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4 Primary Areas For Tuning Your Server

Luigi Ramone | 04 September, 2008 14:57

I just thought I would add my two cents in for everyone. I posted an old howto with some sysctl.conf, but I think that was when I was running on my previous server using and older version of redhat. So here's a fresh howto that is a little more complete.

These configs are based on my server specs, which is a Dual 2.0GHz Xeon with 2GB of RAM running RedHat Enterprise. Depending on your server's RAM you might have to reduce some of the settings, which I'll try make notes with each section. (More)

Easy CURL 7.10.4 w/SSL

Luigi Ramone | 15 December, 2005 21:35

We've put together these RPM's for libcurl 7.10.2 with SSL support. They upgrade over the stock RH ones. Installation is via rpm -Uvh

Applicability (RH 7.2 / 7.3 required) :

Webppliance 3.1
Webppliance Pro 3.5
cPanel 6
Plesk 5.0

These are also Modernbill compatible on all above panel types.

 (More)

APF Firewall 0.9.4-7

Luigi Ramone | 15 December, 2005 21:32

Just thought I'd update the howto's for APF.

Type ifconfig

Find out if it’s using eth0 or eth1.

Usually its eth0 but if its not, change it in conf.apf or you’ll be completely blocking the server from access

wget http://www.rfxnetworks.com/downloads/apf-current.tar.gz

tar -xvzf apf-current.tar.gz
cd apf*
./install.sh
pico -w /etc/apf/conf.apf

RESV_DNS="1"

All SYSCTL options should be set to 1 EXCEPT for
SYSCTL_OVERFLOW="0"
SYSCTL_SYNCOOKIES="0"

USE_DS="1"
USE_AD="1"

 (More)

Get FTP running on your P-NET (PNET) storage server

Luigi Ramone | 15 December, 2005 20:43

Telnet/SSH into your P-NET server as root (or use su).

Use the following command:
/sbin/service vsftpd start

This will start the ftp server.

That's it!

 (More)

Check server hardware

Luigi Ramone | 15 December, 2005 20:41

There are a lot of things that may cause a server to crash, this guide is going to primarily look at the hardware side of crashing. There are many things that might be causing the server to crash from a software standpoint such a process that runs out of control or uses too many resources. There are a fwe things that might be going wrong with a server. Normally the component that goes wrong is the hard drive, simply because it is use so much and is a moving part. The RAM on a server will occasionally go but this is more common when the server is moved around or the RAM moved because it has a chance of being statically shocked. On the less common side of things you could have the CPU, powersupply, ethernet card, or motherboard going out. (More)

Install HotSaNIC (updated)

Luigi Ramone | 15 December, 2005 20:26

HotSaNIC is a very nice tool which combines all sorts of very important system graphs into a simple and easy to understand webpage. It allows the admin to take a quick glance at the graphs to see what may or may not be working with the system. With the new APPS graph it is also possible to watch as more processes are started which can be helpful in tracking down why the server load is increasing. For instance if you see a huge load spike but you see that the number of exim processes has gone up significantly at the same time you can start to investigate. (More)

Transferring an SSL Cert between two CP/WHM Servers

Luigi Ramone | 15 December, 2005 20:14

The problem with some SSL cert authorities is that they won't regenerate a new cert for you to use the moment you switch servers. This is the problem I faced with Geotrust. All the company is willing to say is that you should be able to export the CSR, key file, and the cert quite easily.

So after a bit of mucking around, this is what I did when I found that WHM didn't transfer the cert over when I copied the domain account over.

You'll need to have SSH root access for this.

Before you begin, make sure that you've already used the WHM copy account function to transfer the domain account, dns settings, etc, over.

 (More)

Fix "Support Request" in PRO Version

Luigi Ramone | 15 December, 2005 20:10

Everyone knows that the initial PRO version of CPanel comes with a broken "Submit a Support Request". It seems the reseller settings just plain out don't work, and the root setting overrides everything.

