Primary Default Website in Virtualmin (Apache)

When no virtual websites are in existence, The Apache web server will point to /var/www/html and /var/www/cgi-bin in a base install of Virtualmin (the default). However when a Virtual website is created, this changes to the first available virtual site, so for example, if the hostname is some.domain.com and no virtual sites are configured, typing this URL in a browser will serve the content in /var/www/html. If a virtual site called virtualsite.com is created, the same request will serve the content of /home/virtualsite/public_html.

By design this is normal

Whilst this is the way Apache is designed and there’s nothing wrong with that, it becomes a problem when some applications are only available outside the virtual server realm (i.e. not suexec’ed). For example the server has Nagios or Munin installed and you want to be able to access it even after a virtual server has been created. The solution is to manually create the first virtual server and call it the same as the server hostname (some.domain.com).

Continue reading Primary Default Website in Virtualmin (Apache)

SSL smtp on Virtualmin

By default, virtual servers aren’t setting up SMTP to use SSL. Following this information regarding SSL SMTP I am just summarizing:

 netstat -an | grep :465

Returns nothing, so.

vi /etc/postfix/master.cf

find the lines:

#smtps inet n - n - - smtpd
# -o smtpd_tls_wrappermode=yes
# -o smtpd_sasl_auth_enable=yes
# -o smtpd_client_restrictions=permit_sasl_authenticated,reject
# -o milter_macro_daemon_name=ORIGINATING

And uncomment them:

Continue reading SSL smtp on Virtualmin

index.shtml and #include virtual in Virtualmin

For some reason the default virtualmin install does not have index.shtml in the Directoryindex directive. To enable it, one must edit the directive:

Virtualmin > Services > Configure Website > Edit Directives

Find the following line:

DirectoryIndex index.html index.htm index.php index.php4 index.php5

Add index.shml at the end of the line:

DirectoryIndex index.html index.htm index.php index.php4 index.php5 index.shtml

Click “Save” then “Apply Changes” (on the top right hand side of the “Virtual Server Options” page). Checking your virtual website will show the index.shtml page.

To make it a default configuration

In order to enable this for all further virtual websites:

Continue reading index.shtml and #include virtual in Virtualmin

Virtualmin Virtual Servers (GPL)

Following my last post I now found out that Webmin does not allow multi virtual servers :-(, BUT there is a module called Virtualmin Virtual Servers (GPL) which is what I need.

To save myself hassle, I installed a compatible OS (CentOS 6 64bit) and simply installed virtualmin from the install.sh command after downloading it:

cd /root
wget http://software.virtualmin.com/gpl/scripts/install.sh
sh ./install.sh

After this my next move was to install csf lfd from configserver.com:
(there is now a new URI for the archive which I changed on 2017-02-08)

wget http://www.configserver.com/free/csf.tgz
wget https://download.configserver.com/csf.tgz
tar zxvf csf.tgz
cd csf
sh ./install.sh

Once installed integrate it in Webmin and you’re good to go.

– Install the csf webmin module in:
Webmin > Webmin Configuration > Webmin Modules > From local file > /etc/csf/csfwebmin.tgz > Install Module

Email access problems

All worked well from the word go except SMTP/POP3 (Dovecot) server; I was getting Failed to connect to localhost:143 : Connection refused (as well as port 993,995,110 and 25) when trying to connect either via my email client or usermin.

System Information was reporting that Dovecot IMAP / POP3 Server was offline, and trying to start Dovecot failed:

Starting dovecot: Error: socket() failed: Address family not supported by protocol
Error: service(pop3-login): listen(::, 110) failed: Address family not supported by protocol
Error: socket() failed: Address family not supported by protocol
Error: service(pop3-login): listen(::, 995) failed: Address family not supported by protocol
Error: socket() failed: Address family not supported by protocol
Error: service(imap-login): listen(::, 143) failed: Address family not supported by protocol
Error: socket() failed: Address family not supported by protocol
Error: service(imap-login): listen(::, 993) failed: Address family not supported by protocol
Fatal: Failed to start listeners

After editing the /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf file and commenting out/insert: listen = * Here is how my edited file looks like:

# A comma separated list of IPs or hosts where to listen in for connections. 
# "*" listens in all IPv4 interfaces, "::" listens in all IPv6 interfaces.
# If you want to specify non-default ports or anything more complex,
# edit conf.d/master.conf.
#listen = *, ::
listen = *

Now, why would Dovecot server come with this line disabled is baffling, anyway, after this, Dovecot starts fine allowing usermin and email clients to connect without problems:

Server heartbeat

This little perl program allows you to check the availability of an IP address via a cron command that outputs the result in a text file.

