Lxadmin Host-In-A-Box, a full featured web hosting platform that supports apache/lighttpd, bind/djbdns and pure-ftpd, is the most revolutionary thing to happen to vps hosting. When used with lighttpd, it finally makes vps hosting a reasonable choice to the millions of people who are suffocating in the shared environment. The primary barrier to the vps adoption was the minimum RAM requirement, which was completely independent of the number of websites. Even if you had only a couple of websites, to run it comfortably you would at least need 256MB RAM. With its 15MB RAM requirement Lxadmin HIB finally makes a vps affordable to everyone. HostInABox is tightly integrated with our VPS control panel.

Main Features:

• Backup your entire hosting and restore ANY part of it.
• Disk usage and warning report for the machine.
• In built Application Installer. Lxadmin Installsoft allows you to install more than 35 applications like Coppermine Gallery, Mambo, Phpshop, etc with just a click of a button. We are adding applications every day, and our target is to have at least 60 applications.
• Move Clients/Domains across resellers. You can change the ownership of both clients and domains and move them around trivially.

General Features:

• Messaging System. Lxadmin allows you have a better relationship with your customers using our messaging and ticketing system. The ticketing system is meant for talking to a single customer, while using the messaging system, you can send information to multiple people. Our customers so far has found these features to radically improve the customer experience.
• Ticket System. This is a full featured trouble ticket system that allows customers to post their complaints without the need to login to their main account.
• Ticket alerts.
• Disable Enable Resellers.
• Change Reseller’s quotas.
• Command Line api to everything that can be done through web interface.

Client functions:

• Manage reseller quotas: Control your client’s ability to:
• Change Banner
• Enable frontpage (Not available for Lighttpd).
• Enable ssl
• Ipaddress pool.
• Exclusive ipaddress: Allow a customer to setup ssl certificate for this ipaddress.

Backup

• Backup Your Entire Account, including domains, clients, databases, directory protects, and also the contents of all the resources.
• Restore ANY Part of the backup. You can do this using a web frontend.
• Schedule backup.
• Upload backup to Ftp servers.

Mail Functions

• Catchall
• Manage email accounts
• Webmail
• Auto-responders
• Forwarding
• Mail queue control
• Mailing list Management (ezmlm)
• Full control of Dns.
• Spam filtering (SpamAssassin)

Stats

• AWStats
• View latest visitors
• View bandwidth usage
• Traffic Calculation includes Mail, Web and Ftp Traffics.
• View error log
• Download raw log file

Web functions

• Directory Protect
• User password directly linked to the Frontpage password. (Not available for Lighttpd).
• Frontpage Install/Uninstall (Not available for Lighttpd).
• Custom error pages
• Redirects
• Addon, Redirect domains
• Ftp session management
• Cluster aware File Manager
• Cron job management.
• Manage FTP accounts

Subdomains

• Ability to add/remove subdomains
• Ability to create Ftp users for specific subdomains.

Database Management

• Manage MySQL databases.
• Intelligent phpMyAdmin access.a

Server Functions:

• Manage Services.
• Change Database adminstrator password.
• Ipaddress management
• Cron jobs.
• Log manager
• Process Manager

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Much of what you need to know can be found clicking the ‘Help’ tab at the top right in your lxAdmin control panel. A direct link is here: http://doc.lxlabs.com/lxadmin/admin/

If you got ‘hostinabox’, the login to lxadmin will be at http://your-ip:7778 or https://your-ip:7777. The initial login name and pass are both ‘admin’. If you installed lxadmin from your VPS control panel, you can either access it with the above urls or you can click on ‘Lxadmin management’ tab in the VPS control panel. The First thing you should do (after you change the password) is to update lxadmin by clicking the ‘update home’ icon:

Next, you should create your main client. Its not a good idea to start creating domains under the admin account. Create a new client and name it whatever you want. This is the client where you will create your main domain hosting.. the domain name that you will use also for your dns nameservers. Say your main domain name is ‘cool-domain.org’, later in this tutorial you will be setting up 2 nameservers, ns1.cool-domain.org and ns2.cool-domain.org and assigning them 2 ip addresses that you own with your VPS.

Setting Up DNS

The next thing to do is to set up your dns templates. At first, you may notice that there is an ip address set to be used when you go to create your first dns template : 207.10.240.20. THIS IS NOT A CORRECT IP! Make sure you create a new template and pick one of your own IP addresses. If it will not allow you to pick another ip address, you did not update lxadmin…go update it. The most common error our clients make is that they use this wrong ip instead of the ips that belong to their VPS.

Now you are ready to create your first domain! Go to the main client you created earlier, and choose the ‘Domains’ icon. Then click the ‘Add Domain’ Tab. You will see there is a spot to pick the dns template…pick one of the ones you created that you want to use for the domain. You next will set up the DNS for this new domain. Pick the ‘Manage Dns’ icon:

If this is your main domain where you will define your nameservers, (remember ns1.cool-domain.org, ns2.cool-domain.org ?) you will add 2 ‘a’ records here. Say the first 2 ips you own are 207.10.240.20 and 207.10.240.21. you will create an ‘a’ record for ‘ns1′ to point to the first ip and an ‘a’ record for ‘ns2′ to point to the second ip. Now your next move is to go to your domain registrar (where you bought the domain, for example, godaddy, enom, etc…) and create the custom nameservers there and add what ip addresses they are assigned in your lxadmin. After 24-48 hours (the time for the new nameservers you created at your registrar to propagate all world root-servers) Your nameservers will now work and can be used for all new domains created on your lxadmin hosting management! Notice Below how the 2 ns1,ns2 entries are added as ‘a’ records:

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a simple trick using the .htaccess file

A simple tutorial which only involves editing one little file. Useful for those of us who have mime-typed extensions or who are creating lots of test design files and want an easy way to make the design they like best their default file.

1. Create a file called .htaccess in the /public_html/ folder if you don’t have it. I think one should be there already when you get your site so if it isn’t you should create it anyway!
2. In the file write the following:

3. Replace best_design.weirdext with the file you want your index page to be.
4. Open your website and if all has worked well, you should have your customized index page.

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The purpose of syctl hardening is to help prevent spoofing and dos attacks. This short guide will show what I have found to be a good configuration for the sysctl.conf configuration file. The most important of the variables listed below is the enabling of syn cookie protection. Only place the bottom two if you do not want your server to respond to ICMP echo, commonly referred to as ICMP ping or just ping requests.

Backup sysctl.conf :

# mv /etc/sysctl.conf /etc/sysctl.conf.bak

Open to edit the file:

# nano -w /etc/sysctl.conf

Now paste the following into the file, you can overwrite the current information.

#Kernel sysctl configuration file for Red Hat Linux
#
# For binary values, 0 is disabled, 1 is enabled. See sysctl(8) and
# sysctl.conf(5) for more details.

# Disables packet forwarding
net.ipv4.ip_forward=0

# Disables IP source routing
net.ipv4.conf.all.accept_source_route = 0
net.ipv4.conf.lo.accept_source_route = 0
net.ipv4.conf.eth0.accept_source_route = 0
net.ipv4.conf.default.accept_source_route = 0

# Enable IP spoofing protection, turn on source route verification
net.ipv4.conf.all.rp_filter = 1
net.ipv4.conf.lo.rp_filter = 1
net.ipv4.conf.eth0.rp_filter = 1
net.ipv4.conf.default.rp_filter = 1

# Disable ICMP Redirect Acceptance
net.ipv4.conf.all.accept_redirects = 0
net.ipv4.conf.lo.accept_redirects = 0
net.ipv4.conf.eth0.accept_redirects = 0
net.ipv4.conf.default.accept_redirects = 0

# Enable Log Spoofed Packets, Source Routed Packets, Redirect Packets
net.ipv4.conf.all.log_martians = 0
net.ipv4.conf.lo.log_martians = 0
net.ipv4.conf.eth0.log_martians = 0

# Disables IP source routing
net.ipv4.conf.all.accept_source_route = 0
net.ipv4.conf.lo.accept_source_route = 0
net.ipv4.conf.eth0.accept_source_route = 0
net.ipv4.conf.default.accept_source_route = 0

# Enable IP spoofing protection, turn on source route verification
net.ipv4.conf.all.rp_filter = 1
net.ipv4.conf.lo.rp_filter = 1
net.ipv4.conf.eth0.rp_filter = 1
net.ipv4.conf.default.rp_filter = 1

