crossRT – Page 2

How to fix WordPress user registration email not sending while admin notification is sent.

Published by crossRT on December 14, 2015

Today I noticed my WordPress is not sending registration email to new user, but I’m received the notification email.
I spent 2 hours to figure it out.

Local SMTP mail server checked, email sent without any error.
External SMTP mail server tried, email sent without any error.

Both sending method sent notification to admin only, but not user registration email.

I suspect the problem is not caused by mail server, then I check all installed plugins.

Finally I found a plugin called “Stop Spammers Spam Control” cause the problem I mentioned above. By deactivating it, everything works like charm again.

Conclusion

So if you having the same problem like me, try deactivate some installed anti-spammer plugins. It might helped.

Upgrade PHP 5.5 to 7.0 on Ubuntu 14.04

Published by crossRT on December 12, 2015

PHP 7.0 just released 2 weeks ago, and it has good reviews about performance improved a lot. So I would like to give it a try, upgrading my Ubuntu 14.04 VPS on DigitalOcean to this latest PHP version. Here is my upgrade snippet.

My VPS details before upgrade:

Ubuntu 14.04
PHP 5.5.9
nginx 1.4.6
phpmyadmin installed

Steps

Add the repository
```
add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php-7.0
```
Update
```
apt-get update
```
You can check installed php5-* packages with this command, for better understanding before remove them.
```
dpkg --get-selections | grep php
```

Remove all php5-* packages

apt-get purge php5-*
apt-get --purge autoremove

Install php7.0 packages. Some might not necessary, depends on your requirement.

apt-get install php7.0-fpm php7.0-mysql php7.0-cli php7.0-common php7.0-json php7.0-opcache

After everything installed properly, you will need to update your web server configuration. For me, I need to modify fastcgi_pass directive in Nginx config file to something like this:
```
fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock;
```
This is because the location of socket file has changed in php7.

Restart your nginx and php7.0-fpm

service nginx restart
service php7.0-fpm restart

Notes:

Run all commands with sudo or your root account.
phpMyAdmin will be removed during the steps above. Because it requires some php5 packages.

Setup SFTP for a user to access restricted folder only on Ubuntu 14.04

Published by crossRT on April 15, 2015

Today I need to give my friend access to my server, so he can edit any files in that folder. My server is running OpenSSH and SFTP is enabled by default, actually I can create a new Linux user for him to access with SFTP. But I just want he accessing to the folder I gave him, so here I modify OpenSSH configuration to fit my need.

System details:

Ubuntu 14.04
Running OpenSSH

Steps:

Add a group called sftp.
```
sudo addgroup sftp
```
Add new user with default home path, assign to sftp group and disable shell access.
```
sudo useradd -m -g sftp -s /bin/false username
```
Give a new password for the user.
```
sudo passwd username
```
Change home directory’s user and group to root.
```
sudo chown root:root /home/username
```
Change home directory’s permission
```
sudo chmod 755 /home/username
```
Go into the folder
```
cd /home/username
```
Create a new folder named www.
```
sudo mkdir www
```
Change www folder’s user and group to username.
```
sudo chown username:username www
```
This step is the core. Edit to /etc/ssh/sshd_config with the editor you used to.
```
sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config
```
Add following lines to the end of /etc/ssh/sshd_config.
```
Match group sftp
	ChrootDirectory %h
	X11Forwarding no
	AllowTcpForwarding no
	ForceCommand internal-sftp
	# PasswordAuthentication yes
```
Enable PasswordAuthentication by uncomment it if you enabled PubkeyAuthentication for other users in sshd_config.
Restart ssh service. Done.
```
sudo /etc/init.d/ssh restart
```

Author: crossRT