Realtek SD card reader problems on Ubuntu Mint 16.04 on a Dell Inspiron 3421

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Pretty specific huh? Well the thing is I have the exact same card reader, OS,  version on one Lenovo laptop. The SD card works on the Lenovo, but not on the Dell Inspiron 3421.

The error it made on the Dell was the following in /var/log/syslog

Feb 14 08:30:46 raspberry kernel: [ 216.319736] mmc0: error -22 whilst initialising SD card
Feb 14 08:30:48 raspberry kernel: [ 219.151052] mmc0: tuning execution failed: -22

Lots of googling down dead ends ensued. Here's a little more info about the device in question.

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Switch from UFW and fail2ban to CSF

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Having played with CSF for a while on one server, I've decided I like it more than UFW and fail2ban. It seems much better at blocking mail bruteforce attacks and SSH as a distributed attack. So anyway, here's a list of steps to achieve that, as much for my record as anything. The server is running Ubuntu 16.04, but these general steps should work anywhere. In addition the server I did it on is also running VestaCP, so there are a couple more steps for that.

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Alternative DNS servers in the Philippines

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Sometimes the default DNS servers for ISPs in the Philippines don't work. Sometimes they get overloaded, sometimes they block certain sites and not others due to internal agendas (PLDT blocking Globe sites for eg.). So here's a list of the alternatives. Outside the Philippines Cloudflare, APNIC 1.1.1.11.0.0.12606:4700:4700::11112606:4700:4700::1001[added Mar 2019. Current favourite] Google DNS 8.8.8.88.8.4.42001:4860:4860::8888 (IPv6)2001:4860:4860::8844 … Read more

Viber SQlite Database Extraction / Forensics

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Well you can use this to pull messages out of a Viber Desktop database. I personally had to do it when I re-installed Viber and it deleted my entire message history, which wasn't so friendly, so I pulled this out of the database so I could refer to it in a spreadsheet. Maybe there is … Read more