Ubuntu vsftpd ftp service / server install, configuration

Ubuntu Linux comes with various ftp servers to setup FTP service such as:
=> proftpd - Versatile, virtual-hosting FTP daemon
=> vsftpd - The Very Secure FTP Daemon
=> ftpd - FTP server
=> wu-ftpd - powerful and widely used FTP server
=> wzdftpd - A portable, modular, small and efficient ftp server
=> pure-ftpd - Pure-FTPd FTP server
I recommend using vsftpd. It is simple and quite secure FTP server. According to vsftpd man page:

vsftpd is the Very Secure File Transfer Protocol Daemon. The server can be launched via a super-server such as inetd or xinetd. Alternatively, vsftpd can be launched in standalone mode, in which case vsftpd itself will listen on the network.

=> Default ftp port : 21
=> Default configuration file : /etc/vsftpd.conf

How do I set up the vsftpd daemon to accept connections from another computer?

The configuration of the vsftpd FTP service (read as daemon ) simply requires three steps.

Step # 1: Install vsftpd

Type apt-get command to install vsftpd
$ sudo apt-get install vsftpd
Output:

Password:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  vsftpd
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 121kB of archives.
After unpacking 438kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com edgy/main vsftpd 2.0.4-0ubuntu5 [121kB]
Fetched 121kB in 0s (246kB/s)
Selecting previously deselected package vsftpd.
(Reading database ... 31396 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking vsftpd (from .../vsftpd_2.0.4-0ubuntu5_amd64.deb) ...
Setting up vsftpd (2.0.4-0ubuntu5) ...
Adding system user `ftp' with uid 106...
Adding new user `ftp' (106) with group `nogroup'.
Not creating home directory `/home/ftp'.
 * Starting FTP server: vsftpd

Step # 2: Configure /etc/vsftpd.conf

The default vsftpd configuration file is /etc/vsftpd.conf. You need to edit this file using text editor such as vi:
$ sudo vi /etc/vsftpd.conf
Add the following line (uncomment line) to the vsftpd configuration file:
local_enable=YES
Above config directive will allow local users to log in via ftp
If you would like to allow users to upload file, add the following to the file:
write_enable=YES
For security you may restrict local users to their home directories. Add the following to the file:
chroot_local_user=YES
Save and close the file.

Step # 3: Restart vsftpd

To restart vsftpd type the command :
$ sudo /etc/init.d/vsftpd restart
Output:

* Stopping FTP server: vsftpd                                                                                       [ ok ]
 * Starting FTP server: vsftpd                                                                                       [ ok ]

How do I use ftp command line utility?

Now you should be able to FTP to this server with any account that exists on the system except for the root user. From Windows or other Linux system use ftp client, type the command:
$ ftp ftp.ossc.in
Output:

Connected to ftp.ossc.in.
220 (vsFTPd 2.0.4)
Name (ftp.ossc.in:rajat): rajat
331 Please specify the password.
Password:
230 Login successful.
Remote system type is UNIX.
Using binary mode to transfer files.
ftp> pwd
257 "/"
ftp> ls
200 PORT command successful. Consider using PASV.
150 Here comes the directory listing.
-rw-r--r--    1 1000     1000        91798 Aug 16 08:26 apf-current.tar.gz
-rwxr-xr-x    1 1000     1000          156 Nov 10 07:05 iptables.stop
drwxr-xr-x    3 0        0            4096 Dec 23 11:11 postfix
-rw-r--r--    1 0        0        10481942 Nov 29 23:35 webmin_1.310_all.deb
226 Directory send OK.
ftp> quit
221 Goodbye.

Open FTP port using iptables (optional)

Add following rules to your iptables script. Assuming that default incoming policy is drop. If protocol is TCP and destination port is 21 (ftp):
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 21 -j ACCEPT
See - How do I open open ftp port 21 using iptables for more information.
There are a large number of other configuration options available for vsftpd that can be used to fine tune ftp server. Read vsftpd.conf man page by typing following command:
$ man vsftpd.conf

LAMP on Drupal Installation and configuration

Drupal Install and configuration on LAMP
yum install mysql mysql-server

Then we create the system startup links for MySQL (so that MySQL starts automatically whenever the system boots) and start the MySQL server:
chkconfig --levels 235 mysqld on
/etc/init.d/mysqld start

[root@rajat Rajat]# service mysqld restart
Stopping mysqld: [ OK ]
Initializing MySQL database: Installing MySQL system tables...
OK
Filling help tables...
OK

To start mysqld at boot time you have to copy
support-files/mysql.server to the right place for your system

PLEASE REMEMBER TO SET A PASSWORD FOR THE MySQL root USER !
To do so, start the server, then issue the following commands:

/usr/bin/mysqladmin -u root password 'new-password'
/usr/bin/mysqladmin -u root -h rajat.synovaindia.com password 'new-password'

Alternatively you can run:
/usr/bin/mysql_secure_installation

which will also give you the option of removing the test
databases and anonymous user created by default. This is
strongly recommended for production servers.

See the manual for more instructions.

You can start the MySQL daemon with:
cd /usr ; /usr/bin/mysqld_safe &

You can test the MySQL daemon with mysql-test-run.pl
cd /usr/mysql-test ; perl mysql-test-run.pl

Please report any problems with the /usr/bin/mysqlbug script!

