Preparing a Linux Server Environment - Revision history

Derek Mueller at 01:49, 23 June 2015

2015-06-23T01:49:52Z

2014-08-04T18:52:01Z

‎Protecting ~/.ssh

2014-04-25T18:40:04Z

‎Acquiring Software Packages

2013-02-08T18:04:47Z

‎Configuring SSH For Key-based Authentication

2013-02-05T22:39:51Z

‎Protecting ~/.ssh

2013-02-05T22:37:36Z

‎Protecting ~/.ssh

2013-02-05T22:36:15Z

‎Protecting ~/.ssh

2013-01-30T02:25:39Z

2013-01-30T02:17:33Z

‎Introduction

2013-01-17T19:09:45Z

‎Introduction

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 === Using ps ===
 One can search for the process and see its user, if Apache is already running, using <tt>ps</tt>:
-<pre>ps aux | grep '\(apache|httpd\)'</pre>
+<pre>ps aux | grep '\(apache\|httpd\)'</pre>
 The first column of output should be the user name or id of the running process, whereas the last should be the executable file of the process. Locate the web server process (the path to the executable should be something like <tt>/usr/sbin/apache2</tt> or <tt>/usr/sbin/httpd</tt>).

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 === Protecting ~/.ssh ===
-If the user's home directory is the same as (or lies within) the web server's DocumentRoot (this will usually be the case on Debian-based systems), it is generally a very good idea to prevent all HTTP access to the directory storing the public key, regardless of whether the key pair is password-protected. The most straightforward way of doing this is by editing the main Apache configuration (<tt>/etc/apache2/apache2.conf</tt> Debian, <tt>/etc/http/conf/httpd.conf</tt> RHEL ) and adding the following lines to it (for Apache versions 2.0-2.2):
+If the user's home directory is the same as (or lies within) the web server's DocumentRoot (this is the case for the default LAMP configuration on Ubuntu 12.04), it is generally a very good idea to prevent all HTTP access to the directory storing the public key, regardless of whether the key pair is password-protected. The most straightforward way of doing this is by editing the main Apache configuration (<tt>/etc/apache2/apache2.conf</tt> Debian, <tt>/etc/http/conf/httpd.conf</tt> RHEL ) and adding the following lines to it (for Apache versions 2.0-2.2):
 <syntaxhighlight lang="apache">
 <Directory /var/www/.ssh>

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 Next install Apache, PHP and MySQL. '''Debian-based systems''' should have a utility called "tasksel" that can begin installation of all the necessary packages for a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL & PHP) server in one command:
-<pre>tasksel lamp-server</pre>
+<pre>tasksel install lamp-server</pre>
 However, this task usually does not include the package for the PHP cURL extension, so it must be installed separately via <pre>apt-get install php5-curl</pre>

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 # Create the authorized_keys file with the public key to enable authenticating with the private key on the remote end: <pre>cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys</pre>
 # Ensure the authorized_keys file has the proper permissions: <pre>chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys</pre>
-# Download the private key and delete it from the server as soon as possible.
+# Download the private key (<tt>~/.ssh/id_rsa</tt>) and delete it from the server as soon as possible.
 '''If the server is an Amazon EC2 instance,''' it is not necessary to create a new key pair; the existing key pair can be used for authentication, if desired, by using the existing authorized_hosts file in the <tt>.ssh</tt> directory of "ec2-user" (Amazon Linux) or "ubuntu" (Ubuntu) into the <tt>.ssh/</tt>, as follows:

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 In both of these examples, it is assumed that the home directory is <tt>/var/www</tt>.
-For extra privacy and security, it may also be desirable to deny access to all hidden dotfiles and directories (i.e. <tt>.bashrc</tt>, <tt>.bash_history</tt>, <tt>.viminfo</tt> etc.), in which case you can use the following directive:
+For extra privacy and security, it may also be desirable to deny access to all hidden dotfiles and directories used by the user shell and local programs (i.e. <tt>.bashrc</tt>, <tt>.bash_history</tt>, <tt>.viminfo</tt> etc.), in which case you can use the following directive:
 <syntaxhighlight lang="apache">
 <DirectoryMatch /var/www/\..*>

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 </syntaxhighlight>
 In both of these examples, it is assumed that the home directory is <tt>/var/www</tt>.
 === Disabling Password-based Authentication ===

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 [[Category:Support]]
-This aims to be a generic guide for manually preparing a Linux system for running X2CRM, which applies both to physical servers and virtual servers, i.e. Amazon EC2 instances. It will cover two main families of Linux distributions: RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) based and Debian-based. RHEL-based distributions include, most notably: CentOS, Oracle Linux and Amazon Linux. Debian-based distributions include the popular Ubuntu and Ubuntu derivatives, as well as Linux Mint, Knopper Linux and many others<ref>See: [http://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Census|the Debian Derivatives Census]</ref>.
+This aims to be a generic guide for manually preparing a Linux-based web server, which applies both to physical servers and virtual servers, i.e. Amazon EC2 instances. It will cover two main families of Linux distributions: RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) based and Debian-based. RHEL-based distributions include, most notably: CentOS, Oracle Linux and Amazon Linux. Debian-based distributions include the popular Ubuntu and Ubuntu derivatives, as well as Linux Mint, Knopper Linux and many others<ref>See: [http://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Census|the Debian Derivatives Census]</ref>.
 = Introduction =

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 = Introduction =
-This aims to be a generic all-purpose guide for manually preparing a Linux system for running X2CRM, which applies both to physical servers and virtual servers, i.e. Amazon EC2 instances. It will cover two main families of Linux distributions: RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) based and Debian-based. RHEL-based distributions include, most notably: CentOS, Oracle Linux and Amazon Linux. Debian-based distributions include the popular Ubuntu and Ubuntu derivatives, as well as Linux Mint, Knopper Linux and many others<ref>See: [http://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Census|the Debian Derivatives Census]</ref>.
+This aims to be a generic guide for manually preparing a Linux system for running X2CRM, which applies both to physical servers and virtual servers, i.e. Amazon EC2 instances. It will cover two main families of Linux distributions: RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) based and Debian-based. RHEL-based distributions include, most notably: CentOS, Oracle Linux and Amazon Linux. Debian-based distributions include the popular Ubuntu and Ubuntu derivatives, as well as Linux Mint, Knopper Linux and many others<ref>See: [http://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Census|the Debian Derivatives Census]</ref>.
 It will be assumed in this guide, unless otherwise noted: