How to Disable Touch Screen

There are cases when you want to disable the touch screen when using some application that may cause issues or just you are not using it. You will need to be an administrator to make changes, otherwise, you will get a message, you don’t have rights. Here is how to do disabled, make sure you have another source of input, like external keyboard/mouse, otherwise you will not be able to use your device.

Open Device Manger by going to control panel or just search for device manager

Then expand the Device Manager>Human Interface Devices>Right click on the HID-compliant touch screen and select Disable device

You will get warning message box: Do you really want to disable it? Click Yes Make sure you have external keyboard or mouse, otherwise you will not be able to use your device at all.

That’s it, if you want to re-enable it, just right click on it and it will give you Enable device option



Install XAMPP on Windows 10

XAMPP is very popular many people use for the building, testing the application on your local system. It includes MariaDB, PHP, Perl, and options for FileZilla, Tomcat, etc… It’s free opensource, very easy to set up and use. It can be installed on Windows, Linux, and OS X. I am using Windows 10 Pro, I will go through the install and list some issues/ how to fix issues. You can use Bitnami Application to install ready-to-use applications. It’s well trusted with over 1 million applications per month, which you can use to install from your local installers, single VMs, multi-tier VMs, container images, or Kubernetes Helm charts.

Installation of XAMPP

You can download: https://www.apachefriends.org/download.html
Once you have downloaded the XAMPP, open the installation to start installing, the default location is C:\xampp noted if you install inside of the Program File you might have an issue with permission

I am going to install on default location c:\xampp, click Next

Then it will ask you which components you want to install, select one you like and then click Next

Then it will give you installation location choice, please choose and then click Next

Then click Next (if you want to learn more about Bitnami, you can have it checked otherwise unchecked)

Ready to Install, click Next

Now, it’s going to install whatever you have selected in above choices of the component, then you will see finished screen. That’s it you can start using it.

First time you will get option to select the Language, select it and click Save In case you need to change after you can go to XAMPP Control Panel>Config>Change Language

Then you should see the XAMPP Control Panel, here you can start using, default requirements web server and database, I am going to use Apache and MySQL. You might see error, ports in use, I will list below on fix.

Common Issues/Fixes

Apache port in use: open Config>Service and Port Settings>Apache
Change ports that are not in use both Main and SSL port

You might also need to change MySQL port, default is 3306

Once you have thing running and see any error, you can check out the logs for Apache and PHP, which will give you more details.




osTicket email settings

How to set up an email on an osTicket ticket system, setting up an email to create tickets and get a response back on a ticket system. It’s very easy to set up and to make the changes in case you need to if your support email changes. Here I will list a few email settings for you and you will get an idea, it’s similar you just have to check your email server requirements. Make sure you have the regular email address for your support email. It does not work with shared or forward.

Common settings::

  • Hostname: your email server FQDN
  • Port number: this can be different based on what your account setting is
  • Mail Box Protocol: this would be combined with the Port number, based on your account
  • Fetch Frequency: this can be whatever you like starting from 1 Minute
  • Email per Fetch: how many emails do you want to pull at once, this can also be from 1 to whatever
  • Fetched Emails: What happens once it creates a ticket, this should be set to move to a folder or delete, if you set it to Do nothing, you will have issues
  • Header Spoofing: some have off and some have it on

Incoming and Outgoing email:

Make sure you have email Fetching enabled for incoming emails, otherwise, by default, it will only pull emails when Agent is logged in to the system

For Outgoing email, make sure to set your support email address default as None: Use the PHP mail function

It’s under Emails>Settings
Make sure your Email Login Information is correct

Gmail settings:

This can be different based on your Gmail account settings, so check your Gmail settings and make sure to have the correct hostname, port, protocol, etc… Header spoofing is not needed.

Authentication “Yes” / MTA set as default SMTP account / PORT – 587

If you are using (G Suite) or 2FA settings you will need to create an app password:

Log in to your Gmail account and access the following link
Go to security and click the app password.
Select the app or Give a custom name that makes sense to you and click generate, now use that app-specific password in your osTicket system.

