After going down the compiling route, as in my previous post due to the same out dated problems I actually found a useful and up-to-date repository. Along with this, my bias towards Debian drastically strengthed. Which after many years of working on a a variety of other distro’s never quiet happened.

Setting up and configuring Debian

The initial setup comprises of two steps, the first step is to configure the locales, the second is to add new repos to your sources.list file.

Set the Locale

On a fresh install, anytime you need to use apt-get for anything Debian always complains about ‘setting the locale failed’ like below:

perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
LANGUAGE = "en",
LC_ALL = (unset),
LANG = "en"
are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
LANGUAGE = "en",
LC_ALL = (unset),
LANG = "en"
are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
LANGUAGE = "en",
LC_ALL = (unset),
LANG = "en"
are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").

To set the locale you need to run:

sudo locale-gen
sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

After running the second command, you will be asked to first configure which locales you want, and then to select a default one. After that your done.

Installing PHP and MySQL on Debian

Using dotbeb’s repository add the following to your /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://packages.dotdeb.org stable all
deb-src http://packages.dotdeb.org stable all

After which you must run

apt-get update

Finally, install PHP and MySQL:

apt-get install php5-cgi php5-mysql php5-curl php5-gd php5-idn php-pear php5-imagick php5-imap php5-mcrypt php5-memcache  php5-mhash php5-ming php5-pspell php5-recode php5-snmp php5-sqlite php5-tidy php5-xmlrpc mysql-server mysql-client nginx

Resources:

• dodeb

Ubuntu users:

$sudo apt-get install keychain

After its install, you set it up by entering the keychain command followed by your private key (not the public key).

$ keychain ~/.ssh/id_rsa
KeyChain 2.6.6; http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/keychain/ Copyright 2002-2004
Gentoo Foundation; Distributed under the GPL</pre>
* Initializing /home/timmy/.keychain/hostname-sh file...
* Initializing /home/timmy/.keychain/hostname-csh file...
* Initializing /home/timmy/.keychain/hostname-fish file...
* Starting ssh-agent
* Adding 1 ssh key(s)...
Enter passphrase for /home/timmy/.ssh/id_rsa:
Identity added: /home/timmy/.ssh/id_rsa (/home/timmy/.ssh/id_rsa)

Keychain then creates three files which correspond to various shell environments. As I am using bash, the file I will be referencing will be /home/timmy/.keychain/hostname-sh.

$ source ~/.keychain/hostname-sh

To make sure everything is fine run the following to make sure the the environment is in fact set up:

$ env | grep SSH_A
SSH_AGENT_PID=9607
SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/tmp/ssh-bMoLeb9606/agent.9606

Of course you will want this to happen automatically on login so add the following to your ~/.bashrc

keychain ~/.ssh/id_rsa
source ~/.keychain/hostname-sh

The last step is to add the following line to your backup script (including the .)

. /home/timmy/.keychain/hostname-sh

Backup Scripts
Ill only mention the two methods that i use.
1. scp: To copy files from one location to another
2. rsync: To sync a remote location to local location

SCP

. /home/timmy/.keychain/hostname-sh
scp -r /home/timmy/Server_Backups/web/* root@192.168.0.1:/var/backup/web

Rsync

. /home/timmy/.keychain/hostname-sh
rsync -rzvhlc --delete -e "ssh -p 22 -i /home/timmy/.ssh/id_rsa -o 'BatchMode yes'"
root@hostname:/var/www/vhosts/vhostname/httpd/ home/timmy/Server_Backups/web/

After that you should not get the error:

Permission denied, please try again.
Received disconnect from 192.168.0.10: 2: Too many authentication failures for root
lost connection

Well there are a few things:

1. Setup the firewall to handle them

2. Installing deny hosts

3. Configure your ssh daemon properly

4. Set up proper accounts for people

The methods that I deploy are points 1, 3 and 4.

Configuring SSH

In the sshd_conf do the following:

- change the port number: port 9999

- Allow no password auth: PasswordAuthentication no

- Allow public key auth: PubkeyAuthentication yes

- Only allow user accounts that belong to a group: AllowGroups groupName

By setting the above you have place a lot of restrictions on the who can access your server using ssh.

Configure your firewall iptables in linux

iptables -N SSH_CHECK
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 9999 -m state --state NEW -j SSH_CHECK
iptables -A SSH_CHECK -m recent --set --name SSH
iptables -A SSH_CHECK -m recent --update --minutes 60 --hitcount 4 --name SSH -j DROP

Finally the last thing is to configure the user accounts that can access the server. It is strongly recommended to add the users to the sudousers if they require any specialist privileges.

