It has taken me awhile to get it up and running but I finally have released the new site! I went back and updated quiet a few of the older guides as well as the drupal back end that the site runs. It now runs the latest 5.x version which has all sorts of new features. The old site had a few problems on the back end but those should all be cleared up at this point and everything running smooth. I will also be trying to keep up with the posting on here to always have new and updated information.

Enjoy your stay!

John

Ensim python upgrade problems:

If you end upgrading python when doing an overall system update you may start to obtain internal server errors on every page within the ensim control panel. To fix this you need to recompile the templates and restart ensim:

cd /usr/lib/ensim/frontend/kidpages/
/usr/bin/kidc -f *
service epld restart

That should fix it!

Here is the full error you may be receiving:

2007/08/29 06:33:49 HTTP INFO 127.0.0.1 - GET /isp/services/proftpd/index HTTP/1.1
2007/08/29 06:33:49 INFO Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/cherrypy/_cphttptools.py", line 271, in run
main()
File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/cherrypy/_cphttptools.py", line 502, in main
body = page_handler(*args, **cherrypy.request.paramMap)
File "/home/build/qa/saber/10.0.0/fc.4/13.fc.4/epl/pudasin13/build/build-root/epl/frontend/rootapp/isp/services/proftpd/__init__.py", line 20, in index

RHEL3 only provides a 2.x version of mod_auth_mysql which is not sufficient for all. If you try to compile it on a stock server it will fail. I have gone ahead and pasted the fix that we had to do in order to get it to compile. I also posted the entire error at the bottom for search engines.

Edit mod_auth_mysql.c, simply change to your correct path. The below is for a stock mysql3

#include /usr/include/mysql/mysql.h

You need to change the mysql include to the correct mysql.h, the default is what it causing the problems. After that it should compile with:

apxs -L/usr/lib/mysql -c -lmysqlclient -lm -lz mod_auth_mysql.c
apxs -i mod_auth_mysql.la
chmod 755 /usr/lib/httpd/modules/mod_auth_mysql.so

That should be it! Below is the full error:

mod_auth_mysql-3.0.0]# apxs -c mod_auth_mysql.c

While it would be ideal if every server had plenty of RAM in the real world that does not happen. If for some reason you have a server with too little SWAP or you are hitting the max of the swap here is a quick hack which will create a 2Gb container file then use it for additional swap space on the server. To check the swap space used you can use "free -m".

dd if=/dev/zero of=/usr/swap-file bs=1024 count=2048000
mkswap /usr/swap-file
swapon /usr/swap-file
swapon -s

Now add the following to the /etc/fstab and you are done.

/usr/swap-file swap swap defaults 0 0

While directly logging into a server as root is certainly easy it is not the best choice from a security standpoint. Disabling direct root logins is not something that instantly makes a server impervious but it does help fight against petty brute force script kiddies. There are two options when disabling direct root login, one is to have them completely disabled and the other is to have it only with an ssh key. Make SURE that you add another user you can ssh into. If you are using cPanel use WHM --> Manage wheel users and add your user. Once logging in you can do "su -" you will gain full root access and be able to do your normal administrative commands. Make sure you use su - and not simply su, without the - you will not be on the root path and not have access to all commands.



First open up the ssh config:

nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

PermitRootLogin

Along with the many other GUI enhancements that have come with the new version 11 there have been some MAJOR improvements in how spam is handled. While cPanel has always remained an easy to modify system many people do not like to start modifing configuration files. Those people will be happy to learn that now cPanel 11 includes support for RBL support.


To enable it simply login to WHM and click on "Exim Configuration Editor". From here you have your choice of spamhaus and or spamcop, I generally enable both. You can also set lower limits on SpamAssasin in this menu if you would like to be more sensitive. Keep in mind of course as you raise the sensitivity the chances of legit email getting dropped increase.

Overall good job cPanel! This is a feature that has been needed for awhile but is even more important with the recent wave of spam attacks.

While something that most servers already have enabled from time to we encounter servers with a full domlogs directory so I figure it it worth mentioning. To check how large your apache domain logs are on a cPanel server run "du -hs /usr/local/apache/domlogs". If it is a bit higher then you want or you just want as much free space as possible login to WHM and click Tweak Settings. Within that menu will "Delete each domain's access logs after stats run" which you enable and click save. Now at the end of the stats run every night it will wipe out the directory so you should not have the logs grow very large, unless of course your server is very busy.

While it has been in the works for awhile it appears that theplanet and ev1servers have now officially merged into a single company under theplanet name. While one would hope with all of the resources the 2 companies have they would be able to check everything out before going live as is the case with the real world there are all sorts of small problems cropping up.

***Update*** It took 3 months but I finally received the x60 tablet and love it! While there certainly were a LOT of delays earlier on Lenovo seems to have fixed them and now everything should be going smoothly. I hope they learn from this and in the future do a better job keeping in contact with clients.

I am trying something a bit different for my site with this post. While I normally do some sort of technical article I am going to also do more blog style posts, in this case on a laptop that I am in the process of purchasing.

It is hard to imagine but the server management and admin company that I partially own, Total Server Solutions (TSS) , has now been around for 2 years. It just proves that when you have your heart set on something and have a great group of people you can suceed.We have started off as 4 friends and now have more then doubled in size with more growth coming soon. If you like the information you see on this website but do not quiet feel up to doing it yourself visit our site and check out what we can offer. We have support around 24/7 for monitoring servers as well as fixing servers that break. We work really hard to make sure that every customer of ours is happy and goes away with a good experience.

So please if you like this free information but want more or just want somebody else to look over your server check us out! Total Server Solutions has experience with everything from a shared webhost to a large scale client demanding 100% uptime and moving nearly 1/2 a gigabit every second of the day. If you need a custom cluster solution use the contact page and we can work with you to figure out a cost effective yet powerful solution. Thanks for visiting eth0.us and I hope you find everything that you need, reading this site may not make you a cPanel expert but it should bring you closer! :)

-John "eth00" Wigle
Owner of TotalServerSolutions

Total Server Solutions website