The Perfect Server: Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot With Nginx , Chapter 3.

After the reboot you can login with your previously created username (e.g. administrator).

Because we must run all the steps from this tutorial with root privileges, we can either prepend all commands in this tutorial with the string sudo, or we become root right now by typing

sudo su 

(You can as well enable the root login by running

sudo passwd root

and giving root a password. You can then directly log in as root, but this is frowned upon by the Ubuntu developers and community for various reasons. See http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=765414.)

5. Install The SSH Server (Optional).


If you did not install the OpenSSH server during the system installation, you can do it now:

apt-get install ssh openssh-server

From now on you can use an SSH client such as PuTTY and connect from your workstation to your Ubuntu 11.10 server and follow the remaining steps from this tutorial.

6. Install vim-nox (Optional).

I'll use vi as my text editor in this tutorial. The default vi program has some strange behaviour on Ubuntu and Debian; to fix this, we install vim-nox:

apt-get install vim-nox

(You don't have to do this if you use a different text editor such as joe or nano.)

7. Configure The Network.

Because the Ubuntu installer has configured our system to get its network settings via DHCP, we have to change that now because a server should have a static IP address. Edit /etc/network/interfaces and adjust it to your needs (in this example setup I will use the IP address 192.168.0.100):

vi /etc/network/interfaces

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system # and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5). # The loopback network interface auto lo iface lo inet loopback # The primary network interface auto eth0 iface eth0 inet static address 192.168.0.100 netmask 255.255.255.0 network 192.168.0.0 broadcast 192.168.0.255 gateway 192.168.0.1

Then restart your network:

/etc/init.d/networking restart

Then edit /etc/hosts. Make it look like this:

vi /etc/hosts

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost 192.168.0.100 server1.example.com server1 # The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts ::1 ip6-localhost ip6-loopback fe00::0 ip6-localnet ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix ff02::1 ip6-allnodes ff02::2 ip6-allrouters

Now run

echo server1.example.com > /etc/hostname
/etc/init.d/hostname restart

Afterwards, run

hostname
hostname -f

Both should show server1.example.com now.

8. Edit /etc/apt/sources.list And Update Your Linux Installation.

Edit /etc/apt/sources.list. Comment out or remove the installation CD from the file and make sure that the universe and multiverse repositories are enabled. It should look like this:

vi /etc/apt/sources.list

# # deb cdrom:[Ubuntu-Server 11.10 _Oneiric Ocelot_ - Release amd64 (20111011)]/ dists/oneiric/main/binary-i386/ # deb cdrom:[Ubuntu-Server 11.10 _Oneiric Ocelot_ - Release amd64 (20111011)]/ dists/oneiric/restricted/binary-i386/ # deb cdrom:[Ubuntu-Server 11.10 _Oneiric Ocelot_ - Release amd64 (20111011)]/ oneiric main restricted #deb cdrom:[Ubuntu-Server 11.10 _Oneiric Ocelot_ - Release amd64 (20111011)]/ dists/oneiric/main/binary-i386/ #deb cdrom:[Ubuntu-Server 11.10 _Oneiric Ocelot_ - Release amd64 (20111011)]/ dists/oneiric/restricted/binary-i386/ #deb cdrom:[Ubuntu-Server 11.10 _Oneiric Ocelot_ - Release amd64 (20111011)]/ oneiric main restricted # See http://help.ubuntu.com/community/UpgradeNotes for how to upgrade to # newer versions of the distribution. deb http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric main restricted deb-src http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric main restricted ## Major bug fix updates produced after the final release of the ## distribution. deb http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-updates main restricted deb-src http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-updates main restricted ## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu ## team. Also, please note that software in universe WILL NOT receive any ## review or updates from the Ubuntu security team. deb http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric universe deb-src http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric universe deb http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-updates universe deb-src http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-updates universe ## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu ## team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself as to ## your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in ## multiverse WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu ## security team. deb http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric multiverse deb-src http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric multiverse deb http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-updates multiverse deb-src http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-updates multiverse ## N.B. software from this repository may not have been tested as ## extensively as that contained in the main release, although it includes ## newer versions of some applications which may provide useful features. ## Also, please note that software in backports WILL NOT receive any review ## or updates from the Ubuntu security team. deb http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-backports main restricted universe multiverse deb-src http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-backports main restricted universe multiverse deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric-security main restricted deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric-security main restricted deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric-security universe deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric-security universe deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric-security multiverse deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric-security multiverse ## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from Canonical's ## 'partner' repository. ## This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by Canonical and the ## respective vendors as a service to Ubuntu users. # deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu oneiric partner # deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu oneiric partner ## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from Ubuntu's ## 'extras' repository. ## This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by third-party ## developers who want to ship their latest software. # deb http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric main # deb-src http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric main