# Disable ICMP Redirect Acceptance
net.ipv4.conf.all.accept_redirects = 0
net.ipv4.conf.lo.accept_redirects = 0
net.ipv4.conf.eth0.accept_redirects = 0
net.ipv4.conf.default.accept_redirects = 0

# Disables the magic-sysrq key
kernel.sysrq = 0

# Decrease the time default value for tcp_fin_timeout connection
net.ipv4.tcp_fin_timeout = 15

# Decrease the time default value for tcp_keepalive_time connection
net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_time = 1800

# Turn off the tcp_window_scaling
net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling = 0

# Turn off the tcp_sack
net.ipv4.tcp_sack = 0

# Turn off the tcp_timestamps
net.ipv4.tcp_timestamps = 0

# Enable TCP SYN Cookie Protection
net.ipv4.tcp_syncookies = 1

# Enable ignoring broadcasts request
net.ipv4.icmp_echo_ignore_broadcasts = 1

# Enable bad error message Protection
net.ipv4.icmp_ignore_bogus_error_responses = 1

# Log Spoofed Packets, Source Routed Packets, Redirect Packets
net.ipv4.conf.all.log_martians = 1

# Increases the size of the socket queue (effectively, q0).
net.ipv4.tcp_max_syn_backlog = 1024

# Increase the tcp-time-wait buckets pool size
net.ipv4.tcp_max_tw_buckets = 1440000

# Allowed local port range
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 16384 65536

After you make the changes to the file you need to run the commands below to enable the changes without a reboot:

# /sbin/sysctl -p

# sysctl -w net.ipv4.route.flush=1

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vnStat is a network traffic monitor for Linux that keeps a log of daily network traffic for the selected interface. vnStat isnt a packet sniffer. The traffic information is analyzed from the /proc -filesystem, so vnStat can be used without root permissions.

Installing:

# cd /usr/local/src
# wget http://humdi.net/vnstat/vnstat-1.4.tar.gz
# tar -zxvf vnstat-1.4.tar.gz
# cd vnstat-1.4
# make && make install
# vnstat -u -i eth0

Making vnstat root only:

# chmod 700 /usr/bin/vnstat
# chmod 700 /var/lib/vnstat/ -R

Now you can check the stats, use help for possible commands:

# vnstat –help

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You should hide apache banner information from being displayed so the attackers are not aware of what version of Apache version you are running and thus making it more difficult for them to exploit any system holes and thus making vulnerability scanners work harder and in some cases impossible without knowing banner information.

# nano /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

Change the ServerSignature line to:

ServerSignature Off

Change the ServerTokens line to:

ServerTokens Prod

Restart Apache:

# /sbin/service httpd restart

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You should often check for updates that will fix certain bugs or improve system stability. Exploits are discovered from time to time thus leaving your system exposed to new attacks.

To list available updates:

# up2date -l

To install updates that are not excluded:

# up2date -u

To install updates including excluded:

# up2date -uf

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The /etc/login.defs file defines the site specific  configuration for the shadow password  suite. By default the minimum password length is “5″ characters. Lets change this to “8″ for stronger passwords.

nano /etc/login.defs

Change:

PASS_MIN_LEN          5

to

PASS_MIN_LEN          8

Now type Ctrl+X then hit Y and enter

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Change directory to find your city time zone:

# cd /usr/share/zoneinfo

In our case it is:

Asia/Manila

To change:

# ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Manila /etc/localtime

To verify it is correct:

# date

You should see something similar to this:

Mon Mar 24 07:10:11 PHT 2008

That’s it!

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• How to change hostname in Linux (0)

New to Linux? Need to change the hostname of you server? (A hostname is the unique name by which a network attached device is known on a network.) If you enter the wrong hostname during the installation, and you need to change the hostname, here is how you do it:

Edit file /etc/sysconfig/network using your favorite editor:

# nano /etc/sysconfig/network

Look for HOSTNAME=xxxxxx

Change the xxxx to the name you wish to set for your computer. (ex: HOSTNAME=server.mabuhayhosting.com)

Save the file by typing:

Ctrl+X then hit Y and enter

Now restart the xinetd service:

# service xinetd restart

Done! You have just changed your hostname in Linux platform

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