Basics

How to block ip addresses with iptables

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I have an ip address attacking my server or taking up all my httpd connections so none of my sites work.

In order to correct this you will want to use the netstat -n command to see the ip addresses connected to your server. Once you have the ip address you want to block you can use the following command to block them from accessing your server using iptables

iptables -I INPUT 1 -s IP.ADD.RES.SS -j DROP

-I INPUT 1 means to insert the rule at the top of the INPUT table (which means it will get looked at first)

-s IP.ADD.RES.SS is the source address of the packets we want to deal with

-j DROP means dump the packets into the void, and forget they ever happened.

How to forward a website to another url using PHP

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There are several ways to accomplish this task, but the simplest to understand is to use php.

To do this, you need to create the page that will do the forwarding. This can be any page, as long as it ends in “.php”. If you are trying to redirect a domain, you’d create “index.php” inside the public_html directory.

Once you decide which page you will use, then create the file and enter the following text:

<?php
header(“Location: http://whereyouwant.com/to/go.html“);
?>

Where http://whereyouwant.com/to/go.html is the location that you want the page to forward to. You can use local values, ie: /page.html, or full urls as in the above example (http://..etc.)

Apache : Showing files in a directory

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Showing files in a directory
If you want to list all files in a directory that doesn’t use an index.html (or index.php) file, you can create an .htaccess file with the following contents:

Options +Indexes

This will tell apache that you want to list all files in the directory.

Plesk Migration Manager is unable to connect to Plesk Agent installed on a remote server.

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Source server has Plesk Migration agent installed. Plesk Migration Manager is installed on Plesk server. Plesk keeps displaying

Unable to upload scout: Unable to run migrmng: Unable to connect to remote host xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx. Please check if the remote server is available for connection and if the correct login and password are specified.

To successfully utilize Plesk Migration Manager it’s important to have the network setting configured correctly:

1. The following ports need to be open for PMM (add the required exceptions for firewall):

For PMM:tcp 6489 (by default or other custom)

For data transferring on Windows source servers:tcp 135tcp 139tcp 445udp 137udp 138

For data transferring on Linux source server:tcp: 22

2. Server’s network settings. “Client for Microsoft Networks” and “File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks” must be present.

Start, Settings, Network Connections, Local Area Connection click Properties button. “Client for Microsoft Networks” and “File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks” should be present. If they are not, they need to be installed.

You can test connection to server with PMM Agent using

Start, Run, type \\хxх.хxх.хxх.ххх\c$ and hit Enter

where xхх.xхх.хxх.ххх is the IP address of the source server.

And if “Network sharing” ports are opened you can access windows administrator’s share folders.

Plesk 9.3 Latest update of openssl breaks Parallels Panel :: Starting Plesk… failed

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Latest update of the openssl package from CentOS breaks Parallels Panel 9.x. The following errors are displayed in the /var/log/sw-cp-server/error_log file when Panel is trying to start:

# tail /var/log/sw-cp-server/error_log
2010-04-07 01:56:38: (log.c.75) server started
2010-04-07 01:56:38: (network.c.336) SSL: error:00000000:lib(0):func(0):reason(0)
2010-04-07 01:57:59: (log.c.75) server started
2010-04-07 01:57:59: (network.c.336) SSL: error:00000000:lib(0):func(0):reason(0)
2010-04-07 01:57:59: (log.c.75) server started
2010-04-07 01:57:59: (network.c.336) SSL: error:00000000:lib(0):func(0):reason(0)
2010-04-07 02:13:38: (log.c.75) server started
2010-04-07 02:13:38: (network.c.336) SSL: error:00000000:lib(0):func(0):reason(0)
2010-04-07 02:13:38: (log.c.75) server started
2010-04-07 02:13:38: (network.c.336) SSL: error:00000000:lib(0):func(0):reason(0)

# service psa start
Starting xinetd service... done
Starting named service... done
Starting mysqld service... done
Starting postgresql service... not installed
Starting psa-spamassassin service... done
Plesk: Starting Mail Server... already started
Starting mail handlers tmpfs storage
Starting Plesk... failed
Starting drwebd service... not installed
#

To fix this you need to update Parallels Panel web-engine:

1. Download the appropriate package using the wget utility. Example for CentOS 5 x86:
#wget -c http://kb.parallels.com/Attachments/12669/Attachments/sw-cp-server-1.0-6.201004011105.centos5.i386.rpm

2. Install the downloaded package. Example for CentOS 5 x86:
#rpm -Uhv sw-cp-server-1.0-6.201004011105.centos5.i386.rpm

# rpm -Uhv sw-cp-server-1.0-6.201004011105.centos5.i386.rpm
Preparing... ########################################### [100%]
Stoppping SWsoft control panels server... stale pidfile. [ OK ]
1:sw-cp-server ########################################### [100%]
Starting SWsoft control panels server...[ OK ]
-bash-3.2# service psa start
Starting xinetd service... done
Starting named service... done
Starting mysqld service... done
Starting postgresql service... not installed
Starting psa-spamassassin service... done
Plesk: Starting Mail Server... already started
Starting mail handlers tmpfs storage
Starting Plesk... done
Starting drwebd service... not installed
-bash-3.2#

Uninstall APF

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Sometimes we may require to remove APF from the server. Here is a guide which shows how to remove APF completely from the server.

Stop the firewall first
service apf stop
/bin/rm -rfv /etc/apf
Remove the cron for APF
/bin/rm -fv /etc/cron.daily/fw
/bin/rm -fv /etc/init.d/apf
lastly disable at startup
chkconfig apf off

This should remove APF completely from the server as we removed the APF daemon, cron and files.

PVA troubleshooting.

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Linux/Unix, Management Node:
PVA status: # pvamn status
PVA restart: # pvamn restart
PVA (Control Center) status: # pvacc status
PVA (Control Center) restart: # pvacc restart
Special config file: /opt/pva/mn/bin/pva.conf
[log_folder] – Location of log files, default: /var/log/pva
[etc_folder] – Location of config files, default: /var/opt/pva/mn/etc
To change log level, find vzagent.conf location in pva.conf and change , then restart pvamn
3 – INFO level
4 – DEBUG level
Installation logs: /var/log/pva/setup/
To collect PVA Report run: # /opt/pva/mn/bin/pvareport.sh
Linux/Unix, Slave node:
PVA status: # pvaagent status
PVA restart: # pvaagent restart
PVA (Power Panel) status: # pvapp status
PVA (Power Panel) restart: # pvapp restart
Special config file: /opt/pva/agent/bin/pva.conf
[log_folder] – Location of log files, default: /var/log/pva
[etc_folder] – Location of config files, default: /vz/pva/agent/etc
To change log level, find vzagent.conf location in pva.conf and change , then restart pvaagent
3 – INFO level
4 – DEBUG level
Installation logs: /var/log/pva/setup/
To collect PVA Report run: # /opt/pva/agent/bin/pvareport.sh

PhpMyAdmin Stuck at Login screen with no errors !

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This is a possible issue when the path to save php_session is not correctly set :

The directory for storing session does not exists or php do not have sufficient rights to write to it.

To define the php_session directory simply add the following line to the php.ini :

session.save_path=”/tmp/php_session/”

And give write rights to the http server.

usually, the http server run as user daemon in group daemon. If it is the case, the following commands will make it :

chown -R :daemon /tmp/php_session

chmod -R g+wr /tmp/php_session

restart http server.

How to change time zone in Linux !

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1. Log in as root, check which timezone your machine is currently using by executing `date`. You’ll see something like “Mon Feb 12 05:09:00 CST 2007″, CST in this case is the current timezone.

2. Change to the directory to /usr/share/zoneinfo, here you will find a list of time zone regions. Choose the most appropriate region. If you live in Canada or the US this directory is the “Americas” directory.

3. If you wish, backup the previous timezone configuration by copying it to a different location. Such as `mv /etc/localtime /etc/localtime-old`.

4. Create a symbolic link from the appropiate timezone to /etc/localtime. Example: `ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Amsterdam /etc/localtime`.

5. If you have the utility rdate, update the current system time by executing `rdate -s time.nist.gov` or `rdate -s rdate.cpanel.net`

6. Synchronize hardware clock with system clock by executing: ` /sbin/hwclock –systohc`

🙂