Follow the How-To below and you will get the submit a support request feature working the way it was intended to.

 (More)

Installing PHP5 and PHP4 together on Unix

Luigi Ramone | 15 December, 2005 19:19

So you have PHP4 working on your server, and have heard that PHP5 may break things. Here’s how to have both running alongside. (More)

cPanel Reverse DNS

Luigi Ramone | 15 December, 2005 19:14

After searching for help all over the net in adding PTR records to my cPanel DNS setup, I found a very easy to follow tutorial which along with some other sources, made it possible for me to get reverse DNS working with cPanel. It’s still a question I see quite a bit so I decided to create a short how-to to help others.

1. You must have reverse authority delegated to you from your hosting provider. Though common wisdom in forums says most providers do not delegate authority, I have found this to be untrue. I don’t recommend asking for it if you don’t feel confident you can handle the technical end of setting up BIND.
2. You need to have a domain of course, or a few and it helps greatly to have DNS setup and working for a few days prior to attempting this.
3. Every install of cPanel I have done to date comes with a broken BIND server. The issue is always the rndc.key issue. This is my first task for every cPanel install now to do the following fix before I add any information in cPanel WHM at all. To fix it, open /etc/rndc.conf in a text editor and at the top you should see this:

 (More)

Installing Postgresql on Cpanel

Luigi Ramone | 15 December, 2005 19:07

cPanel requires Postgresql 7.3.x or later. 7.2.x will not work.

===========================================
Step 1
===========================================
Upgrade to cPanel 7.4.0 build 45 or later
===========================================

===========================================
Step 1a (If you do not have 7.2.x or earlier installed skip this step)
===========================================
Login to a root shell via ssh or the console.

If you have Postgres 7.2.x installed, backup your databases using pg_dumpall or some other method.

Move the postgres data directory somewhere else. ie

mv /var/lib/pgsql /var/lib/pgsql.old
===========================================

 (More)

HOW-TO: Secure cPanel

Luigi Ramone | 30 November, 2005 21:43

First and foremost I want to say that this is not going to make your server 100% cracker proof, there is always a possibility that somebody will find a way in. I have listed a lot of things you can do to protect your server and that will help you secure it. While securing your server you have to find a median between what is secure and what restricts your clients or websites. You can easily make your server 100% secure from remote attacks by unplugging the ethernet cable, but chances are you will not get much good with it. This is not a complete guide and I will update it when I find time or it needs it. Overall it is a very good start and it is probably more then most servers have.

If you have any problems with the guide please post them and I will try and help/update the guide. I have not included everything you can do but it is a very good start. If you need somebody to secure server please feel free to private message or email me.

All commands meant to be run in ssh will begin with "#"

 (More)

Troubleshotting Tomcat installation bugs

Luigi Ramone | 30 November, 2005 21:35

Note: these instructions is provided according Cpanel Tomcat Installer bugs on versions near WHM 10.6.0 cPanel 10.8.0-S21.

Let's remove Tomcat and install it again.

Table of contents
1 Checking everything is clean
2 Installing tomcat
3 If it fail while installing Tomcat on WHM: install hangs after license
4 Fixing jsvc
5 Making sure Tomcat is running and apache is restarted
6 Each time you install Servlet on a domain
7 Mapping .do

 (More)

HOW-TO: Apache + (phpsuexec, not required) + php4 (mod_php4 or cgi) + php5 (cgi)

Luigi Ramone | 30 November, 2005 21:18

HOW-TO updated to reflect 5.0.4 update to 5.0.5

Finally I have confirmed that this setup works!

I'm using Apache 1.3.33 (1.3.34 out, but it will not broke anything) + phpsuexec coming with cPanel + custom php 4.3.11 compiled as cgi (actually you may use the Apache Update via WHM to compile working php4 in cgi mode/phpsuexec) + custom php 5.0.5 compiled as cgi (it is easy to do as well, I will explain)

php5 works the same as php4 and it saves the permissions and etc. E.g. no problems with nobody as well.

 (More)

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