Then run

apt-get update

to update the apt package database and

apt-get upgrade

to install the latest updates (if there are any). If you see that a new kernel gets installed as part of the updates, you should reboot the system afterwards:

reboot

9. Change The Default Shell.

/bin/sh is a symlink to /bin/dash, however we need /bin/bash, not /bin/dash. Therefore we do this:

dpkg-reconfigure dash

Use dash as the default system shell (/bin/sh)? <-- No

If you don't do this, the ISPConfig installation will fail.

10. Disable AppArmor.

AppArmor is a security extension (similar to SELinux) that should provide extended security. In my opinion you don't need it to configure a secure system, and it usually causes more problems than advantages (think of it after you have done a week of trouble-shooting because some service wasn't working as expected, and then you find out that everything was ok, only AppArmor was causing the problem). Therefore I disable it (this is a must if you want to install ISPConfig later on).

We can disable it like this:

/etc/init.d/apparmor stop
update-rc.d -f apparmor remove
apt-get remove apparmor apparmor-utils

11. Synchronize the System Clock.

It is a good idea to synchronize the system clock with an NTP (network time protocol) server over the Internet. Simply run

apt-get install ntp ntpdate

and your system time will always be in sync. 

We can install Postfix, Courier, Saslauthd, MySQL, rkhunter, and binutils with a single command:

apt-get install postfix postfix-mysql postfix-doc mysql-client mysql-server courier-authdaemon courier-authlib-mysql courier-pop courier-pop-ssl courier-imap courier-imap-ssl libsasl2-2 libsasl2-modules libsasl2-modules-sql sasl2-bin libpam-mysql openssl getmail4 rkhunter binutils maildrop

You will be asked the following questions:

New password for the MySQL "root" user: <-- yourrootsqlpassword
Repeat password for the MySQL "root" user: <-- yourrootsqlpassword
Create directories for web-based administration? <-- No
General type of mail configuration: <-- Internet Site
System mail name: <-- server1.example.com
SSL certificate required <-- Ok
If you find out (later after you have configured your first email account in ISPConfig) that you cannot send emails and get the following error in /var/log/mail.log...

SASL LOGIN authentication failed: no mechanism available

... please go to Ubuntu 11.10 + saslauthd: SASL PLAIN authentication failed: no mechanism available to learn how to resolve the issue.
We want MySQL to listen on all interfaces, not just localhost, therefore we edit /etc/mysql/my.cnf and comment out the line bind-address = 127.0.0.1:

vi /etc/mysql/my.cnf

[...] # Instead of skip-networking the default is now to listen only on # localhost which is more compatible and is not less secure. #bind-address = 127.0.0.1 [...]

