Posts tagged howto

htop-web2

All in one webserver from the ground up. A Virtualized Debian How-to

2
4 months ago
by Daniel Stinebaugh in , , ,

< This is the only image you get, as this is going to be a very text centered post.htop-web2

I figured after virtualizing my entire network a few weeks ago and while learning alot, I also rebuilt several machines, and documented the rebuild. So from those notes, I’m going to finally get around to how to securely host and build a website, from the ground up.

We’ll start with a bare bones debian 6 install (this guide will work for ubuntu server 12.04 as well) on a virtual host.

I’m also using this guide as a walk-through for myself, so I’ve included the instructions on getting vmware-tools installed, if you’re doing this on bare metal, skip that part. :)

Most of this should be done as the root user. In ubuntu, to gain root use the command:

Also to get the basics out of the way I will be using nano as my text editor, to save in nano use the keys

or to save and exit use the command

I will assume you know how to save a file from this point forward.

To get started let’s get our environment setup, it makes life easier in the end.

Uncomment the lines in the root .bashrc file

Save and exit * I won’t be telling you this again, if the files done being edited, save and close it! :) *

Force your current session to use the new .bashrc file.

You should now have colors when displaying the contents of your directories and have a shortcut to restart apache once we have it installed.

But before we install the web server let’s finish getting prepped. (ubuntu users, don’t add the netselect-apt in the next command, it’s not available in your repos.)

If your curious on how any of these programs work in more detail, you can always turn to the “man” command. I do often, so I like my man pages in color. If you do as well, use this, and select the option that references “most” (usually 3 in my experience)

Now let’s create a normal user (ubuntu users will already have a normal user, and can skip this part)
*replace <yourname> with Your name.*

and then answer the questions it asks as best you want.

Now let’s also give this user the ability to manage this server using sudo.

Copy the syntax for the root user replacing root with your username from above.

Now Debian users with netselect installed, use this list of commands:

then

Now we can start installing the vmware-tools. First click the option on your vmware console to install tools or guest additions. This will insert a virtual cd-rom in your virtual machine. I know right!?! How deep DOES the rabbit hole go?! Anyways.

Welcome back :) Login as your normal user from here on out and gain root using “sudo su“. It’s just good practice.

Comment out the default settings for the eth0 interface as we want a static IP address for a server and add something like this (changing the values as needed for your network of course!)

Then restart your network.

You will probably get disconnected if you’re using ssh to connect. This is to be expected and you should now be able to ssh to the IP address you just set.

Now let’s set the hostname of the server.

And append the same name to the hostname file and restart the service.

Being ssh is probably going to be left open, let’s start to automate banning of brute force attempts for our ssh login (moving ssh to a non standard port is also a good idea!)

Setup the times and purge options as you see fit and then restart denyhosts.

And let’s FINALLY get to installing that webserver like I promised!

That’s it! your webserver’s installed! Now let’s configure it!

Now let’s build the config for the website you’ll be hosting.

There are alot of options you can define in here, but to get you started make sure you have the DocumentRoot, ErrorLog and CustomLog defined in this config file.

Using our example above, let’s create those directories.

And bring this site online, and remove the default site

Your website should now be online! w00t!

Let’s get the rest going so we can get something more dynamic then html websites.

Enter in a SQL root password when prompted. (SHOULDNT BE THE SAME AS YOUR ROOT PASSWORD!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

And let’s harden our SQL environment as this is not a developer server.

You don’t need to change your SQL root password if you set a good one above. if it’s the same as your normal root user’s password, change it ffs! Answer yes to the rest of the questions.

Now this next line will install php. Lot’s of php. This command should be entered in as one single line!

These settings will get you off to a good start, but more tuning can be done. Search for the following and make the needed changes in this file. (search in nano using “Ctrl+w” and typing in the keyword.

(You do remember you can type in ^ arestart ^ instead of that line throughout this gude if you used my .bashrc edits, right? ;) )

And of course a web-gui to your SQL server is super handy, so let’s add that as well.

Select apache2 when asked, and choose yes to create the default database. Enter in the SQL root password, and then leave the next password prompt blank to have a random one generated, as you won’t need it.

Almost done!

Let’s set the permissions on the folders we created.

And your set!

Let’s go one step further and setup a firewall to finish it up, just in case you’re not behind a seperate firewall (Check out untangle if you’re looking for a good one!)

This will install the “Uncomplicated Firewall” that works with iptables, and makes life alot easier!
For more help with ufw settings check out this guys site, it’s got a pretty good rundown and examples.

You should now get a result that says the following:

Of course this is the basic setup, you can further limit ssh to local connections only etc.

And your website is ready for stage 2, Content! You now have a memcached apache http server with php5 and mysql ready for the world wide web! Good luck!

(The stage 2 post will come soon!)

