While searching for how I could secure my web server environment I came across this wonderful post. I was already used suPHP. Replacing it with mpm-itk was very simple since mpm-itk were already in the Intrepid repositories.
Archive for the ‘Ubuntu’ category
Securing a shared server with mpm-itk
April 6th, 2009Upgraded to Intrepid
April 4th, 2009Very soon, Jaunty is going to be released. In mean time, I decided to upgrade my server from Hardy to Intrepid. I don’t know actually what I was thinking. Why should I upgrade something that’s still supported and runs without problems? On intrepids plus side, intrepid had packages for libcap2. I had only installed these from a PPA-repository previously. On the down-side, I had problems running the new Xorg on the same hardware when Intrepid was brand new. I just couldn’t get tv-out to work regardless of how hard I tried with my Geforce 6200.
Well, how did it go then?
Oh… It was the smoothest release-upgrade ever! Wow 
OK, xorg struggled. But it wasn’t harder than: resetting the xorg.conf, starting xorg, let jockey install the correct driver, restart and set up twinview (clone) using nvidia-settings.
Now, I just wait for proftpd v1.3.2 to hit the repositories. In the mean time, I use proftpd debian packages.
Changing file permissions recursively
November 26th, 2008I often find myself wanting to both change the owner and file permissions of my web served files. When apache creates new files, the owner becomes www-data, and I can’t manipulate those files directly without changing the ownership to me. Also, apache can’t write to files if they aren’t writable by group. Well. The solution is very simple; I should fix my suPHP installtion. It worked some time ago but no longer. Anyway. The following three commands are a lifesaver.
sudo chown xxx:yyy -R . find -type f -exec chmod 664 \{\} \; find -type d -exec chmod 775 \{\} \;
The first one change ownership of files to user xxx group yyy recursively. The second one change permissions of all regular files (not directories) to whatever you want to (664 here). The third one change permissions of all directories. I want my directories to be executable, while I usually don’t want my files to be that. Find handles that for me.
