This entry will guide through the process of creating a self-signed certificate to use on an Apache Tomcat 7 or 8 HTTPS connector. Self-signed certificates allow secure, encrypted HTTPS connections but are not certified by any trusted certificate authority. So first time client connections will receive all kinds of warnings from their web browser. Because of this they are not recommended for use in production environments but are useful for secure LAN traffic or testing HTTPS configurations.

rsync is a widely used tool for synchronisation so to keep copies of a file on multiple computers the same. Because of its flexibility it has become the defacto standard on Linux and other similar systems. While newer protocols and tools such as Dropbox and BitTorrent Sync overlap with and improve on some of rsync’s capability. Rsync is still relevant today both for syncing and for other function such as local directory duplication and large file copying.

tar is a feature rich but often confusing archiving tool most commonly used on Linux and BSD systems. One of the great benefits of tar over other more modern tools such as 7z, RAR or ZIP is that it is open source, free and platform agnostic. Even more importantly for Linux users tar archives preserve user and file permissions allowing for easy directory backups and restoration.

Over the years I have looked around for easy to use MySQL database backup tools that I can quickly and reliably automate. I’ve tried many unsatisfactory solutions but finally I have found something I am happy with, Perscona’s XtraBackup.

With the recent admission from Adobe that it lost over 150 million user accounts from its online database in October. I thought it would be wise to go over my tool of choice for password management, KeePass.