 

** EDIT **

After a few month’s with this setup I’ve started getting several mail objects that say:

This is a RAID status update from mpt-statusd.
The mpt-status program reports that one of the RAIDs changed state:

Report from /etc/init.d/mpt-statusd on virtual-proxy

Being it’s a virtual machine there’s no raid state to worry about (at least not from the guest side…) so unless you have a reason for it, just stop the mpt-status daemon. Do the following:

to stop it from it’s currently running state, and then

which will remove it from several startup scripts that run on boot.

That’s it, no more mail from that problem :) Hope your install is running as smoothly as mine has been!

CMINECRAFTserver.properties_-_Notepad-2012-03-03_02.39.34

Another How to host your own Minecraft Server – Windows – Part 1

1
1 year ago
by Daniel Stinebaugh in ,

So I have had a few people at school ask me how to host a minecraft server, so I figured I’d go ahead and do a walkthrough for the basics and then work into config’s etc on a later post. I’ll also be doing a similar walkthrough for Linux so look for that to come soon :)

I’ll also say that google will return a million different posts as well, but at least this one you know the source of the info and hopefully I’ve vetted the software enough for you to trust my outside links as well, so here we go.

 

Alright First you have to make a choice. (explained further down)

Vanilla or Bukkit?

(click the link above to download after making your choice)
A Vanilla is the Official plain (plain like vanilla get it?) minecraft server. Just your friends, you and the world as it was intended to be played by the creators at Mojang.

 

A Bukkit server is a re-write of the official server that allows a very strong plugin community to (GREATLY) extend the functionality and interactions you can have in the minecraft world.

 

Running a vanilla server is quite simple, download using the link above and run the .exe file. That’s it. :)

Running a bukkit server is a little more work. First download bukkit from the link above, and save the .jar file to a directory of your choice, I will use C:\MINECRAFT\ as my default location.

Once you have it saved you will need to create a file to launch it so you don’t have to keep opening a terminal and typing commands. Again we will be using our friend the .bat file.

Create a new file named something like start_bukkit.bat and enter in the following:

[codesyntax lang="bash" title="start_bukkit.bat"]

[/codesyntax]

Save and close. This will need to be changed each time the folk’s at bukkit.org release a new updated version so that the name represents the file you download.

Then again you could take the easy way and just change the line in the file above to say craftbukkit.jar and then just rename the .jar file you download each time.

I personally like being reminded what version I’m using so I just change it manually each time, but meh, I’m a nerd… So I’ll also tell you that you can set the memory sizes for the server to be able to use in the above file by changing the -Xms (minimum) and -Xmx (maximum) amount of memory in Mb that you want to dedicate to your server instance.

So one last thing before you run that .bat file. Make sure you have this and the .jar file in it’s own directory and not on your desktop or something because it will generate several new files once you run it.

Go ahead and run the .bat file you created, it should open a terminal and run craftbukkit :) It will lo

ok something like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then stop the server by typing in “stop” and pressing return (then press any key to close the window)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now when you look in your minecraft directory, you’ll see all the newly created files and folders.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nice.

This is what a new install should look like. Now let’s do some simple configurations as the rest of the bukkit config will be covered in a seperate post as it works the same for windows or linux after this point.

First open the server.properties file. I prefer notepad++ but your more then welcome to use your editor of choice.

Here are the setting’s and their function:

 

[codesyntax lang="python" lines="normal" title="server.properties"]

[/codesyntax]

 

Be sure to set this up as you see fit.

That’s about it! Make sure your incoming port (25565 by default) is forwarded through your windows firewall and any other firewall’s you might have in place, and you should be able to connect! If you need a name to give your friends, check out the site http://www.no-ip.com/ (they have a free version as well that works fine) and install the .exe so that it can track your dynamic IP address. The rest will be covered in following posts :)

Hope this has helped!

BTCM_-_Slush_-_Cbtcm_-_Bitcoin_Minerbitcoin-miner.exe__-a_5_-o_httpapi.bitcoin.cz8332_-u_XtCrAvE

Start your bitcoin apps without using the commandline using shortcuts

0
1 year ago
by Daniel Stinebaugh in ,

So I haven’t talked about Bitcoin in a while, so I figured I’d re-hash the subject. (get it?!)

I’ve recently re-discovered that there are several good mining apps these days, as well as some pretty powerful bitcoin pools. Being I have been a solo miner up until lately, I never had the need for special commands, however now I do, so I wanted to make starting these easier, and figured I’d share my information on how I did just that using shortcuts.

First off I’m assuming you know how to make a shortcut for an app. (right click it and choose the optioin “create a shortcut”) This will create a shortcut for whatever you right clicked, most of the time a .exe file. But bitcoin mining apps have to run in the commandline to work, and when you just click the .exe file, a prompt window flashes and the program ends. Not really what you want. So here’s how you do this.