Then we restart MySQL:

/etc/init.d/mysql restart

Now check that networking is enabled. Run

netstat -tap | grep mysql

The output should look like this:

root@server1:~# netstat -tap | grep mysql
tcp        0      0 *:mysql                 *:*                     LISTEN      22355/mysqld
root@server1:~#

During the installation, the SSL certificates for IMAP-SSL and POP3-SSL are created with the hostname localhost. To change this to the correct hostname (server1.example.com in this tutorial), delete the certificates...

cd /etc/courier
rm -f /etc/courier/imapd.pem
rm -f /etc/courier/pop3d.pem

... and modify the following two files; replace CN=localhost with CN=server1.example.com (you can also modify the other values, if necessary):

vi /etc/courier/imapd.cnf

[...] CN=server1.example.com [...]

vi /etc/courier/pop3d.cnf

[...] CN=server1.example.com [...]

Then recreate the certificates...

mkimapdcert
mkpop3dcert

... and restart Courier-IMAP-SSL and Courier-POP3-SSL:

/etc/init.d/courier-imap-ssl restart
/etc/init.d/courier-pop-ssl restart

13. Install Amavisd-new, SpamAssassin, And Clamav.

To install amavisd-new, SpamAssassin, and ClamAV, we run

apt-get install amavisd-new spamassassin clamav clamav-daemon zoo unzip bzip2 arj nomarch lzop cabextract apt-listchanges libnet-ldap-perl libauthen-sasl-perl clamav-docs daemon libio-string-perl libio-socket-ssl-perl libnet-ident-perl zip libnet-dns-perl

The ISPConfig 3 setup uses amavisd which loads the SpamAssassin filter library internally, so we can stop SpamAssassin to free up some RAM:

/etc/init.d/spamassassin stop
update-rc.d -f spamassassin remove

14.Install Nginx, PHP5 (PHP-FPM), And Fcgiwrap.

Nginx is available as a package for Ubuntu which we can install as follows:

apt-get install nginx

If Apache2 is already installed on the system, stop it now...

/etc/init.d/apache2 stop

... and remove Apache's system startup links:

insserv -r apache2

Start nginx afterwards:

/etc/init.d/nginx start

(If both Apache2 and nginx are installed, the ISPConfig 3 installer will ask you which one you want to use - answer nginx in this case. If only one of these both is installed, ISPConfig will do the necessary configuration automatically.)

We can make PHP5 work in nginx through PHP-FPM (PHP-FPM (FastCGI Process Manager) is an alternative PHP FastCGI implementation with some additional features useful for sites of any size, especially busier sites) which we install as follows:

apt-get install php5-fpm 

PHP-FPM is a daemon process (with the init script /etc/init.d/php5-fpm) that runs a FastCGI server on port 9000.

To get MySQL support in PHP, we can install the php5-mysql package. It's a good idea to install some other PHP5 modules as well as you might need them for your applications. You can search for available PHP5 modules like this:

apt-cache search php5

Pick the ones you need and install them like this:

apt-get install php5-mysql php5-curl php5-gd php5-intl php-pear php5-imagick php5-imap php5-mcrypt php5-memcache php5-ming php5-ps php5-pspell php5-recode php5-snmp php5-sqlite php5-tidy php5-xmlrpc php5-xsl

APC is a free and open PHP opcode cacher for caching and optimizing PHP intermediate code. It's similar to other PHP opcode cachers, such as eAccelerator and XCache. It is strongly recommended to have one of these installed to speed up your PHP page.

APC can be installed as follows:

apt-get install php-apc

Now restart PHP-FPM:

/etc/init.d/php5-fpm restart

To get CGI support in nginx, we install Fcgiwrap.

Fcgiwrap is a CGI wrapper that should work also for complex CGI scripts and can be used for shared hosting environments because it allows each vhost to use its own cgi-bin directory.

Install the fcgiwrap package:

apt-get install fcgiwrap 

After the installation, the fcgiwrap daemon should already be started; its socket is /var/run/fcgiwrap.socket. If it is not running, you can use the /etc/init.d/fcgiwrap script to start it.
That's it! Now when you create an nginx vhost, ISPConfig will take care of the correct vhost configuration.

