WordPress Permalinks Issue Solved

Almost after Twenty hours of nerve wrecking and hair splitting search, finally got the much irritating WordPress Permalinks Issue solved for my blog.

Yes, the one you are reading right now.

There are some standard procedures you might not want to skip.

First, check if mod_rewrite is enabled in your Apache config and to enable mod_rewrite in Apache if not already, type the following in your terminal

sudo a2enmod rewrite

It should enable or tell you “Module rewrite already enabled”

Now that mod_rewrite has been sorted, lets get to telling Apache that its alright if the .htaccess file overrides some server level settings.

Look for “AllowOverride none” in your 000-default.conf, httpd.conf, httpd-vhosts.conf and change it to “AllowOverride all” – It is important that you check in all these files as it took me several hours of searching to figure that out as primarily I was tinkering with my httpd-vhosts.conf and httpd.conf and didn’t pay attention to the 000-default.conf file.

Once you’ve made the change, restart Apache using the following command

service apache2 restart

Now, ensure there is a .htaccess file in your WordPress install directory.

If its not there, then create an empty one using the following command in your terminal

touch .htaccess && chmod 666 .htaccess

Don’t worry yet about adding anything in the .htaccess file. WordPress will handle it for you.

Now go to your WordPress Settings and set your Permalinks to whatever options given there pleases you and save the settings. This should generate the required content for the .htaccess file automatically.

You can visit your site and check if the fancy Permalinks are working and then change the permission for the .htaccess file to 644.

That should set you right with your WordPress Permalinks Issue.

ShellShock – CVE-2014-6271 and CVE-2014-7169 Bash Vulnerability

If you are running a *nix machine, personal or in a server capacity, in most probability your system is affected by this vulnerability thats been reported. I just ran a check on my boxlet running Ubuntu 12.4 LTS and yes, it was indeed vulnerable. This quick note covers identifying, fixing the ShellShock Bash Vulnerability.

At this point there seem to be incomplete fixes available and we’d have to wait to see more development on this. Keep a close watch on your favorite distro’s security updates and ensure your boxlet is patched.

How to check if your *nix boxlet is vulnerable to the ShellShock Bash Vulnerability?

Open a terminal and copy paste this command:

env x=‘() { :;}; echo vulnerable’ bash c ‘echo hello’

If your boxlet is not vulnerable, you should get the following message as response:

bash: warning: x: ignoring function definition attempt
bash: error importing function definition for `x’
hello

If your boxlet is indeed vulnerable, most likely, it would be, you should get the following message as response:

vulnerable
hello

How to fix the ShellShock Bash Vulnerability?

Now to the fix, its pretty much nothing but an update, to do so, type the following in the terminal:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install bash

Heres what happens “sudo apt-get update”  makes sure that you have the latest packages list and that should include the fixed version of bash and “sudo apt-get install bash” installs the latest, fixed version of bash.

With that, you should be patched for the ShellShock Bash Vulnerability.

However, there are no certainty but to keep a close watch on security sites to see more development and fixes as they evolve.

Keep safe and Keep Peace!