March 26, 2020

Issues Solved covid-19: day 14 | US: GA | info | act

There were two issues I needed to solve on my new server that I couldn’t yesterday: (1) apache (or php) was not talking with mysql, and (2) I couldn’t get certbot to install. Both actually ended up being simple fixes.

The mysql issue involved authentication. I only learned this by turning on debugging in Wordpress. Following the [advice of others, I was able to solve this issue within mysql easily. I transferred my Wordpress sites, and they seemed to be running just fine. Oops, all except for the url rewrites. Again, this was just the matter of a tweak in the apache2 configuration file. I really love doing this stuff, and the open-source community lends such great support to us noobs.

As the above makes clear, I soon fixed my certbot issue. It was a matter of a different install to support my version of Ubuntu. Then—BAM!—it ran like a charm. I am truly impressed at this free service. Let’s Encrypt provides a valuable service for securing the internet, and it’s super easy compared to Namecheap’s complicated and often problematic process. Plus, did I mention, these certificates are free? Yes Namecheap oftens runs specials on their certificates, but I’ve always had to pay something—usually a minimum of $10. I’d rather donate to projects like this.