Installing & Configuring PROFTPD FTP Service on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx

01 # Install proftpd
02 sudo apt-get install proftpd
03
04 # During installation you can choose to install as an inetd service,
05 # or a standalone server.  I read and followed the advice of installing
06 # as an inetd service since I won't have many users.
07
08 # Backup the configuration file incase you mess something up!
09 sudo cp /etc/proftpd/proftpd.conf /etc/proftpd/proftpd.conf.original
10
11 # Open the config for edit
12 sudo nano /etc/proftpd/proftpd.conf
13
14 # Change your server name to whatever you like
15 ServerName "whatever.mydomain.com"
16
17 # Uncomment the line to restrict users to their home directory
18 DefaultRoot ~
19
20 # Uncomment the large block of commented code at the end of the
21 # config to enable anonymous user access
22 <Anonymous ~ftp>
23 ...
24 </Anonymous>
25
26 # Save your changes and then restart the service
27 sudo service proftpd restart
28
29 # You can modify your welcome message at
30 sudo nano /home/ftp/welcome.msg
31
32 # And you can put a custom message in any folder to have it
33 # displayed when accessed
34 sudo nano /home/johndoe/.message
35
36 # That's it!  Connect from any FTP client.  Be careful of your file permissions
37 # if you decide to create custom FTP users and change there home directories
38 # to a fileshare or something.

Common SSH Commands – Linux Shell Commands

Common SSH Commands or Linux Shell Commands,
ls : list files/directories in a directory, comparable to dir in windows/dos.
ls -al : shows all files (including ones that start with a period), directories, and details attributes for each file.

cd : change directory ? ? cd /usr/local/apache : go to /usr/local/apache/ directory
cd ~ : go to your home directory
cd – : go to the last directory you were in
cd .. : go up a directory cat : print file contents to the screen

cat filename.txt : cat the contents of filename.txt to your screen

chmod: changes file access permissions
The set of 3 go in this order from left to right:
USER – GROUP – EVERONE

0 = — No permission
1 = –X Execute only
2 = -W- Write only
3 = -WX Write and execute
4 = R– Read only
5 = R-X Read and execute
6 = RW- Read and write
7 = RWX Read, write and execute

Usage:
chmod numberpermissions filename

chmod 000 : No one can access
chmod 644: Usually for HTML pages
chmod 755: Usually for CGI scripts

chown: changes file ownership permissions
The set of 2 go in this order from left to right:
USER – GROUP

chown root myfile.txt : Changes the owner of the file to root
chown root.root myfile.txt : Changes the owner and group of the file to root

tail : like cat, but only reads the end of the file
tail /var/log/messages : see the last 20 (by default) lines of /var/log/messages
tail -f /var/log/messages : watch the file continuously, while it’s being updated
tail -200 /var/log/messages : print the last 200 lines of the file to the screen

more : like cat, but opens the file one screen at a time rather than all at once
more /etc/userdomains : browse through the userdomains file. hit Spaceto go to the next page, q to quit

pico : friendly, easy to use file editor
pico /home/burst/public_html/index.html : edit the index page for the user’s website.

File Editing with VI ssh commands
vi : another editor, tons of features, harder to use at first than pico
vi /home/burst/public_html/index.html : edit the index page for the user’s website.
Whie in the vi program you can use the following useful commands, you will need to hit SHIFT + : to go into command mode

:q! : This force quits the file without saving and exits vi
:w : This writes the file to disk, saves it
:wq : This saves the file to disk and exists vi
:LINENUMBER : EG :25 : Takes you to line 25 within the file
:$ : Takes you to the last line of the file
:0 : Takes you to the first line of the file

grep : looks for patterns in files
grep root /etc/passwd : shows all matches of root in /etc/passwd
grep -v root /etc/passwd : shows all lines that do not match root

ln : create’s “links” between files and directories
ln -s /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf /etc/httpd.conf : Now you can edit /etc/httpd.conf rather than the original. changes will affect the orginal, however you can delete the link and it will not delete the original.

last : shows who logged in and when
last -20 : shows only the last 20 logins
last -20 -a : shows last 20 logins, with the hostname in the last field

w : shows who is currently logged in and where they are logged in from.
who : This also shows who is on the server in an shell.

netstat : shows all current network connections.
netstat -an : shows all connections to the server, the source and destination ips and ports.
netstat -rn : shows routing table for all ips bound to the server.