#!/usr/bin/perl
# This script pings IP addresses
#
# In a live application, read host list
# from a config file
@hosts = ("192.168.1.1","192.168.1.19");
($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday,$yday,$isdst) = localtime(time);
$year += 1900;
$mon += 1;
$min = sprintf("%02d", $min);
$sec = sprintf("%02d", $sec);
$mon = sprintf("%02d", $mon);
$mday = sprintf("%02d", $mday);
$year = sprintf("%02d", $year % 100);

@live = ();
foreach $h (@hosts) {
        $r = `ping -c2 $h`;
        if ($r =~ /2 re/) {
                push @live,$h;
                }
        }
$alive = "@live";
print ("You have $alive on $mday $mon $year @ $hour:$min:$sec\n");

This script can then be used in a cron like:

*/5 * * * * /path/to/file/pingtest.pl >> /some/path/pingtest.txt

This command will write the result on a new line in the file called pingtest.txt every 5 minutes. Which will look like that:

You have 192.168.1.1 192.168.1.19 on 06 01 13 @ 20:05:01
You have 192.168.1.1 192.168.1.19 on 06 01 13 @ 20:10:01
You have 192.168.1.1 192.168.1.19 on 06 01 13 @ 20:15:01

Plesk panel, backup strategy when low in space

Plesk backup is a real pain in the backside, if your server disk space is limited, even when choosing to backup in a ftp repository. All the files are created locally and then send over via ftp.

Prerequisites

Note that in order to implement this backup strategy, one must have an external backup space available like rsync.net (which I use) so that you can use the “rsync” command to transfer your files.

Minimising disk usage

In order to exclude any gigantic compressed (or not) archives being stored in your local hard drive, here is a little guide to help you avoid filling your server disk.

The first thing to backup regularly is the Plesk server configuration, this backup will not save the websites/email/database data but the content/configuration of your Panel, which is the first thing to restore if your server packs up.

Backing up Plesk (11) configuration

Open your Plesk Panel as Admin
Choose Tools & Settings from the Server Management sub-menu
Click on Backup Manager
Select Scheduled Backup Settings
Activate the scheduled backup
Select Store backup in: Server repository (or you can chose ftp there also as the files aren’t big, a couple of MB’s)
I have set the Maximum number of backups in repository to “3”, but you can choose another value here
Under the Backup content section, select “Server configuration“
Press OK

Obviously the choice of Schedule and prefix is at your convenience, I personally back up every day at 00:10 and the prefix is set to “configuration”.

If you aren’t using ftp, the content of this backup is stored in the /var/lib/psa/dumps/ directory. So in order to backup this on another server, simple rsync this location with a command that could be:

rsync -avz /var/lib/psa/dumps/ user@domain.rsync.net:var/lib/psa/dumps

If you don’t want to keep aggregated data add the –delete option:

rsync -avz --delete /var/lib/psa/dumps/ user@domain.rsync.net:var/lib/psa/dumps

To automate

To automate all this simply stick it in a cron (one can use the “Scheduled Tasks” under “Tools & Settings” (select root user) with a command that could look like this:

nice -20 rsync -avz --stats --delete /var/lib/psa/dumps/ user@domain.rsync.net:var/lib/psa/dumps 2>&1 | mail -s "backups dir rsync report" you@youremail

Databases

I will refer to MySQL databases in this section.

Database content is important, and you must back them up regularly, be it incrementally or not. I have Perl scripts that are in charge of dumping the content of the entire dataset and compress it. The file for my setup ends up being about 300MB, which is acceptable. I proceed to dump the content of the dataset via a “schedule” (root cron) and another cron simply “rsync’s” this file over to the backup server.