14.1 Install phpMyAdmin.

Install phpMyAdmin as follows:

apt-get install phpmyadmin

You will see the following questions:

Web server to reconfigure automatically: <-- select none (because only apache2 and lighttpd are available as options) 

Configure database for phpmyadmin with dbconfig-common? <-- No

You can now find phpMyAdmin in the /usr/share/phpmyadmin/ directory.

After you have installed ISPConfig 3, you can access phpMyAdmin as follows:

The ISPConfig apps vhost on port 8081 for nginx comes with a phpMyAdmin configuration, so you can use http://server1.example.com:8081/phpmyadmin or http://server1.example.com:8081/phpMyAdmin to access phpMyAdmin.

If you want to use a /phpmyadmin or /phpMyAdmin alias that you can use from your web sites, this is a bit more complicated than for Apache because nginx does not have global aliases (i.e., aliases that can be defined for all vhosts). Therefore you have to define these aliases for each vhost from which you want to access phpMyAdmin.

To do this, paste the following into the nginx Directives field on the Options tab of the web site in ISPConfig:

location /phpmyadmin { root /usr/share/; index index.php index.html index.htm; location ~ ^/phpmyadmin/(.+\.php)$ { try_files $uri =404; root /usr/share/; fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; fastcgi_index index.php; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $request_filename; include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params; fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_script_name; fastcgi_buffer_size 128k; fastcgi_buffers 256 4k; fastcgi_busy_buffers_size 256k; fastcgi_temp_file_write_size 256k; fastcgi_intercept_errors on; } location ~* ^/phpmyadmin/(.+\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|css|png|js|ico|html|xml|txt))$ { root /usr/share/; } } location /phpMyAdmin { rewrite ^/* /phpmyadmin last; }

If you use https instead of http for your vhost, you should add the line fastcgi_param HTTPS on; to your phpMyAdmin configuration like this:

location /phpmyadmin { root /usr/share/; index index.php index.html index.htm; location ~ ^/phpmyadmin/(.+\.php)$ { try_files $uri =404; root /usr/share/; fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; fastcgi_param HTTPS on; # <-- add this line fastcgi_index index.php; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $request_filename; include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params; fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_script_name; fastcgi_buffer_size 128k; fastcgi_buffers 256 4k; fastcgi_busy_buffers_size 256k; fastcgi_temp_file_write_size 256k; fastcgi_intercept_errors on; } location ~* ^/phpmyadmin/(.+\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|css|png|js|ico|html|xml|txt))$ { root /usr/share/; } } location /phpMyAdmin { rewrite ^/* /phpmyadmin last; }

If you use both http and https for your vhost, you need to add the following section to the http {} section in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf (before any include lines) which determines if the visitor uses http or https and sets the $fastcgi_https variable (which we will use in our phpMyAdmin configuration) accordingly:

vi /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

[...] http { [...] ## Detect when HTTPS is used map $scheme $fastcgi_https { default off; https on; } [...] } [...]

Don't forget to reload nginx afterwards:

/etc/init.d/nginx reload

Then go to the nginx Directives field again, and instead of fastcgi_param HTTPS on; you add the line fastcgi_param HTTPS $fastcgi_https; so that you can use phpMyAdmin for both http and https requests:

location /phpmyadmin { root /usr/share/; index index.php index.html index.htm; location ~ ^/phpmyadmin/(.+\.php)$ { try_files $uri =404; root /usr/share/; fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; fastcgi_param HTTPS $fastcgi_https; # <-- add this line fastcgi_index index.php; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $request_filename; include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params; fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_script_name; fastcgi_buffer_size 128k; fastcgi_buffers 256 4k; fastcgi_busy_buffers_size 256k; fastcgi_temp_file_write_size 256k; fastcgi_intercept_errors on; } location ~* ^/phpmyadmin/(.+\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|css|png|js|ico|html|xml|txt))$ { root /usr/share/; } } location /phpMyAdmin { rewrite ^/* /phpmyadmin last; }

