Mohammed Sameer's Online Aggregator

CentOS 5.3 Samba Standalone Server With tdbsam Backend

This tutorial explains the installation of a Samba fileserver on CentOS 5.3 and how to configure it to share files over the SMB protocol as well as how to add users. Samba is configured as a standalone server, not as a domain controller. In the resulting setup, every user has his own home directory accessible via the SMB protocol and all users have a shared directory with read-/write access.

Installing Adobe AIR 1.5.1 For Linux On Ubuntu 9.04 (x86_64)

Adobe AIR is a technology that lets you run Internet applications on the desktop. With AIR you do not need a browser to run such desktop applications. This tutorial explains how you can install Adobe AIR 1.5.1 for Linux on an Ubuntu 9.04 desktop (x86_64) and how you can install AIR applications.

How To Remotely Shut Down Windows XP Computers From A Linux Server

As a budget cutback, our school administrators asked us to shutdown all non-essential classroom computers at night to save electricity. I teach Linux in a classroom that has a Dell Poweredge 2850 Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL5) server and 29 Dell Optiplex 745 student lab computers running Microsoft Windows XP SP3 as the host operating system and VMWare Server to provide virtual Linux machines for our classes. I researched on the Internet for the best solution to remotely shutdown the student lab computers at night. I was not able to find one post or how-to that completely answered my questions, but I was able to piece together a solution. In an effort to document this project and help others with similar needs, here are my notes on the project.

Squid Proxy Server On Ubuntu 9.04 Server With DansGuardian, ClamAV, And WPAD (Proxy Auto-Detection)

This tutorial will demonstrate how to set up a Squid Proxy server on Ubuntu 9.04 Server with DansGuardian (for content filtering) and ClamAV (for Virus scanning); in addition, we will set up Web Proxy AutoDetection (WPAD) through DHCP (in this case, the Windows Server 2003 DHCP server) or DNS so that the only configuration necessary on the client side is to check "Auto-detect proxy settings for this network" in Firefox or Internet Explorer. At the end of the tutorial, users will have a fully functional and secure proxy for HTTP access.

Installing Adobe AIR 1.5.1 For Linux On Ubuntu 9.04 (i386)

Adobe AIR is a technology that lets you run Internet applications on the desktop. With AIR you do not need a browser to run such desktop applications. This tutorial explains how you can install Adobe AIR 1.5.1 for Linux on an Ubuntu 9.04 desktop and how you can install AIR applications.

OpenERP Server Installation On Fedora 11

This article will show you how to set up OpenERP on Fedora 11. Open ERP (formerly named Tiny ERP) is the leader open-source ERP/CRM system written mostly in Python and initiated in Belgium. It offers a three-tier web architecture, ease of use and flexibility.

Using IP Service Object In Firewall Builder

This article continues the series of articles on Fireall Builder, a graphical firewall configuration and management tool that supports many Open Source firewall platforms as well as Cisco IOS access lists and Cisco ASA (PIX). This article demonstrates how you can work with IP Service object in Firewall Builder.

Distributed Replicated Storage Across Four Storage Nodes With GlusterFS On Debian Lenny

This tutorial shows how to combine four single storage servers (running Debian Lenny) to a distributed replicated storage with GlusterFS. Nodes 1 and 2 (replication1) as well as 3 and 4 (replication2) will mirror each other, and replication1 and replication2 will be combined to one larger storage server (distribution). Basically, this is RAID10 over network. If you lose one server from replication1 and one from replication2, the distributed volume continues to work. The client system (Debian Lenny as well) will be able to access the storage as if it was a local filesystem. GlusterFS is a clustered file-system capable of scaling to several peta-bytes. It aggregates various storage bricks over Infiniband RDMA or TCP/IP interconnect into one large parallel network file system. Storage bricks can be made of any commodity hardware such as x86-64 servers with SATA-II RAID and Infiniband HBA.

How To Configure SSH Keys Authentication With PuTTY And Linux Server In 5 Quick Steps

This tutorial explains how you can replace password-based SSH authentication with key-based authentication which is more secure because only the people that own the key can log in. In this example, we're using PuTTY as our SSH client on a Windows system.

Virtualization With XenServer 5.5.0

This Howto covers the installation of XenServer 5.5.0 and the creation of virtual machines with the XenCenter administrator console. XenServer is a free virtualization platform from Citrix, the company behind the well known Xen virtualization engine. XenServer makes it easy to create, run and manage Xen virtual machines with the XenCenter administrator console. The XenServer installation CD contains a full Linux distribution which is customized to run XenServer.