Email

All the email accounts are in /var/qmail/mailnames, the process is the same as above, use a rsync via a cron:

rsync -avz /var/lib/qmail/mainames/ user@domain.rsync.net:var/qmail/mailnames

Website content

Same as email but the directory is /var/www/vhosts/ so:

rsync -avz /var/www/vhosts/ user@domain.rsync.net:var/www/vhosts

There you have it, obviously I am providing this entirely as guidance and will in no way be liable for any loss you may get using these instructions. Even if you are on a cloud server (like me) it is a good idea to be able to extract files, especially databases or web content should a mistake be made that a cloud server cannot prevent like deleting a site by mistake etc…

Feel free to comment if you have any questions or if I have missed some important bits to backups that a Plesk backup may make which aren’t in this article.

Thunderbird: There was an error saving the message to Draft. Retry?

A nagging problem has really made me crazy today, so much so that I finally decided to fix it. As usual this problem is probably not common, basically I could not save messages in the draft folder on one of my accounts. I don’t usually use the Draft folder, however Thunderbird does, automatically, try to save messages into draft after a set period. Having a problem saving to draft always led me to lose very long messages for ever (having to restart the whole thing really did it for me!). So I tried the following:

Compact folder (a popular one for Thunderbird users)
Changed the folder permissions
Deleted the folder and the Draft.msf file
Repaired folder (under folder properties)

None of the above worked.

The fix

So if this happens to you also, this is how I finally fixed it:

Closed Thunderbird
Created a new folder under the Mail directory
Changed the local folder in the account settings > server settings in Thunderbird to point to the newly created above folder.
Copied the content of the old folder to the new one (I omitted the Draft folder and draft.msf file though, they were empty – remember I could not save into it)

Restarting Thunderbird made the problem go away. Finally!

How Exciting!

Just added a new Plugin on this Blog to enable me to be more creative. I am still experiencing with it. I am glad to see that one of the biggest issues with CMS systems is still their level of complexity.

The most important barrier to past, modern and future technologies is simplicity and foremost usability and ability to remember how it works. In 2001 that was when I saw a website called Superupdate, now Hannon Hill advertising their CMS, I looked into it, it was relatively simple. So I though, I can easily do that even easier and simpler and created my own CMS system A very simple system, so simple that It is for people that are barely able to use Computers at all. Most of these people being the mature generation,

This is not a problem for things that you’re using all the time like Smart phones (well how much do you actually know about the phone you’re using? Do you know for example it’s got a feature allowing you to make phone calls). It’s more like when you tend to not do it often and you’re not an Internet Guru, let alone a PC wiz kid. For most people having or managing a website is not necessarily something they do on a full time basis. like the chairman of a Club or a charity or a one man business. That is my target market. My website design site provides an unique design plus the ability to edit the pages easily and fast without having to hold a degree in Computing Science. My clients only contact me when they need technical assistance, it works because it is KISS.

WordPress

This CMS system is quite good I must say, (the one that I used to create this content.), it is relatively simple, the strategy is working great especially the Plug-In system, although I must say that I struggle, it’s getting too complicated for me already.

How Exciting?

Now the reason, finally, of my excitement is that when you are using WordPress you tend get a lot of spam messages (well this site does). I am happy to announce that on this front there’s been a development, with the use of a Plug-in called Spam-stopper which is the easiest one ever. I have yet to receive a single spam comments 🙂 or any comments at all for that matter.

File access PHP on Plesk

On certain occasions, and if you’re running Plesk on a dedicated server (like I do), there are certain problems with file access and other upload permissions which aren’t allowed unless you turn file permission to 777!

Obviously this isn’t the recommended way to operate a website, turning directories and files all open with rwx is kind of risky.

So I have found a solution that works everytime, simply change the “PHP Support” to run as “FastCGI Application” instead of the default “Apache”. This option is found under the Hosting setting of the domain.

I must point out that this hack only works if you’re running Plesk (10+) on Linux Servers.

How to create a bootable WIN7 USB flash disk?

Connect the USB drive On a Win7 Machine
Partition the USB disk drive NTFS, if the disk is large (i.e. 1TB, reduce active partition to say, 6GB, I used gparted on Linux ;-p)
Run DISKPART in command line
LIST DISK
SELECT DISK n (n is the number matching the USB disk obtained above)
CLEAN
CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY
then copy the content of the DVD with XCOPY e:\*.* /s /e /f j: (e: = CD drive, j: = USB drive)