15 Install Mailman

Since version 3.0.4, ISPConfig also allows you to manage (create/modify/delete) Mailman mailing lists. If you want to make use of this feature, install Mailman as follows:

apt-get install mailman

Before we can start Mailman, a first mailing list called mailman must be created:

newlist mailman

root@server1:~# newlist mailman
Enter the email of the person running the list: <-- admin email address, e.g. info@example.com
Initial mailman password: <-- admin password for the mailman list
To finish creating your mailing list, you must edit your /etc/aliases (or
equivalent) file by adding the following lines, and possibly running the
`newaliases' program:

## mailman mailing list
mailman:              "|/var/lib/mailman/mail/mailman post mailman"
mailman-admin:        "|/var/lib/mailman/mail/mailman admin mailman"
mailman-bounces:      "|/var/lib/mailman/mail/mailman bounces mailman"
mailman-confirm:      "|/var/lib/mailman/mail/mailman confirm mailman"
mailman-join:         "|/var/lib/mailman/mail/mailman join mailman"
mailman-leave:        "|/var/lib/mailman/mail/mailman leave mailman"
mailman-owner:        "|/var/lib/mailman/mail/mailman owner mailman"
mailman-request:      "|/var/lib/mailman/mail/mailman request mailman"
mailman-subscribe:    "|/var/lib/mailman/mail/mailman subscribe mailman"
mailman-unsubscribe:  "|/var/lib/mailman/mail/mailman unsubscribe mailman"

Hit enter to notify mailman owner... <-- ENTER

root@server1:~#
Open /etc/aliases afterwards...

vi /etc/aliases

... and add the following lines:

[...] mailman: "|/var/lib/mailman/mail/mailman post mailman" mailman-admin: "|/var/lib/mailman/mail/mailman admin mailman" mailman-bounces: "|/var/lib/mailman/mail/mailman bounces mailman" mailman-confirm: "|/var/lib/mailman/mail/mailman confirm mailman" mailman-join: "|/var/lib/mailman/mail/mailman join mailman" mailman-leave: "|/var/lib/mailman/mail/mailman leave mailman" mailman-owner: "|/var/lib/mailman/mail/mailman owner mailman" mailman-request: "|/var/lib/mailman/mail/mailman request mailman" mailman-subscribe: "|/var/lib/mailman/mail/mailman subscribe mailman" mailman-unsubscribe: "|/var/lib/mailman/mail/mailman unsubscribe mailman"

Run

newaliases

afterwards and restart Postfix:

/etc/init.d/postfix restart

Then start the Mailman daemon:

/etc/init.d/mailman start

After you have installed ISPConfig 3, you can access Mailman as follows:

The ISPConfig apps vhost on port 8081 for nginx comes with a Mailman configuration, so you can use http://server1.example.com:8081/cgi-bin/mailman/admin/<listname> or http://server1.example.com:8081/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/<listname> to access Mailman.

If you want to use Mailman from your web sites, this is a bit more complicated than for Apache because nginx does not have global aliases (i.e., aliases that can be defined for all vhosts). Therefore you have to define these aliases for each vhost from which you want to access Mailman.

To do this, paste the following into the nginx Directives field on the Options tab of the web site in ISPConfig:

location /cgi-bin/mailman { root /usr/lib/; fastcgi_split_path_info (^/cgi-bin/mailman/[^/]*)(.*)$; include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name; fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_path_info; fastcgi_param PATH_TRANSLATED $document_root$fastcgi_path_info; fastcgi_intercept_errors on; fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/fcgiwrap.socket; } location /images/mailman { alias /usr/share/images/mailman; } location /pipermail { alias /var/lib/mailman/archives/public; autoindex on; }

This defines the alias /cgi-bin/mailman/ for your vhost, which means you can access the Mailman admin interface for a list at http://<vhost>/cgi-bin/mailman/admin/<listname>, and the web page for users of a mailing list can be found at http://<vhost>/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/<listname>.
Under http://<vhost>/pipermail you can find the mailing list archives.

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