Creating Portable DiskSafes With LoopbackFS And LVM Snapshots

This is the "DiskSafe" idea used to store backups of server data. This could be used to replace physical tape volume and still provide portablility. I have found pieces of this information around the Internet but nothing putting it all together.

Installation Of OpenERP Server 5.0, OpenERP GTK Client 5.0 And OpenERP Web Client 5.0.1 On Ubuntu Server 9.04

This article will show you how to set up openerp-server 5.0.0-3-1 + openerp-client 5.0.0-3-1 + openerp-web 5.0.1 on Ubuntu Server 9.04. Open ERP (formerly named Tiny ERP) is the leader open-source ERP/CRM system written mostly in Python and initiated in Belgium. It offers a three-tier web architecture, ease of use and flexibility.

Distributed Storage Across Four Storage Nodes With GlusterFS On Debian Lenny

This tutorial shows how to combine four single storage servers (running Debian Lenny) to one large storage server (distributed storage) with GlusterFS. The client system (Debian Lenny as well) will be able to access the storage as if it was a local filesystem. GlusterFS is a clustered file-system capable of scaling to several peta-bytes. It aggregates various storage bricks over Infiniband RDMA or TCP/IP interconnect into one large parallel network file system. Storage bricks can be made of any commodity hardware such as x86-64 servers with SATA-II RAID and Infiniband HBA.

How To Set Up Journaled Quota On Debian Lenny

This tutorial shows how you can set up journaled quota on a Debian Lenny system. With journaled quota, you don't need to run quotacheck after an unclean shutdown. Journaled quota works on ext3 and ext4 file systems.

Using Network, Address Range Objects And Groups Of Addresses Objects In Firewall Builder

This article continues the series of articles on Fireall Builder, a graphical firewall configuration and management tool that supports many Open Source firewall platforms as well as Cisco IOS access lists and Cisco ASA (PIX). This article demonstrates how you can work with Network, Address Range and Groups of Objects objects in Firewall Builder.

Enabling Compiz Fusion On A Fedora 11 GNOME Desktop (NVIDIA GeForce 8100)

This tutorial shows how you can enable Compiz Fusion on a Fedora 11 GNOME desktop (the system must have a 3D-capable graphics card - I'm using an NVIDIA GeForce 8100 here). With Compiz Fusion you can use beautiful 3D effects like wobbly windows or a desktop cube on your desktop.

How To Set Up Mass Virtualhosting With Apache2 + mod_rewrite + mod_userdir + mod_suexec On CentOS 5.3

This howto shows one method of doing mass virtualhosting using mod_rewrite to dynamically map a list of directories on your filesystem to virtual hosts. Additionally, by rewriting the incoming URL to the user's home directory we can make use of suEXEC to have Apache execute CGI scripts as the owner of the script.

Virtualization With KVM On A Fedora 11 Server

This guide explains how you can install and use KVM for creating and running virtual machines on a Fedora 11 server. I will show how to create image-based virtual machines and also virtual machines that use a logical volume (LVM). KVM is short for Kernel-based Virtual Machine and makes use of hardware virtualization, i.e., you need a CPU that supports hardware virtualization, e.g. Intel VT or AMD-V.

Goldfish, A PHP Autoresponder Script For The HowtoForge "Virtual Users And Domains With Postfix, Courier, MySQL And SquirrelMail " Setups

Goldfish is a quite simple autoresponder script (written in PHP) for Postfix. It consists of only one PHP file which can be started through a cronjob. It works with our "Virtual Users And Domains With Postfix, Courier, MySQL And SquirrelMail" tutorials (it cannot be used for other setups, especially Postfix setups that don't use a MySQL database).

How To Install Qmailtoaster (CentOS 5.3)

Qmailtoaster is a project that aims to make the installation of Qmail onto RPM based systems a snap. All of the packages are distributed in source RPMs so building the packages for your particular distro and architecture is as easy as running a script or a simple command for each package. The RPMs have all of the needed and commonly asked for patches included so you can have a mail server up and running in about an hour. When it's all complete, you'll have a full Qmail mail server installation ready for just about anything. I personally run Qmailtoaster servers for other companies and ISPs who have tens of thousands of users on their systems.

The Perfect Desktop - Fedora 11 (GNOME)

This tutorial shows how you can set up a Fedora 11 desktop (GNOME) that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge.

Basic Web Server On Ubuntu 9.04 With Zend Framework

This is a brief description of the steps required to set up a basic Web Server (on Ubuntu 9.04) with the Zend Framework installed.

Using IP And MAC Address Objects In Firewall Builder

This article continues the series of articles on Fireall Builder, a graphical firewall configuration and management tool that supports many Open Source firewall platforms as well as Cisco IOS access lists and Cisco ASA (PIX). This article demonstrates how you can work with IPv4, IPv6 and MAC Address objects in Firewall Builder.

Setting Up A High-Availability Load Balancer (With Failover And Session Support) With HAProxy/Keepalived On Debian Lenny

This article explains how to set up a two-node load balancer in an active/passive configuration with HAProxy and keepalived on Debian Lenny. The load balancer sits between the user and two (or more) backend Apache web servers that hold the same content. Not only does the load balancer distribute the requests to the two backend Apache servers, it also checks the health of the backend servers. If one of them is down, all requests will automatically be redirected to the remaining backend server. In addition to that, the two load balancer nodes monitor each other using keepalived, and if the master fails, the slave becomes the master, which means the users will not notice any disruption of the service. HAProxy is session-aware, which means you can use it with any web application that makes use of sessions (such as forums, shopping carts, etc.).

How To Upgrade From Fedora 10 To Fedora 11 (Desktop & Server)

This article describes how you can upgrade your Fedora 10 system to Fedora 11. The upgrade procedure works for both desktop and server installations.

The Perfect Server - Fedora 11 x86_64 [ISPConfig 2]

This is a detailed description about how to set up a Fedora 11 server that offers all services needed by ISPs and hosters: Apache web server (SSL-capable) with PHP5/Ruby/Python, Postfix mail server with SMTP-AUTH and TLS, BIND DNS server, Proftpd FTP server, MySQL server, Dovecot POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, etc. This tutorial is written for the 64-bit version of Fedora 11, but should apply to the 32-bit version with very little modifications as well. In the end you should have a system that works reliably, and if you like you can install the free webhosting control panel ISPConfig (i.e., ISPConfig runs on it out of the box).

Record "DreamBox dm 500 S" On Linux Over HTTP Stream

This "short HowTo" shows how to watch, record and convert TV shows on-the-fly from "DreamBox" using the "HTTP" streaming service on a PC runing Linux OS. The "DreamBox" is a satellite receiver that has a NIC and you can access it using a web interface to watch and control it.

The Perfect SpamSnake - Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope

This tutorial shows how to set up an Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope based server as a spamfilter in Gateway mode. In the end, you will have a SpamSnake Gateway which will relay clean emails to your MTA. You will also be able to view your incoming queue, train your SpamSnake and carry out a few more advanced operations via MailWatch.

Virtual Users And Domains With Postfix, Courier, MySQL And SquirrelMail (Ubuntu 9.04)

This document describes how to install a Postfix mail server that is based on virtual users and domains, i.e. users and domains that are in a MySQL database. I'll also demonstrate the installation and configuration of Courier (Courier-POP3, Courier-IMAP), so that Courier can authenticate against the same MySQL database Postfix uses. In addition to that, this tutorial covers the installation of Amavisd, SpamAssassin and ClamAV so that emails will be scanned for spam and viruses. I will also show how to install SquirrelMail as a webmail interface so that users can read and send emails and change their passwords.

Running Vhosts Under Separate UIDs/GIDs With Apache2 mpm-itk On Ubuntu 9.04

This article explains how you can install and configure apache2-mpm-itk on an Ubuntu 9.04 server. apache2-mpm-itk is an MPM (Multi-Processing Module) for the Apache 2 web server. mpm-itk allows you to run each of your vhost under a separate UID and GID - in short, the scripts and configuration files for one vhost no longer have to be readable for all the other vhosts. mpm-itk works with mod_php because mpm-itk is based on the traditional prefork MPM, which means it's non-threaded. This means you don't need to use suExec or suPHP anymore to run a website's PHP scripts as a separate user.

Using The Interface Object In Firewall Builder

This article continues the series of articles on Fireall Builder, a graphical firewall configuration and management tool that supports many Open Source firewall platforms as well as Cisco IOS access lists and Cisco ASA (PIX). This article demonstrates how you can work with Interface objects in Firewall Builder.

High-Availability Storage With GlusterFS On Debian Lenny - Automatic File Replication (Mirror) Across Two Storage Servers

This tutorial shows how to set up a high-availability storage with two storage servers (Debian Lenny) that use GlusterFS. Each storage server will be a mirror of the other storage server, and files will be replicated automatically across both storage servers. The client system (Debian Lenny as well) will be able to access the storage as if it was a local filesystem. GlusterFS is a clustered file-system capable of scaling to several peta-bytes. It aggregates various storage bricks over Infiniband RDMA or TCP/IP interconnect into one large parallel network file system. Storage bricks can be made of any commodity hardware such as x86-64 servers with SATA-II RAID and Infiniband HBA.

Building Customized Ubuntu Live-CDs With UCK On Ubuntu 9.04

This guide explains how you can build customized Ubuntu (as well as Kubuntu/Xubuntu and Edubuntu) Live-CDs with the help of UCK (Ubuntu Customization Kit) on Ubuntu 9.04. UCK allows you to customize the language and the applications on the Live-CD.

The Perfect Server - CentOS 5.3 x86_64 [ISPConfig 3]

This tutorial shows how to prepare a CentOS 5.3 x86_64 server for the installation of ISPConfig 3, and how to install ISPConfig 3. ISPConfig 3 is a webhosting control panel that allows you to configure the following services through a web browser: Apache web server, Postfix mail server, MySQL, MyDNS nameserver, PureFTPd, SpamAssassin, ClamAV, and many more.

How To Configure An Email Account In Thunderbird

This guide explains how you can configure a POP3 account in Mozilla Thunderbird. I'm assuming that Mozilla Thunderbird is already installed.

iRedMail: Mail Server With LDAP, Postfix, RoundCube/SquirrelMail, Dovecot, ClamAV, SpamAssassin, Amavisd, DKIM, SPF On Debian (Lenny) 5.0.1

iRedMail is a shell script that lets you quickly deploy a full-featured mail solution in less than 2 minutes. Since iRedMail 0.5, it supports Debian 5.0.1 (it supports both i386 and x86_64). Its object is to make a Linux mail server installation and configuration simple and easy to use. iRedMail supports both OpenLDAP and MySQL as backends for storing virtual domains and users.This tutorial shows how to use OpenLDAP as the backend.

Creating An NFS-Like Standalone Storage Server With GlusterFS On Debian Lenny

This tutorial shows how to set up a standalone storage server on Debian Lenny. Instead of NFS, I will use GlusterFS here. The client system will be able to access the storage as if it was a local filesystem. GlusterFS is a clustered file-system capable of scaling to several peta-bytes. It aggregates various storage bricks over Infiniband RDMA or TCP/IP interconnect into one large parallel network file system. Storage bricks can be made of any commodity hardware such as x86-64 servers with SATA-II RAID and Infiniband HBA.

Using The Host Object In Firewall Builder

This article continues the series of articles on Fireall Builder, a graphical firewall configuration and management tool that supports many Open Source firewall platforms as well as Cisco IOS access lists and Cisco ASA (PIX). This article demonstrates how you can work with Host objects in Firewall Builder.

How To Migrate Mailboxes Between IMAP Servers With imapsync

This guide explains how you can migrate mailboxes between IMAP servers with imapsync. imapsync is an IMAP synchronisation, sync, copy or migration tool. More than 32 different IMAP server softwares are supported with success. All flags are preserved, unread will stay unread, read will stay read, deleted will stay deleted.

Using ATA Over Ethernet (AoE) On Fedora 10 (Initiator And Target)

This guide explains how you can set up an AoE target and an AoE initiator (client), both running Fedora 10. AoE stands for "ATA over Ethernet" and is a storage area network (SAN) protocol which allows AoE initiators to use storage devices on the (remote) AoE target using normal ethernet cabling. "Remote" in this case means "inside the same LAN" because AoE is not routable outside a LAN (this is a major difference compared to iSCSI). To the AoE initiator, the remote storage looks like a normal, locally-attached hard drive.

Delete Unnecessary Files From Your Desktop With BleachBit On Ubuntu 9.04

This guide shows how you can install and use BleachBit on an Ubuntu 9.04 desktop to delete unnecessary files. BleachBit deletes unnecessary files (such as cache, cookies, Internet history, localizations, logs, temporary files, and broken shortcuts) to free valuable disk space, maintain privacy, and remove junk. It wipes clean Adobe Reader, APT, Bash, Beagle, Chromium, Epiphany, Firefox, Flash, GIMP, Google Earth, Java, KDE, OpenOffice.org, Opera, RealPlayer, Second Life viewer, Skype, VIM, XChat, Yum, and more.