First off, go ahead and make the shortcut as usual.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then right click on the resulting shortcut and go to properties.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You will see the full path to the .exe you made a shortcut for in the “Target” field. This is where we start.

First enter in

 

 

at the very beginning of the target line. This will force the .exe to be run in the command prompt (which is what we want!)

Then we need to add the options for our mining app. Being I am on an old laptop (intel core 2 duo) with no graphics gpu worth mentioning, I use the Ufasoft Miner (good for cpu mining) if you need a list of commands here they are.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just enter them in after the end of the .exe so for my example (username and password omitted) it would look like this.

Deepbit:

 

This translates to: get work every 5 seconds, use 3 cores, get the work from deepbit and register any work I return to this account.

 

Slush pool:

 

 

 

Theres many other options you can change in here as well, such as the font size, icon and colors. Don’t be afraid to play around a little!

Here’s what mine looks like when it’s running.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Green like money!

 

Now I just need enough to buy one of these awesome butterfly boxes! (update over a year later, I just bought one!!!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another cool thing about butterfly, is they also accept payment in bitcoin! So help me buy one with a small donation?

My Bitcoin address: 1337DanaAJt3w6Trpp13SyNce7HLkzdL42  (yep mined my own vanity address :) )

Any amount is appreciated! Even Bitcents!

 

 

 

usenet-title

Uploading to Usenet on debian (or ubuntu) linux

6
2 years ago
by Daniel Stinebaugh in , ,

So I’ll start off by saying I do use a graphical user interface (gui) on my debian laptop (Linux Mint Debian Edition) and have also switched from my old love bit torrent over to usenet just for security’s sake. I’ve been reading alot of posts on the net to figure everything out as people and links come and go as does software to do what you want it to do. Here’s the easy way of how I upload to usenet using my laptop.

A few things you’re going to need beforehand.

rar, cksfv, PyPar2 and JBinUp. (cksfv, rar and PyPar2 are available in the repos. and JBinUp is availble online.)

Now you’ll notice a few dependancies are going to be needed just by the names of those apps. PyPar2 is obviously written in python so you’re going to need that and JBinUp is written in java so you’re also going to want that installed. Yes there are other apps such as newsposter (cli) but I’ve been having issues with that and really the gui of JBinUp as well as the .nzb file creations really come in handy for me.

First your going to need to break your video down into smaller parts using rar. Music files are small enough you don’t need to split them apart but movies you do. For files 1.4gb in size or smaller your going to want to split them into 15mb sizes. Here’s the easy gui way of doing that.

Right click the movie file and choose compress.

After some using this, I realized that the rar settings are set to archive not store (read slower and not recommended)

There’s a better way, and I’ve made an earlier post about how to do that using a script so you don’t have to use the commandline (after setting it up the first time that is ;) ). After using that guide, skip down to the next part starting in Green.

Once the Compress window opens click the option that says “Other Options” to expand them, then change the extention to .rar and LEAVE THE BLOODY PASSWORD FIELD BLANK!!! Then check the box that says “Split into volumes of” and set that field to 15.0 then click Create.

Once it’s run it’s path (which could take some time) you’ll be left with many files in your folder which should look something like this:

Skip to here.

Remember that the original file is NOT going to be uploaded but we’ll need it for another step later so leave it in your folder for now.

We’re going to want to create the .svf and .nfo files. NFO Files are just a .txt file that has had it’s extention changed. so feel free to use whatever text editor you feel comfortable with and create your .nfo file. I’m not going to go far into the .nfo creation as that’s really up to you what info you want to put in there, however the output from programs like MediaInfo will suit you quite well. Run MediaInfo on the original file and select view > text and you’ll get something that looks like this:

Copy the info from there and add it to your .nfo file. Your done with this step, so you can now safely remove the original file from your folder now.

Next we’re going to create the parity files. (Par2) so open your PyPar2 app and click on the create tab.

Right click on the window and add all the .rar files in your folder. The default settings will be fine for our needs, so once all your files are in PyPar2 just click on the GO button.

Choose the same folder as your .rar files to save the .par files and let it run it’s magic.

The par files are very important as they let you fix broken or missing .rar files. Make sure they are included in your folder.

To Create the .sfv file, your going to have to check into the commandline (sorry I haven’t found a gui for this part yet) so fire up your terminal emulator. (I like terminator)  Now let’s cd to your working directory which in my case is /home/daniel/NZB/example

then run the cksfv command like so.

The -b command strips out the directorys so that the .sfv file will work on anyone’s system without having to have it in the same directory structure. The > checksum.sfv will create the .sfv file instead of just printing the results to the terminal window. It should look like this:

and the output should look like this:

So now your files are rar’ed and par’ed, you’ve got a .nfo file and a .sfv file, your almost ready to post your files! Fire up JBinUp

 

In JBinUp go to File > Settings and setup your server and poster settings. I’ll wait. I can’t tell you how to enter in this info as each usenet provider has there own url’s and settings, as well as plenty of documentation on how to setup your clients so this shouldn’t be a major issue for you.

