Jesin's Blog

Welcome to the Portal of Technology

›
linux

How to setup mod_security with ServerPilot

Linux 14 Comments

Serverpilot is a hosted control panel for setting up and managing LAMP/LEMP stacks on Ubuntu servers. Just like any other control panel it can be installed with a single command. ServerPilot is simple to use and does not install unnecessary packages like other commercial control panels.

I had written an article for DigitalOcean on setting up mod_security on Apache. Since I found several DO users using ServerPilot to manage their Droplets I wanted to do a small piece on configuring mod_security on ServerPilot managed Ubuntu servers. ServerPilot supports custom .conf files for Apache making it easier load additional modules. This tutorial with be brief, for a detailed explanation please read the guide I wrote for DigitalOcean.Continue Reading…

Setting up a PPTP VPN Server on Debian/Ubuntu

Linux 62 Comments

Last month the undersea cable SEA-ME-WE 4 cable was cut near Egypt causing a massive degradation of internet speed in India. For me several websites including the world’s 6th popular website Wikipedia didn’t load at all. And to make matters worse I wasn’t able to access my own blog :'( as it was located in Dallas (so traffic had to pass through damaged cable). So I quickly setup VPN server on an AWS micro instance running Linux (Ubuntu) and accessed everything I wanted, so here I am writing this article for the benefit of all netizens. To create a similar type of VPN server in windows read this tutorial. You’ll find a lot of articles on the internet with the similar topic but in this article I’ll keep the configuration part as short as possible setting up only the bare minimum to get a PPTP VPN server running in the time it takes to make noodles!Continue Reading…

Fix serial port permission denied errors on Linux

Linux 29 Comments

The ancient serial port which is no longer found on the latest motherboards and even the not so latest laptops is still used for connecting to the console of networking devices, headless computers and a lot other applications. On computers which do not have built-in serial ports USB-to-Serial adapters can be used. Linux identifies inbuilt serial ports as /dev/ttyS0, /dev/ttyS1,….. /dev/ttySn and USB-to-Serial adapters as /dev/ttyUSB0, …. /dev/ttyUSBn and they can be accessed using terminal emulator applications like PuTTY, minicom and screen.Continue Reading…

How to manage jobs in Linux – fg bg kill Ctrl+Z

Linux 1 Comment

How many times did you start something which is time consuming and waited for it to end until you could use the console again. We have all faced a situtation when we just stare at the screen for a process to get over after we have initiated it. It could be something as simple as copying a large file from a removable media or installing packages using yum/apt-get from online repositories over a slow internet connection (ouch!). Once started you will not get back the command shell until the process is done, so what do you do ? Hit Ctrl+C terminate it and hope to do it over the weekend ? Take a coffee break ? Count the number of keys on the keyboard ? Why not press Ctrl+Z and get the work done in background while you use the console to do something else. In this article I will cover how to suspend a process a.k.a. job, run it in the background, bring it to the foreground, terminate it if necessary.Continue Reading…

How to configure a Linux PPTP VPN client

Linux 13 Comments

Configuring a VPN client connection is a simple matter of point and click in Windows OSes, but in Linux it is involves installing a package, configuring passwords, VPN server settings and finally routing the traffic destined for the VPN network via the VPN connection. The package named pptp is used on the client side for configuring a connection. To setup a VPN server read How to setup a VPN Server in Windows Server 2008. This tutorial is for both Debian Linux variants and Red Hat Linux variants.Continue Reading…

How to setup an unmanaged Debian server

Linux 1 Comment

So you’ve bought a shiny new VPS or dedicated unmanaged server to cut costs on hosting but don’t know how to begin ? Read this post to make this easier.  This tutorial will cover the instructions for a basic setup of a Debian unmanaged VPS or dedicated server. The following are covered in this article

  • Configuring the Timezone
  • Selecting locales
  • Creating a sudo user
  • Securing SSH
  • Adding firewall rules

The first task is to update the apt database and check if any installed packages can be upgraded.

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

Continue Reading…

Vultr SSD VPS