In some cases, you might need to force to use TLS, in that case, you can use the hostname as: tls://smtp.gmail.com

Exchange

  • Hostname: YourMailServer.domain.com
  • Port Number: 993
  • Mail Box Protocol: IMAP + SSL
  • Fetch Frequency: 1 minute (s)
  • Emails Per Fetch: 30
  • Fetched Emails: Move to folder: TicketsOrWhateverName

Microsoft office 365:

make sure your hostname and ports are correct
Hostname: smtp.office365.com or outlook.office365.com
Ports:587 or 993 or 25

For Synology NAS: You will need to setup Cron Job:
/usr/local/bin/YourPHPVerison /volume1/web/osticket/upload/api/cron.php

Check the logs to find more details of osTicket under /scp/logs.php
Web server, email server, Apache, etc… Many times hostname, ports, or protocol are mixed up or typos could cause the email not to work. You might have firewall issues or IP blocking. Hope this help out someone out there

Also, FYI: Ports information

IMAP uses port 143
But if you use SSL/TLS encrypted IMAP uses port 993

POP uses port 110
But if you use SSL/TLS encrypted POP uses port 995

SMTP uses port 25
But if you use SSL/TLS encrypted SMTP uses port 587 (formerly 465)

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How to upgrade osTicket to 1.11

update: this version no longer support please use 1.12 or latest

Finally, osTicket v1.11 is released open source ticket system, it has lots of new feature people been waiting for a long time. You can find official documents and a full list of all the features on here. Most important issues people had was PHP version too old in 1.10.4.  The osTicket v1.11 supports PHP version v5.6-v7.2.

How to upgrade from 1.10.4 to 1.11

  1. Make sure you have a good backup of Database and files of osTicket
  2. Then put the system in the offline mode: by going to /scp/settings.php
  3. Download the new version from https://osticket.com/download/ and choose the osTicket Core, v1.11 (Latest Release)
  4. Upload to your server v. 1.11 and replace current files/folders from Upload folder from your downloaded, and exclude the script folder/files
  5. Make sure you have the correct permission, then go to the URL/SCP of the osTicket system and login, you should see osTicket Upgrader, make sure your Prerequisites are all good, if any errors correct it, then click Start Upgrade Now
  6. Then you should see Apply updates to database stream: core, click Upgrade Now
  7. If everything went well you should see Upgrade Completed

  8. Delete the /setup folder and update any customization you may have, test it, then once all is good you can put the system back online

That’s it if you have customized PHP core files, those needs to be re-applied after the upgrade. Also, make sure your plugins are good, if needed upgrade do so, make sure it supports the new version. one more thing, if using Language packs, you can find them at the osTicket website, those do needs to be updated.   You will find many solutions to the problem in a forum where people report and help out each other. Please read your error message and logs of your system web server, PHP, osTicket, it gives many ideas about why things are not working. Many of them due to the PHP version not supported. If you were to get help from the forum, please include your system information, like osTicket, PHP version, web server, and remember forum support is free, so don’t order/demand to fix your issues.  They do offer paid support if you wish to pay for it.  Thank you very much to the osTicket team for their hard work on keeping osTicket System up to date.



How to upgrade WordPress

Many websites and company Intranet runs on WordPress around the world. Keeping the WordPress software is very important to keep your data safe. The process can be very simple or it could involve a lot of planning and carefully testing a newer version, before upgrading the live system. If you have set up your WordPress correctly with the right permission and documented all the customization then it should be easy to upgrade. Your template/plugin is the key to your WordPress function. The template should be customized to void the system upgrade issues and tested.

Preparation for upgrade

  • Backup database and installation files, make sure your backup is good
  • Check your current Plugin and Template comparability
  • Have your customization documentation handy, review it make sure they are up to date
  • Make sure you have access to the server directly, in case you lose remote session
  • Plan out and communicate with your users

Upgrade options 1

Login to your WordPress admin pannel, make sure you have full permission

1. Click on Update>Update Now

If everything goes well you should see: latest version installed 5.0.2

Then you need to upgrade the Templates Themes

2. Click on Update> you will see the message:
“The following themes have new versions available. Check the ones you want to update and then click “Update Themes”.”

click on each or select all and update

3. If there are any Plugin updates you will see message:
“The following plugins have new versions available. Check the ones you want to update and then click “Update Plugins”. “

Upgrade options 2

The manual process, assumed you have already done the backup in case anything goes wrong you can restore it. Download WordPress and extract the WordPress you just downloaded

1. Delete the old wp-includes and wp-admin directories from server, so it should look something like this

2. Then upload the wp-includes and wp-admin to server
3. Upload wp-content folder to your server and overwrite existing files
4. upload all of the root directory files and overwite on server

Then go to your WordPress URL, you should see Database update Required, click Update WordPress Database

If everything goes well you should see Update Complete

In case you want to check your WordPress is up to date you can type in URL
/wp-admin/upgrade.php

Then you need to upgrade the Templates Themes/Plugin
Click on Update>
you should see message for Themes/Plugin update, click on each one an update it.

The following plugins have new versions available. Check the ones you want to update and then click “Update Plugins”.

The following themes have new versions available. Check the ones you want to update and then click “Update Themes”.

That’s it, of course to test your website, menu, links, etc…