After you have your basic settings situated, click on the single (+) button to start setting the posting information. The interface is quite simple, just fill in the blanks. Set your post’s title (aka subject) and choose who’s uploading this post (if you have more then one setup) then click the add button to add the files you want to upload. You want to select every file in your folder, so a simple keyboard command of Ctrl+A will select everything for you and click the Open Button.

Once everything looks right, click Forward and select the groups you want to add this post to. The options here are too varied and numerous so you’ll have to figure out what groups you want yourself but check the alt.binaries.whatever group’s to figure out where you’re going to want to post to. Got your groups? Good! Click the “Add Job” button and it’s off and uploading!

Once your files have finished uploading it’s a good idea to create a .nzb file for them so you can share your posts easily on sites like NzbMatrix and the likes. I am not uploading this example I’ve been using so the option isn’t available for me but if you right click the file you posted in JBinUp after it’s done uploading you’ll get the option to create a nzb file. Again I highly recommend you do this :)

That’s it! Your files are now living on usenet and you have the .nzb file to prove it! Share it with your friends and let’s get some more new content on the net’s!

Screenshot-11

Getting your Zune to work in linux, kinda.

7
3 years ago
by Daniel Stinebaugh in ,

UPDATE! If you read the comments you’ll notice that linux has finally ported the zune over to it nativly! Please do check it out and let me know how it works for you, I don’t have a zune anymore…

 

So alright, yea, I own a Microsoft Zune.

I do really like it as well! (it’s really quite loud even if the antenna for the radio sucks!)

However I’ve recently decided that running Microsoft Windows just wasn’t going to cut it any longer, and with the fit and finish of Ubuntu I haven’t even had a wanting for anything Windows related other then getting music (and more importantly my netcasts and audiobooks) on my zune (well and photoshop…).

Most applications do recognize that I have a media player plugged in (works great for my Sony PSP however!) but being the Zune’s file content is encrypted in a fashion which renders it moot to try moving or deleting content from it that I had to find another way.

Enter in VirtualBox.

Now to be clear I’m talking about the actual VirtualBox from http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads not the one available from the repositories in Ubuntu and I’ll get to why in a moment.

You’ll also need a valid copy of windows. Any flavor that will run the Zune software. I’m using a stripped down version of XP that I’ve cleaned up and slipstreamed using nLite.

Now download your version of VirtualBox using the above link and install it. Ubuntu users will just double click the .deb file and enter in your password and it will begin.  The reason we’re using the official (ie: Non-free as in speach not beer) is that there is no USB support in the “OpenSource” version that Ubuntu host’s in it’s repo’s and yea, your going to need USB support.

Once it’s installed we need to setup a new Virtual OS inside of it. There’s TONS of post’s out there that will explain how to setup a virtual box install so I won’t go into detail other then to say that after you have Windows installed and shutdown you need to enable USB sharing by going to: Settings>USB and clicking the USB plug icon with a “+” symbol in it and selecting the Zune that you already have plugged into your pc.

Now of course you should have already installed the Zune Software inside of your virtual os (I shouldn’t have to tell you that should I?) and whatever other software you wish to use. Also the “Shared folders” inside of VirtualBox is quite handy as well. (I’ll touch on them a little later as well)

Now here’s where I might actually be able to save a few of you some headache’s. You’ll probably find out that when you go to the Zune software it’s not able to connect to your Zune even though the linux side see’s it just fine and it’s listed in your device manager on windows, the Zune software keeps telling you to try dissconnecting and reconnecting your player but it still doesn’t recognize it. DON’T bother trying to do that, it’ll just keep returning the same error. Instead, on the bottom of the VirtualBox window you’ll see that same USB icon. Right click it and un-select your Zune and then re-select it. (also make sure if your Zune is protected with a pin number you’ve already typed that in successfully.)

Now the Zune software should see and have connected to your Zune player!

As for the “Shared Folders” Setting in VirtualBox it’s handy to move music over to your virtual OS instead of trying to figure out other ways and you can, after setting them up inside of the VirtualBox settings, they are located at “\\Vboxsvr” or step by step, open up “My Computer” click on the “Folders” Button, then browse in the file tree to: My Network Places>Entire Network>VirtualBox Shared Folders>\\Vboxsvr. Here’s a screenshot for reference.

I hope that this has helped! I was tired of having a dual boot system and having to restart my laptop every time I wanted to update my Zune (it was messing with my uptime bragging rights in the IRC channel :P ) now I just shutdown the virtual os instead and keep on trucking!

Thank you SO much Oracle/Sun for making VirtualBox so great and best of all free as in beer!

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