Monthly Archives: January 2012

Blocking advert sites using /etc/hosts

Using the hostsfile.mine.nu approach to blocking adverts is nothing new, but sometimes in the course of testing something, I do actually need to see if adverts and ad pop-ups are working correctly. So I do this… Download the hosts file …

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Persistent SSH connections with tmux

I administer a group of Amazon cloud instances and am constantly having to SSH in to update and monitor them. And for some reason (maybe because I live in the back of beyond) I often get really poor connections to …

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Size of MySQL fields – incorrect assumptions

I came to the world of MySQL with very little experience. I inherited a DB with a client I took on, and found myself learning what I needed as I went on. And I found something out today that surprised …

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Protecting WordPress from script fishing attacks with Fail2Ban (more…)

A better, but slightly more complex, solution has been posted here A previous post here suggested using a blanket ban on all 404s recorded in the access.log, but this isn’t working quite as well as expected. Mainly due to the …

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