiny new disk, CPU, memory, Case, DVD-Writer etc. all in, migrate the old system to that hardware, adapt all scripts for automation, monitoring, remote access and apply the newest patches etc.
You tell yourself, that for the next 5 years there won't be any more hardware related issues showing up. That box then runs for 2.5months, and suddenly you are bombarded with S.M.A.R.T. alerts sent to you, and the full-backup is unable to go through a...  

 my old NAS beeing dead (kind of had to expect it, the server died, and the NAS was not much younger than the server) - I decided to go for a replacement having the following features:

• Low power consumption
• Raid capability
• Linux OS, that can be adapted to own needs
• Possibility to use more than 2 disks, preferably enough to hold a Raid5
• SMART Monitoring capability for all disks
• UPS Support - Back-UPS CS 350

After lots of...