Kayako wget OpenSSL: error:140770FC:SSL routines:SSL23_GET_SERVER_HELLO:unknown protocol

We are using Kayako for our support ticket system. I just updated our server from Ubuntu 12.04 to Ubuntu 14.04. We started to see a problem with some crons which automate the importing and processing of emails.

This is the error that we got:

Resolving support.oursite.com (support.oursite.com)... 127.0.1.1
Connecting to support.oursite.com (support.oursite.com)|127.0.1.1|:443... connected.
OpenSSL: error:140770FC:SSL routines:SSL23_GET_SERVER_HELLO:unknown protocol
Unable to establish SSL connection.

There are several possible SSL problems that this could be:

1 – The destination site does not like the protocol – this could be caused but CURL / WGET not using a compatible version of SSL as the server. So you can try setting the version of ssl like so:

wget -secure-protocol=SSLv2 https://example.com
curl --sslv2 https://example.com

2 – The destination site does not like the cipher. This can be caused by a poor cipher configuration in Apache or anonymous ciphers is disabled on the server.

Finally – and this was my problem…

The php script that was making the request was located on the same server as the Kayako support ticket system. The url for the server was something like support.randomhacks.co.uk and the hostname of the server was also support.randomhacks.co.uk . So, when looking up the DNS record for support.randomhacks.co.uk the computer went to /etc/hosts and returned 127.0.0.1 rather than the public ip address. So, when the script tried to connect to Apache at 127.0.0.1 using https it failed because SSL certificates a limited to one ip address only and this was the public IP address.

I hope help solve you problem. I would be great to hear if you have another solution.
I hope this helps someone.

Kayako – Your PHP was not compiled with IMAP support. Ubuntu 14.04

If you have just upgrade Ubuntu from 12.04 to Ubuntu 14.04 and are running Kayako. You might have seens this bug:

Your PHP was not compiled with IMAP support. 

The solution is to first install the php imap extension:

sudo apt-get install php5-imap

Then restart Apache using:

sudo apache2ctl restart

If you are still having the error then you need to explicitely enable this extension.

ln /etc/php5/conf.d/imap.ini /etc/php5/apache2/conf.d/20-imap.ini

Then finally restart Apache again:

sudo apache2ctl restart

Hope this help someone.

Bacula Error shell command: run AfterJob “/etc/bacula/scripts/delete_catalog_backup” Ubuntu 14.40

I have just upgraded from Ubuntu 12.04 to Ubuntu 14.04 on our Bacula backup server. Everything is backing up okay however it’s failing to delete the catalogue backup job after it has run. The error message is:

24-Apr 23:31 bacula-dir JobId 7388: shell command: run AfterJob "/etc/bacula/scripts/delete_catalog_backup"

It turns out that Ubuntu 14.04 updated the backup script /etc/bacula/scripts/delete_catalog_backup but didn’t make is excutable. I could see this by running:

ls -la /etc/bacula/scripts/

and saw:

-rw------- 1 root root   104 Apr 24 20:30 delete_catalog_backup
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   112 Sep  8  2012 delete_catalog_backup.ucf-old

To fix this you just need to run the following command:

sudo chmod 755 /etc/bacula/scripts/delete_catalog_backup

This should fix the issue but you can test this my:

sudo bconsole
run job=BackupCatalog"

Let me know if this works for you.

Replacing Windows XP with Ubuntu and Mac’s

We are starting to upgrade lots of machines now that support for Windows XP has ended. Naturally, we are installing Ubuntu on as many machines as possible… but sometimes there are software restrictions and we have to make a purchasing decision between Apple and Windows.

Apple hardware is cheaper longterm
What is really interesting it that we are finding it is cheaper to replace Windows machines with Apple Macs. Surely this isn’t possible!? Well actually it is. Here is how I see it. There are obviously two components that make up a computer:

Hardware
Generic super crap Windows hardware is cheaper than Apple hardware. However, if you get something good quality, there isn’t much in it. For example:

  • Windows Machine – a Fujitsu Esprimo E410 E85+ SFF Desktop with Intel Core i5-3340 3GHz, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD and a confusing mixture of Windows 7 + 8 Pro 64bit – £449.00 from Ebuyer.
  • Apple Machine – Apple Mac mini 2.5GHz Dual Core Intel Core i5 4GB 500GB – £479.00 from Dabs.

The processor is better on the Fujitsu but not by much and even though Fujistu make great gear there is no denying that the quality of the Mac Mini is the best. Note – you can’t upgrade either without voiding their warranties.

Software
Short term, we don’t need to purchase anti-virus, firewalls and generally remove the bundled crap that always comes with a Windows machine. In fact, everything just works better on a Mac out the box.

Longterm, you always need to reinstall and upgrade an operating system in the future. The key here is that Apple makes it free to upgrade or reinstall. Windows charge around £100 for a license. Therefore, over the life of the machine it will cheaper to own an Apple product.

How to cancel your naked wines subscription / membership

I’ve been a member of the Naked Wines – however I come to conclusion that it isn’t very good value for money and the range of wines isn’t very good. However, it isn’t clear how to cancel your naked wines account and Google doesn’t have this as a good page range. This post isn’t purely to help that!

Here is a link to cancel your Naked Wine subscription:

Cancel your Naked wine subscription

Ubuntu Unity freezes after login when upgraded from Ubuntu 13.10 to 14.04

I just upgraded from Ubuntu 13.10 to Ubuntu 14.04. However, after I had entered the username and password the computer froze. Unity just appears to hang. I fixed this by reinstalling Unity.

Note – this problem might have be caused by the upgrade process. I’m not sure it was related to this error message:

(gtk-update-icon-cache:19911): GdkPixbuf-WARNING **: Cannot open pixbuf loader module file '/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gdk-pixbuf-2.0/2.10.0/loaders.cache': No such file or directory

This likely means that your installation is broken.
Try running the command
  gdk-pixbuf-query-loaders > /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gdk-pixbuf-2.0/2.10.0/loaders.cache to make things work again for the time being.

I tried running gdk-pixbuf-query-loaders > /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gdk-pixbuf-2.0/2.10.0/loaders.cache but this didn’t seem to fix the problem.

Step 1 – Get into the terminal
You enter the terminal by holding down ctrl-atl and pressing f2. You can actually press any of the f (function) key and you get a new terminal.

Step 2 – Reinstall Unity and the Ubuntu-Desktop

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install --reinstall ubuntu-desktop
sudo apt-get install unity
sudo reboot

Several people had added additional steps that worked for them. So, please read the comments. I considered modifying the original post but there are several variations on the theme.

This post is getting quite a lot of views. Could you please add a comment if this solution worked or didn’t work for you? It would help me improve the post. Thanks.