[ OK ]
Starting mysqld: [ OK ]
[root@rajat Rajat]# /usr/bin/mysqladmin -u root password 'password'

Apache2 is available as a Fedora package, therefore we can install it like this:
yum install httpd
Now configure your system to start Apache at boot time...
chkconfig --levels 235 httpd on
... and start Apache:
/etc/init.d/httpd start
[root@rajat default]# service httpd restart
Stopping httpd: [ OK ]
Starting httpd: [ OK ]

We can install PHP5 and the Apache PHP5 module as follows:
yum install php
We must restart Apache afterwards:
/etc/init.d/httpd restart
Testing PHP5 / Getting Details About Your PHP5 Installation
vi /var/www/html/info.php

http://rajat.synovaindia.com/info.php

yum install php-mysql php-gd php-imap php-ldap php-odbc php-pear php-xml php-xmlrpc php-
eaccelerator php-magickwand php-magpierss php-mapserver php-mbstring php-mcrypt php-mssql php-
shout php-snmp php-soap php-tidy phpmyadmin
[root@rajat default]# service httpd restart
Stopping httpd:                              [ OK ]
Starting httpd:                             [ OK ]

http://drupal.org/project/drupal

tar -xvzf drupal-6.17.tar.gz /var/www/html/


goto
/var/www/html/sites/default
cp default.settings.php setting.php
chmod 777 settings.php

#chmod 755 settings.php

Install and configure munin for Server Monitoring

Munin is an efficient and lightweight Monitoring tool. Its available in ’server’ and ‘node’ packages. You can install server in a single machine and node in all other machines and then view all information/statistical data in server machine.
This quick copy and paste howto explains steps needed to setup server and multiple nodes. These steps are tested in CentOS 5.X Server.

Step 1. Prepare Server machine. For quick installation and dependency resolution, you can install DAG repository:
# rpm -Uhv http://apt.sw.be/packages/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.elX.rf.i386.rpm
Step 2. Install munin (server) and munin-node (node) on this machine:
# yum install munin munin-node
Step 3. Setup a directory to store munin generated htmls, you can create a directory in your server DocumentRoot or in munin directory itself. Here we create it in munin’s directory:
# cd /etc/munin
# mkdir html
# chown munin:munin html -R
Step 4. If in previous step, you created a directory in your web server root, then you dont need to set an alias, else if you did the exact whats written in above step, create an alias:
# vi /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
—–
Alias /server-health/ “/etc/munin/html/”

AllowOverride None
Options None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all

—–
Step 5. Configure munin for monitoring localhost (you are already in /etc/munin directory):
# vi munin.conf
—-
htmldir /etc/munin/html
[localhost]
address 127.0.0.1
use_node_name yes
—-
here we set the html directory and section for local machine. Feel free to change ‘localhost’ to any meaningful name like Monitoring Server etc. You can further read the file for more options.
Step 6. Start munin service:
# chkconfig munin-node on
# service munin-node start
Step 7. Restart your web server and then access the munin page from your browser by pointing it to http://localhost/server-health/. You can also password protect the munin page by using .htaccess or inserting rules in your httpd.conf file but its optional.
You should be able to view various parameters/values/trends related to disk,network,apache,mail etc of your local machine/server via browser. Let us configure multiple nodes now:
Step 8. SSH to any other machine/ server and install DAG repository as described in Step 1 and then install the munin node:
# yum install munin-node
Step 10. Configure the node to allow our main server get input from this machine. For this purpose, we need to add ‘Allow IP ADDRESS’ line in config file. Note that there’s already a Allow line which allow localhost to get values, we just need to add another line for server:
# vi /etc/munin/munin-node.conf
—
allow ^192\.168\.0\.1$
—
Here 192.168.0.1 (change it as per your settings) is the IP of server machine, written in regex form which is required here.
Step 11. Start the node now:
# chkconfig munin-node on
# service munin-node start
Now configure the Server to monitor the above machine:
Step 12. Goto Server machine and update munin.conf and add a new section:
# vi /etc/munin.conf
—
[App_Server]
address 192.168.0.5
use_node_name yes
—
Here, App_Server is the name (you can write any), and 192.168.0.5 is the IP address of the machine in which we configured munin-node in Step 9 to Step 11.
After a while, Check you browser and munin should include the update from node machine.

Chmod Command

Following are the symbolic representation of three different roles:

■u is for user,
■g is for group,
■and o is for others.
Following are the symbolic representation of three different permissions:

■r is for read permission,
■w is for write permission,
■x is for execute permission.
Following are few examples on how to use the symbolic representation on chmod.

1. Add single permission to a file/directory
Changing permission to a single set. + symbol means adding permission. For example, do the following to give execute permission for the user irrespective of anything else:

$ chmod u+x filename2. Add multiple permission to a file/directory
Use comma to separate the multiple permission sets as shown below.

$ chmod u+r,g+x filename3. Remove permission from a file/directory
Following example removes read and write permission for the user.

$ chmod u-rx filename4. Change permission for all roles on a file/directory
Following example assigns execute privilege to user, group and others (basically anybody can execute this file).

$ chmod a+x filename5. Make permission for a file same as another file (using reference)
If you want to change a file permission same as another file, use the reference option as shown below. In this example, file2’s permission will be set exactly same as file1’s permission.

$ chmod --reference=file1 file26. Apply the permission to all the files under a directory recursively
Use option -R to change the permission recursively as shown below.

$ chmod -R 755 directory-name/7. Change execute permission only on the directories (files are not affected)
On a particular directory if you have multiple sub-directories and files, the following command will assign execute permission only to all the sub-directories in the current directory (not the files in the current directory).

$ chmod u+X *