Linux system administration and security (via Mowser)

Information for Linux System Administration

Tutorial: Centralized RSYSLOG Server Monitoring

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This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions on how to install RSYSLOG server on Debian 6 (Squeeze) and how to send syslog data to it from multiple client servers. We will also show how to install an Apache webserver and a MySQL database server to gather the syslog data and how to install LogAnalyzer to easily browse the collected data with a web-browser. read more...

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permapage | score:9995 | -falko, February 17, 2012

Tutorial: Build a Web, Email, DNS, MySQL Database Cluster server on Debian 6.0

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This tutorial describes the installation of a clustered web, email, database and DNS server to be used for redundancy, high availability and load balancing on Debian 6 with the ISPConfig 3 control panel. MySQL Master/Master replication will be used to replicate the MySQL client databases between the servers and Unison will be used to Sync the /var/www (websites) and /var/vmail (email account data) folders. read more...

permapage | score:9981 | -falko, February 16, 2012

Tutorial: Install Lighttpd, PHP5 and MySQL on Ubuntu 11.10

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Lighttpd is a secure, fast, standards-compliant web server designed for speed-critical environments. This tutorial shows how you can install Lighttpd on an Ubuntu 11.10 server with PHP5 support (through FastCGI) and MySQL support. read more...

permapage | score:9968 | -falko, February 15, 2012

Tutorial: Rename Apache Server with mod_security on Debian 6

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In this tutorial I want to focus on how to change the Apache server name to whatever you want, so you can give your own name or sentence to Apache server headers that are sent to whois programs or websites, for example you can type "YTS", "GWS" or "Microsoft-IIS/7.0" to misguide the hacker to guess which Linux OS or which version of Apache you are using. read more...

permapage | score:9959 | -falko, February 13, 2012

Upgrading Nagios XI

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Before you update your Nagios XI server be sure to create a good backup that could be used to recover if there are problems. This article provides you a script that you can use to backup Nagios XI before an upgrade and shows how to perform the upgrade of Nagios. read more...

permapage | score:9957 | -aweber, February 14, 2012

Icinga configuration for Nginx on Debian 7/Ubuntu 11.10

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Icinga is an enterprise grade open source monitoring system which keeps watch over networks and any conceivable network resource, notifies the user of errors and recoveries and generates performance data for reporting. It is a fork of Nagios. This tutorial explains how to serve the Icinga Web interface from an nginx server on Debian Wheezy/Ubuntu 11.10 (the tutorial might work for Debian Squeeze as well but I didn't test; Squeeze's Icinga version is a lot older than the versions for Wheezy and Ubuntu 11.10, so there might be small differences). read more...

mail this link | permapage | score:9956 | -falko, February 14, 2012

Tutorial: Run ownCloud3 on Nginx on Debian 6, Ubuntu 11.10

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This tutorial shows how you can install and run ownCloud3 on a Debian Squeeze or Ubuntu 11.10 system that has nginx installed instead of Apache (LEMP = Linux + nginx (pronounced "engine x") + MySQL + PHP). ownCloud enables universal access to files through the widely implemented WebDAV standard, providing a platform to easily view and sync contacts, calendars and bookmarks across devices while supporting sharing, viewing and editing via the web interface. It offers the ease-of-use of Dropbox and box.net without vendor lock in. ownCloud users can run its file sync and share services on their own hardware. nginx is a HTTP server that uses much less resources than Apache and delivers pages a lot of faster, especially static files. read more...

mail this link | permapage | score:9951 | -falko, February 6, 2012

Tutorial: Install Postfix, Courier, MySQL, SquirrelMail on CentOS 6.2

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This document describes how to install a Postfix mail server that is based on virtual users and domains, i.e. users and domains that are in a MySQL database. I'll also demonstrate the installation and configuration of Courier, so that Courier can authenticate against the same MySQL database Postfix uses. The resulting Postfix server is capable of SMTP-AUTH and TLS and quota. Passwords are stored in encrypted form in the database. In addition to that, this tutorial covers the installation of Amavisd, SpamAssassin, ClamAV and SquirrelMail. read more...

mail this link | permapage | score:9949 | -falko, February 2, 2012

Tutorial: PHP5-FPM and Apache2 on Ubuntu 11.10

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This tutorial shows how you can install an Apache2 webserver on an Ubuntu 11.10 server with PHP5 (through PHP-FPM) and MySQL support. PHP-FPM (FastCGI Process Manager) is an alternative PHP FastCGI implementation with some additional features useful for sites of any size, especially busier sites. read more...

permapage | score:9947 | -falko, February 12, 2012

AVG Antivirus For Linux/FreeBSD Plus Postfix Mail Server

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This document describes how to deploy AVG Antivirus for Linux/FreeBSD to a Postfix mail server. It is usable for AVG version 8.5, 10 and 2012. By using AVG Antivirus with your Postfix mail server, you can ensure virus-free inboxes. read more...

