At a customer, a Linux workstation suddenly refused to open HTTPS sites. Verified recent package versions of both browser (konqueror) and libraries (kde, openssl), everything looked good, but it didn't work. This blogpost serves as documentation for the fact that checking new software isn't enough, because in this case removing old openssl compatibility libraries solved the problem. The kio_http helper is not linked with openssl directly, and for some reason it must have tried to open one of the old openssl versions that were also installed. After erasing all versions between 0.9.5a and 0.9.6b, keeping the current 0.9.8e, konqueror had no problems opening https sites anymore.
Several years ago, I created a list of ESXi versions with matching VM BIOS identifiers. The list is now complete up to vSphere 7. Your Linux runs on a VMware VM, but on which ESXi version? Even without access to the host nor vCenter, you can see for yourself: run "dmidecode" and look at lines 10, 11 and 12. The BIOS release date, the address and the runtime size are unique for each ESXi version. Starting from 7.0 U3, no address and size is reported, and the "Phoenix Technologies LTD" name changed to "VMware, Inc.". Look up your result in the following table: ESXi version BIOS release date Address Size ESX 2.5 04/21/2004 0xE8480 97152 bytes ESX 3.0 04/17/2006 0xE7C70 99216 bytes ESX 3.5 01/30/2008 0xE7910 100080 bytes ESX 4 08/15/2008 0xEA6C0 88384 bytes ESX 4U1 09/22/2009 0xEA550 88752 bytes ESX 4.1 10/13/2009 0xEA2E0 89376 bytes ESXi 5 01/07/2011 0xE72C0 101696 bytes ESXi 5.1 06/22/2012 0xEA0C0 89920 bytes ESXi 5.5 07...
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