We use a base project that is configured for all our core developers, which means im not adding the same permissions and groups all the time.

How I configured it:

apache svn config:

<Location /projects/test2>
 DAV svn
 # Set this to the path to your repository
 SVNPath /var/svn/test2
 AuthType Basic
 AuthName "Test2 Project"
 AuthUserFile /var/trac/.htpasswd
 AuthzSVNAccessFile /var/svn/authz
 Require valid-user
</Location></pre>
<strong>apache trac config:</strong>
<pre><VirtualHost *:80>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond /var/trac/$1 -d
RewriteRule ^/([^/.]+)(/?.*) /trac.cgi$2 [S=1,E=TRAC_ENV:/var/trac/$1]

ServerAdmin tim@domain.com
ServerName trac.domain.com

DocumentRoot /usr/share/trac/cgi-bin/
AddHandler cgi-script .cgi

<Directory /usr/share/trac/cgi-bin/>
  Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews ExecCGI
  AllowOverride All
  Order allow,deny
  allow from all
</Directory>

Alias /trac "/usr/share/trac/htdocs"

<Location />
 SetEnv TRAC_ENV_PARENT_DIR "/var/trac"
 SetEnv PYTHON_EGG_CACHE /var/trac/egg_cache
<Location>

DirectoryIndex trac.cgi
 ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.trac.log
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.trac.log combined
</VirtualHost>

The above configuration means that all users are in one file, and can be controlled globally. Below are the plugins which i have installed and consider very helpful.

Plugins – Below are some of the plugin which I think really help

iniadmin

trac account manager

trac svn authz

trac web admin

timing and estimatation

pagetopdf

Trac table of contents macro

XMLRPC ]]> http://timothybowler.com/2008/07/31/trac-svn/feed/ 1 http://timothybowler.com/2008/06/29/ubuntu-php-and-exim4/ http://timothybowler.com/2008/06/29/ubuntu-php-and-exim4/#comments Sun, 29 Jun 2008 17:35:52 +0000 Tim Bowler http://timothybowler.com/2008/06/29/ubuntu-php-and-exim4/ Ubuntu 8.04 does not have sendmail installed by default. This was annoying when some of the php web apps that I created rely on sendmail to send out email notifications. But before going ahead and installing sendmail, I thought that I would try exim4. Installing on Ubuntu is very straight forward:

apt-get install exim4  exim4-config

After installation is complete, you must run:

dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config

This will allow you to configure the MTA. That is it, php will ‘just work’ because the installation also creates a symlink of sendmail to the exim binary.

If you do not run the above config command, you will see this in your exim/mainlog:

tim@*******.com R=nonlocal: Mailing to remote domains not supported

svn export . ../new_dir

or

find . -name .svn -prune -exec rm -rfv {} \;

Either way, both will work. I personally use export, because if there is a problem it means that I do not have to checkout an entire project

Today I finally installed Ubuntu 8.04 on my Sony vaio sz4. It runs like a dream, better than the SUSE setup which it replaced. My first thoughts are that the system runs very fast and all the components work out of box(web cam, finger print scanner have not being tested yet). I have noticed the wifi throughput has increased, using the eclipse IDE runs like a dream and best of all compiz fusion works on both the laptop and on a dual monitor setup. The synaptic package manager seems more complete overSUSE’s yast package management.

Although it is my personal laptop,  Ubuntu (7.10) was rolled out on all developer workstations at Or Media. This was a little shock to some of the developers, but everyone has seen the benefits. Some of which are:

• Apps deployed on a Linux system are developed on a Linux system.
• Most of the software is free (Although some machines run VMWare with windows installations – QA, Bless them!)
• Cheaper machines can be bought
• Everyone now has the same setup
• Security is tighter

Of course, like all good things, there are certain draw backs. . VMware needed the vmware-any-any-116 hack just to get it working. After that the evaluation license is invalid and therefore had to buy it straight away (well 30 days earlier than needed!).

In conclusion, SUSE in my eyes was pretty good. But the more I use Ubuntu I see that this distro is going to be the de-facto standard.  Below are some of the reason why you will agree why Ubuntu is on top and why everyone is changing towards linux:

Dell

Dell

BBC’s view

Sweeden moving to linux

Japan’s schools

 French parliment

Cross over office helps

An advocate of microsoft windoze(hehe)

There are many many more example that you can find. At the end of the day, money, security and stability all play a key role. Linux is a winner, so if you have not tried to change your OS now is the time to consider.