top : shows live system processes in a nice table, memory information, uptime and other useful info. This is excellent for managing your system processes, resources and ensure everything is working fine and your server isn’t bogged down.
top then type Shift + M to sort by memory usage or Shift + P to sort by CPU usage

ps: ps is short for process status, which is similar to the top command. It’s used to show currently running processes and their PID.
A process ID is a unique number that identifies a process, with that you can kill or terminate a running program on your server (see kill command).
ps U username : shows processes for a certain user
ps aux : shows all system processes
ps aux –forest : shows all system processes like the above but organizes in a hierarchy that’s very useful!

touch : create an empty file
touch /home/burst/public_html/404.html : create an empty file called 404.html in the directory /home/burst/public_html/

file : attempts to guess what type of file a file is by looking at it’s content.
file * : prints out a list of all files/directories in a directory

du : shows disk usage.
du -sh : shows a summary, in human-readble form, of total disk space used in the current directory, including subdirectories.
du -sh * : same thing, but for each file and directory. helpful when finding large files taking up space.

wc : word count
wc -l filename.txt : tells how many lines are in filename.txt

cp : copy a file
cp filename filename.backup : copies filename to filename.backup
cp -a /home/burst/new_design/* /home/burst/public_html/ : copies all files, retaining permissions form one directory to another.
cp -av * ../newdir : Copies all files and directories recurrsively in the current directory INTO newdir

mv : Move a file command
mv oldfilename newfilename : Move a file or directory from oldfilename to newfilename

rm : delete a file
rm filename.txt : deletes filename.txt, will more than likely ask if you really want to delete it
rm -f filename.txt : deletes filename.txt, will not ask for confirmation before deleting.
rm -rf tmp/ : recursively deletes the directory tmp, and all files in it, including subdirectories. BE VERY CAREFULL WITH THIS COMMAND!!!

TAR
: Creating and Extracting .tar.gz and .tar files
tar -zxvf file.tar.gz : Extracts the file
tar -xvf file.tar : Extracts the file
tar -cf archive.tar contents/ : Takes everything from contents/ and puts it into archive.tar
gzip -d filename.gz : Decompress the file, extract it

ZIP Files: Extracting .zip files shell command
unzip file.zip

Firewall – iptables commands
iptables -I INPUT -s IPADDRESSHERE -j DROP : This command stops any connections from the IP address
iptables -L : List all rules in iptables
iptables -F : Flushes all iptables rules (clears the firewall)
iptables –save : Saves the currenty ruleset in memory to disk
service iptables restart : Restarts iptables

Apache Shell Commands
httpd -v : Outputs the build date and version of the Apache server.
httpd -l : Lists compiled in Apache modules
httpd status : Only works if mod_status is enabled and shows a page of active connections
service httpd restart : Restarted Apache web server

MySQL Shell Commands
mysqladmin processlist : Shows active mysql connections and queries
mysqladmin drop databasenamehere : Drops/deletes the selected database
mysqladmin create databasenamehere : Creates a mysql database

Restore MySQL Database Shell Command
mysql -u username -p password databasename < databasefile.sql : Restores a MySQL database from databasefile.sql

Backup MySQL Database Shell Command
mysqldump -u username -p password databasename > databasefile.sql : Backup MySQL database to databasefile.sql

kill: terminate a system process
kill -9 PID EG: kill -9 431
kill PID
EG: kill 10550
Use top or ps ux to get system PIDs (Process IDs)

EG:

PID TTY TIME COMMAND
10550 pts/3 0:01 /bin/csh
10574 pts/4 0:02 /bin/csh
10590 pts/4 0:09 APP

Each line represents one process, with a process being loosely defined as a running instance of a program. The column headed PID (process ID) shows the assigned process numbers of the processes. The heading COMMAND shows the location of the executed process.

Putting commands together
Often you will find you need to use different commands on the same line. Here are some examples. Note that the | character is called a pipe, it takes date from one program and pipes it to another.
> means create a new file, overwriting any content already there.
>> means tp append data to a file, creating a newone if it doesn not already exist.
< send input from a file back into a command.

grep User /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf |more
This will dump all lines that match User from the httpd.conf, then print the results to your screen one page at a time.

last -a > /root/lastlogins.tmp
This will print all the current login history to a file called lastlogins.tmp in /root/

tail -10000 /var/log/exim_mainlog |grep domain.com |more
This will grab the last 10,000 lines from /var/log/exim_mainlog, find all occurances of domain.com (the period represents ‘anything’,
— comment it out with a so it will be interpretted literally), then send it to your screen page by page.

netstat -an |grep :80 |wc -l
Show how many active connections there are to apache (httpd runs on port 80)

mysqladmin processlist |wc -l
Show how many current open connections there are to mysql

Linux SSH commands to show and monitor server resources and real-time performance: memory, swap, disk usage, CPU usage and I/O

Below are a few general commands found in most popular Linux distros which you can use via SSH to check the status of your hosting server.

To show used and available RAM memory and swap space usage:

free -m

To show current disk storage usage by mounted device:

df

To show disk usage statistics of the current directory by directories and files:

du

To show the hard disk space a directory or a file takes up:

du filename

To show the length of time this server has been up and the server loads in the past 1 minute, 5 minutes and 15 minutes:

uptime

To display a real-time updated server resource usage including: server uptime, user logged on, load average, current tasks, CPU usage, memory usage and swap usage:

top

To display a list of real-time active or sleeping processes your server is up to:

ps

To show some information about the current status of virtual memory, CPU usage, I/O usage:

vmstat

This is also a good tool to find out system performance bottlenecks.

To display currently logged on users on the system:

w

Or

who

To print a full screen text graph of the server load refreshed every few seconds:

tload

If you are on shared hosting, chances are your server usage has been imposed some hard limits such as the largest amount of files / directories possible and the hard storage limit. View them by:

quota

WordPress Permalinks not working on Ubuntu 10.04 ? mod_rewrite issue requires a symlink

This is a copy from Philip Oakley’s blog. I just want to say thank you for helping me with the same problem. Here is a direct link to his blog posting.

http://philipoakley.org/2010/07/27/wordpress-2/wordpress-permalinks-not-working-on-ubuntu-10-04-mod_rewrite-issue-requires-a-symlink/

1. First we need to check if the rewrite module is installed. I was connected to my VPS server via SSH but either in a Terminal or via SSH type (or copy from below):


apache2ctl -M

This should show a list of Apache modules. Rewrite_Module should be there (as it is a default in Ubuntu 10.04) but if not check with your FTP client or in your file browser that /etc/apache2/mods-available contains a file called rewrite.load. If it does not then you need to fix this before you can carry on.

Presuming it does exist then we need to create a symlink


cd /etc/apache2/mods-enabled
sudo ln -s ../mods-available/rewrite.load

2. Now we need to check that rewrite module rewrite.load is in the mods enabled folder (/etc/apache2/mods-enabled). The easiest way is to have a look at that folder with your FTP client or file browser.

3. Presuming you are still OK then then the final and very import stage is to ?Enable AllowOverride All?

In the folder /etc/apache2/sites-enabled you should find a file called 000-default and you need to check that all permissions are set to read & write not just read only, easily done with an FTP client (right click file>File Permissions in Filezilla)

In 000-default it will probably say AllowOverride None in several places. Find the one for where you?ve installed WordPress , and change it to AllowOverride All. e.g if WordPress is installed at var/www/????? then it may be under the Directory ?/var/www? grouping.

Finally, dont forget to restart Apache from the terminal:

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Ubuntu Server 9.04 Manual Lamp Install

Here is a quick Reference guide for installing the components needed for a fresh ubuntu server install to Lamp configuration.
These instructions were originally written 3-2008. As you know that will surely change by the time you need this info.
Hopefully this will give you some idea on how to do it on newer versions of ubuntu server.

Run all as root or sudo

1. change ip from dhcp to static

sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces
[how to setup for dhcp]
Auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
[how to setup for static]
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
Address 192.168.1.50
Netmask 255.255.255.0
Network 192.168.1.0
Broadcast 192.168.1.255
Gateway 192.168.1.1
[now to setup dns settings]
vi /etc/resolv.conf
On the line ?name server xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx? replace with ip of dns server.

Now to restart network
/etc/init.d/networking restar

2. [get updates for ubuntu]

aptitude update
aptitude upgrade
aptitude dist-upgrade

3. apt-get install apache2
/etc/init.d/apache2.start
/etc/init.d/apache2 stop

4. apt-get install php5 libapache2-mod-php5
[restart apache]
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

5. [how to delete full directorys]
rm ?r directory

6. apt-get install mysql-server

If you are running a server you should probably bind your
address by editing bind-address in /etc/mysql/my.cnf and
replacing its value (127.0.0.1) by your IP address

how to set root password if not setup in install of mysql
mysql> SET PASSWORD FOR ?root?@’localhost? = PASSWORD(?xxxxxx?);

Try running it

Code:
mysql -uroot -pxxx

7. apt-get install libapache2-mod-auth-mysql php5-mysql phpmyadmin

8. Also I had to chown the www folder so that I could easily edit files in it:

cd /var/
sudo chown -R USERNAME www

then created a symlink in my home directory:
ln -s -v /var/www /home/USERNAME/www

9. apt-get install openssh-server

10. http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin_1.400_all.deb

apt-get install openssl libauthen-pam-perl libio-pty-perl libmd5-perl
libnet-ssleay-perl

dpkg -i webmin_1.400_all.deb