SolidServers.ca

I just thought that I would let everyone that may be interested, that I am available for one time, or continuous server administration. Prices do vary, and if you would like more information, please feel free to reply to this post or email me directly at:

Thanks!

Here are some quick tips on how to secure your Linux server. This is only a short list, but, they are must do’s! Some of which are:

1. Change ssh port (use keys if possible as well/allow only specific users)
2. Disable unneeded services
3. Install a good firewall
4. Disable dangerous / unused PHP functions / harden your PHP
5. Install mod_security
6. Virus scan FTP uploads
7. Install root kit detection
8. Set root email to off server email account
9. Make sure your passwords are tough to guess. This is a big one, especially for the root user, this should be a very tough password.

This is a quick list, as there are many other things that can be done. Some things on this list are already on this blog, so please be sure to read the related posts.

Here is a little code that I use to scan servers that I admin on for unwanted files. These include php shell’s and encoded files. You can add your own expressions as well. The expressions that I have listed are what I have found to most likely be in infected files.
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I was recently asked to look at allowing custom php.ini files on a system where they were using FastCGI (fcgid) with SuExec to load php pages. This was a cPanel server using PHP5x, and after some research, I was able able to come up with a solution.
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The latest cPanel release comes with the option to have php version 5.3.1, and also uses the latest release candidate for eAccelerator, 0.9.6-rc1. These options are available to you through the EasyApache interface. There seems however, to be some bugs which cause unexpected high loads on busy servers, which some believe, are caused by a fault in the eAccelerator release candidate. Here are the steps you need to take in order to downgrade to eAccelerator Release-0.9.5.3. Read the rest of this entry »

We are going to install mod_limitipconn in order to limit the number of connections per IP on our server.  This can be a very useful tool, as it could help in lowering the load on your server due to someone connecting too many times from the same IP.

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Well, I figured I would post this for any DirectAdmin ( DA ) users out there that would like to use the power of mod_evasive.  The install is fairly close to a cPanel install, with a couple of little twists.  This is geared towards a server running Apache2, if you are running Apache1, let me know if this worked for you!

Now, we are going to install mod_evasive to help protect our DirectAdmin server from low end ddos attacks. The installation is really quite simple. Read the rest of this entry »

We are going to install mod_evasive to help protect our cPanel server from low end ddos attacks.  The installation is really quite simple. Read the rest of this entry »

There are a couple of good scripts out there that will help you to tune your mysql usage for better perfomance.  I’ve used both of these, and they are very intuative.  Personally, I prefer the latter, however, I still use both for tweaking.

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I’ve taken on a couple of new servers, so I figured I would share this little tidbit of information.  RKHunter stands for root kit hunter, which will scan your system for nasty root kits.  A quote from the site:

Rootkit scanner is scanning tool to ensure you for about 99.9%* you’re clean of nasty tools. This tool scans for rootkits, backdoors and local exploits by running tests like:
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