Okay, so I was installing an SSL certificate using Godaddy.com as the certificate provider. I followed their instructions for generating the key, creating the CSR and downloading and installing the certificate. Then I go to restart apache and apache will not restart with the following error:

Enter pass phrase:Apache:mod_ssl:Error: Private key not found.

On my Redhat machine, I am not even prompted to put in the password. It simply fails on me.

While it would be preferred to find a way to configure the passphrase into the startup files, I am not able to figure out how to do it. However, I do learn that you can eliminate the passphrase from the key file and this is what many on the internet recommend doing. This is the command to eliminate the passphrase.

# openssl rsa -in www.key -out new.key

Thanks MNX Solutions…it took me an over an hour to find you.

http://www.mnxsolutions.com/blog/apache/removing-a-passphrase-from-an-ssl-key.html

So I decided it is time to learn OpenBSD. I have had my head stuck under Windows and Red Hat Linux for some time. I knew eventually it would come to this. I have a need for a new firewall because I don’t want to pay Astaro for support and maintenance. So I have now installed OpenBSD on two machines and both times I ran into the same issue. I cannot ping outside of the Cox Communications subnet. I can ping items within the subnet such as the Gateway and my other firewall, but I cannot ping anything else including the external DNS server.

Setup
I am hooking my OpenBSD directly to the internet as it is intended to become a firewall. During the installation process, I configured one ethernet card for the external network, gave it an IP Address, and a subnet mask. But I could not see where to place the Gateway value.

The network settings given by the ISP were as follows (values changed to protect the innocent):

IPAddress: 81.147.68.133
Subnet: 255.255.255.128
Gateway: 81.147.68.129

To look at my settings, I went to /etc/myhostname.fxp0 which was the name of the file for configuring the network card on this particular machine. This is what it should have looked like.

INET 81.147.68.133 255.255.255.128 NONE

Since I did not know where to put the Gateway, I originally tried variations such as replacing NONE with the gateway address. However, whenever I tested the network, I was still not able to access or ping the DNS or anything outside of the subnet.

Solution
The gateway needed to be added. The file for the gateway did not exist by default. To add the gateway, I had to create the following file:

/etc/mygate

Inside that file, I added the IP address of the Gateway.

After saving the file, I rebooted the machine and now my access to the external network works properly. I can fully access the internet.

What I finally figured out later is that the Gateway address is one of the parameters that you set during the installation. I must have left it blank while I was going through the installation process. However, they did not call it a gateway. They called it something else.

Affect on Page Rank
Recently for Quest Software, we changed the domain name of one of the communities. It was a fairly new community that had plans to become one of the most prolific communities for Quest Software. Prior to the name change, the site already had the Google Page Rank of 3/10 showing up in the Google Toolbar. Not long thereafter, the new URL was showing up with a Page Rank of 0/10. I was quite ashamed as I was the one who recommended the change to the shorter URL. I felt that I had damaged the site. Then someone from outside of the communities pointed out that my redirects where not 301 redirects, they were 302 redirects.

Frankly, at this time, I had never heard of a 301 redirect. But being open to learn new things, I researched the 301 redirects and found this post by Matt Cutts, http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-discussing-302-redirects/.

In a nutshell, a 301 redirect is a permenant redirect. A 302 redirect is a temporary redirect. The new domain name recieved a 302 redirect from the original domain name and hence a penalty in Google probably for being duplicate content of an existing domain. The original domain name was simply being considered as temporarily offline.

So I dug in and figured out that the redirects I had set up in IIS did not have the “a permanent redirection for this resource” box checked. Problem solved? At least now I have the redirect set up properly.

Here is an example of what a 301 redirect looks like in IIS.

Here are a couple of examples of doing 301 redirects when using Apache / Linux.
http://briannettles.com/2008/07/using-htaccess-to-redirect-a-single-webpage/
http://briannettles.com/2008/05/getting-rid-of-the-www-on-you-website/

It still took another 6 weeks or so for the page rank in the toolbar to change. It remained showing up in the toolbar with a ranking of 0/10 throughout this time. Then finally on July 31, it changed to a ranking of 4/10.

Affect on Search Engine Results
While I do not have clear knowledge of how the Quest site was affected in the search engine results, I do have a second example where I do know how it was affected.

My tire chain website had a name which I chose to get rid of. Originally, this obsolete website was the catalog for my new site. I was reluctant to ditch the orginal name at first for one reason–the placement on the long tail search results for “Rud tire chains” was good. While the results for “Tire Chains” was horrible on the original domain name being on page 35, the results for “Rud tire chains” was perfect in the number 2 spot on page 1–right behind the manufacturer’s web page. Now the new domain name showed up on page 15 for “Tire chains” - much better. However, it as in position 5 on page 1 for “Rud tire chains”. I did not want to lose that number 2 spot which the original domain name had. Also, I had already changed about as many of the links as I was going to get changed to the new domain name and I believe that mostly all of the link changes were already saturated in Google for about a two week time period.

I took a chance to see what would happen if I put up a 301 redirect from the old domain name to the catalog directory of the new domain name and placed all of the contents of the old site into the catalog directory of the new site.

There was no change in Google for about ten days. Then finally the 301 redirect kicked in with Google. The old domain name disappeared as I had expected. Then new domain name jumped up into the coveted number two spot that I was afraid to lose. I even jumped up two pages on Google for the keyword search of “Tire Chains” to where I am now on page 13. This was a total win for me. Now I have the domain name I like, the positive ranking of the old domain name, and improved ranking of the new domain name.

Conclusion
A 301 redirect is a critical piece that all SEO experts must be familiar with. Google appears to handle it very nicely. I have been warned in other blog posts that the other search engines may not be so friendly to the 301 redirect. Since the vast majority of my traffic comes from Google anyways, I am not all that concerned with it.