The Perfect Desktop - Linux Mint 7 (Gloria)

This tutorial shows how you can set up a Linux Mint 7 (Gloria) desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge. Linux Mint 7 is a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu 9.04 that has lots of packages in its repositories (like multimedia codecs, Adobe Flash, Adobe Reader, Skype, Google Earth, etc.) that are relatively hard to install on other distributions; it therefore provides a user-friendly desktop experience even for Linux newbies.

How To Compile virt-df, virt-top, virt-mem & virt-ctrl On Debian Lenny

This short guide explains how you can build virt-df, virt-top, virt-mem and virt-ctrl from the sources on a Debian Lenny system. These tools are currently available for Fedora in binary format.

Fedora 10 Samba Standalone Server With tdbsam Backend

This tutorial explains the installation of a Samba fileserver on Fedora 10 and how to configure it to share files over the SMB protocol as well as how to add users. Samba is configured as a standalone server, not as a domain controller. In the resulting setup, every user has his own home directory accessible via the SMB protocol and all users have a shared directory with read-/write access.

Using iSCSI On Fedora 10 (Initiator And Target)

This guide explains how you can set up an iSCSI target and an iSCSI initiator (client), both running Fedora 10. The iSCSI protocol is a storage area network (SAN) protocol which allows iSCSI initiators to use storage devices on the (remote) iSCSI target using normal ethernet cabling. To the iSCSI initiator, the remote storage looks like a normal, locally-attached hard drive.

Integrating eAccelerator Into PHP5 And Lighttpd (Debian Lenny)

This guide explains how to integrate eAccelerator into PHP5 and lighttpd on a Debian Lenny system. From the eAccelerator project page: "eAccelerator is a free open-source PHP accelerator, optimizer, and dynamic content cache. It increases the performance of PHP scripts by caching them in their compiled state, so that the overhead of compiling is almost completely eliminated. It also optimizes scripts to speed up their execution. eAccelerator typically reduces server load and increases the speed of your PHP code by 1-10 times."

Using Firewall Object In Firewall Builder

Firewall Builder supports variety of object types, both simple such as address, network, host, or IP, TCP, UDP and ICMP services, as well as more sophisticated such as Firewall, Host, Address table, DNS name, User service. Firewall object is central to the program and is in the focus of this article.

Setting Up A PXE Install Server For Multiple Linux Distributions On Debian Lenny

This tutorial shows how to set up a PXE (short for preboot execution environment) install server on Debian Lenny. A PXE install server allows your client computers to boot and install a Linux distribution over the network, without the need of burning Linux iso images onto a CD/DVD, boot floppy images, etc. This is handy if your client computers don't have CD or floppy drives, or if you want to set up multiple computers at the same time (e.g. in a large enterprise), or simply because you want to save the money for the CDs/DVDs. In this article I show how to configure a PXE server that allows you to boot multiple distributions (i386 and x86_64): Debian Lenny, Ubuntu 9.04, Fedora 10, CentOS 5.3, OpenSuSE 11.1, and Mandriva 2009.1.

How To Install VMware Server 2 On Ubuntu 9.04

This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions on how to install VMware Server 2 on an Ubuntu 9.04 desktop system. With VMware Server you can create and run guest operating systems ("virtual machines") such as Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, etc. under a host operating system. This has the benefit that you can run multiple operating systems on the same hardware which saves a lot of money, and you can move virtual machines from one VMware Server to the next one (or to a system that has the VMware Player which is also free).

Installing MyDNS & MyDNSConfig 3 On Fedora 10

In this tutorial I will describe how to install and configure MyDNS and MyDNSConfig 3 on Fedora 10. MyDNS is a DNS server that uses a MySQL database as backend instead of configuration files like, for example, Bind or djbdns. The advantage is that MyDNS simply reads the records from the database, and it does not have to be restarted/reloaded when DNS records change or zones are created/edited/deleted. A secondary nameserver can be easily set up by installing a second instance of MyDNS that accesses the same database or, to be more redundant, uses the MySQL master / slave replication features to replicate the data to the secondary nameserver. MyDNSConfig is an easy to use web-based interface to MyDNS. MyDNSConfig can create all types of DNS records that are available in MyDNS and adds features like user management and access privileges.