permapage | score:9934 | -falko, February 4, 2012

Tutorial: Xen on CentOS 6.2

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This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions on how to install Xen (version 4.1.2) on a CentOS 6.2 (x86_64) system. Xen lets you create guest operating systems (*nix operating systems like Linux and FreeBSD), so called "virtual machines" or domUs, under a host operating system (dom0). Using Xen you can separate your applications into different virtual machines that are totally independent from each other, but still use the same hardware. read more...

permapage | score:9922 | -falko, January 31, 2012

Tutorial: Harden Postfix

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The goal of this tutorial is to harden the mail server Postfix used by ISPConfig for internet mail servers where authenticated users are trusted. With this setup you will reject a great amount of spam before it passes into your mail queue, saving a lot of system resources and making your mail server strong against spammers and spam botnets. read more...

permapage | score:9911 | -falko, February 3, 2012

Tutorial: Secure your server with a free StartSSL Certificate

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This tutorial shows how you can use a free Class1 SSL Certificate from StartSSL to secure your ISPConfig 3 installation and get rid of self-signed certificate warnings. The guide covers using the SSL certificate for the ISPConfig web interface (both Apache2 and nginx), Postfix (for TLS connections), Courier and Dovecot (for POP3s and IMAPs), and PureFTPd (for TLS/FTPES connections). If you've installed monit and use HTTPS for its web interface, I will show you how to use the StartSSL certificate for it as well. This guide assumes you use Debian or Ubuntu; the principle is the same for other distributions supported by ISPConfig 3, but paths might differ. read more...

mail this link | permapage | score:9910 | -falko, January 30, 2012

Tutorial: Install Lighttpd, PHP5, MySQL on CentOS 6.0

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Lighttpd is a secure, fast, standards-compliant web server designed for speed-critical environments. This tutorial shows how you can install Lighttpd on a CentOS 6.0 server with PHP5 support (through FastCGI) and MySQL support. read more...

permapage | score:9906 | -falko, December 15, 2011

Tutorial: Route VirtualBox traffic over the TOR network

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This tutorial will show you how to reroute all traffic for a virtual machine through the Tor network to ensure anonymity. It assumes a standalone machine with a Linux OS, and VirtualBox installed. In this case, we'll be using Ubuntu on the host machine. read more...

permapage | score:9904 | -falko, February 8, 2012

VirtualBox 4.1 on Headless Ubuntu 11.10

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This guide explains how you can run virtual machines with VirtualBox 4.1 on a headless Ubuntu 11.10 server. Normally you use the VirtualBox GUI to manage your virtual machines, but a server does not have a desktop environment. Fortunately, VirtualBox comes with a tool called VBoxHeadless that allows you to connect to the virtual machines over a remote desktop connection, so there's no need for the VirtualBox GUI. read more...

permapage | score:9895 | -falko, January 24, 2012

Simple Linux Auditing

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Basic Linux system auditing is a bit tricky and data collected and information of that is out of place and readability is not that good. Recently this lead me to put together a Open Source code project and develop simple BASH scripts that do the job nicely. The code and tar ball can be downloaded from both google code or from SourceForge's website and the project website has links to documentation, help, installation and code. read more...

permapage | score:9892 | -falko, January 27, 2012

Linux Iptables Examples

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Linux comes with a host based firewall called Netfilter. It is a set of hooks inside the Linux kernel that allows kernel modules to register callback functions with the network stack. A registered callback function is then called back for every packet that traverses the respective hook within the network stack.

This Linux based firewall is controlled by the program called iptables to handles filtering for IPv4, and ip6tables handles filtering for IPv6. This tutorial list most common iptables solutions required by a new Linux user to secure his or her Linux operating system from intruders. read more...

mail this link | permapage | score:9888 | -nixcraft, December 14, 2011

Tutorial: TYPO3 4.6 on Nginx on Debian 6/Ubuntu 11.10

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This tutorial shows how you can install and run a TYPO3 (version 4.6) web site on a Debian Squeeze or Ubuntu 11.10 system that has nginx installed instead of Apache (LEMP = Linux + nginx (pronounced "engine x") + MySQL + PHP). The guide also covers the use of the nc_staticfilecache extension which allows TYPO3 to cache pages as complete .html files for faster delivery (increases response times for static pages by a factor of 230; it's similar to Drupal's Boost module). nginx is a HTTP server that uses much less resources than Apache and delivers pages a lot of faster, especially static files. read more...

mail this link | permapage | score:9883 | -falko, January 10, 2012

Tutorial: Install Apache2, PHP5, MySQL on CentOS 6.1 (LAMP)

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LAMP is short for Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP. This tutorial shows how you can install an Apache2 webserver on a CentOS 6.1 server with PHP5 support (mod_php) and MySQL support. read more...

permapage | score:9882 | -falko, January 11, 2012

More admin articles...

Large Canvas Abstract Art Prints

Selected articles

Shadow.sh: A simple directory shadowing script for Linux

Microsoft to push unlicensed users to Linux

MiniLesson: An introduction to Linux in ten commands

Why Programmers are not Software Engineers

The Supreme Court is wrong on Copyright Case

Hacker Haiku

The short life and hard times of a Linux virus

Missing the point of the Mac Mini