If you take a look at the graphic below, the spike in the middle will probably stick out quite a bit.  Oddly enough, the spike I noticed in CPU percentage used (which is regulated for VPS at Linode) also spiked up disk usage…mainly because I began to swap when cpu/ram use skyrocketed.  All of this happened with Ubuntu 10.04 installed.  CentOS was the first distro I tried but I quickly switched to Ubuntu when I spotted a really nice how-to in the Linode document library.  Oh, and please excuse my horrible gimp skills on the image below…it was a quick and dirty editing of the image:

cpu usage

After switching to Ubuntu, I began receiving alarms for my account due to the high usage of CPU and disk.  I attempted to tweak settings and configuration files for about a week and realized it just wasn’t going to work for me.  I switched to Debian Lenny and the move was a positive as is reflected in these pictures.

disk usage

I was hoping Ubuntu 10.04 would fit for me since it is a long term support (LTS) release.  CentOS is my normal server distribution of choice and I really wanted to branch out and go with something different.  I used a Linode Stackscript for WordPress for CentOS but elected for vanilla installs of Ubuntu and Debian aftwards (I didn’t like NOT knowing what was installed when I first logged in…call me a control freak).

I just found it interesting that Ubuntu 10.04 did so horribly in this instance.  After investigating, I found a couple of likely suspects:

1. Default Apache install in Ubuntu leaves a lot to be desired..even after tweaking both it and PHP for days I couldn’t get them to lay off the resources.  Even switching to mpm_worker and FastCGI did little to settle things down.
2. Ubuntu swappiness is bad…it is set at 60 (I use 10 normally) and it swapped every chance it could get…it’s set by default to swap more than it should.
3. mod_php on Ubuntu is hungry for all your cpu and ram and disk; be warned!

Debian, as the parent distribution of Ubuntu, would most likely suffer from the same problems…except it doesn’t.  Things are working great with it and I’d recommend it for any of your server needs!  Has anyone else seen this oddity with Ubuntu 10.04?  If so, please drop me a comment below.

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Interesting Statistics originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on July 13, 2010.

I knew from experience in the mid-nineties that Slackware was probably the most Unix-like distribution out there…I felt at home there quite a bit after learning the *nix ropes on Solaris 2.0.  So we configured a Slackware 8.1 dual processor tower server he was lucky enough to acquire as our home firewall-all-around-great-linux box.  He took his beginning steps there and flourished since our Air Force job already had us jumping around in a VAX/VMS mainframe.  We had many late night hacking sessions attempting to get things to work or compile there.  We also had a multi GB shared hard disk (unheard of at the time!) shared over samba.

After I got moved out, I continued to keep the Slackware box up to date.  I moved onward to Slackware 9.  Samba operated like a champ and Slackware was a great routing system and dhcp server.  Then I discovered ClarkConnect and loved the web interface.  I could do things in half the time!  I could do them over the web from work without SSH tunneling!  All this appealed to me at the time.

I continued to run ClarkConnect from that point on and have continued to all the way up to when it changed to ClearOS this past year.  Indeed, I have ClearOS now as my central server.

The only problem is that I’ve suffered 2 of the most catastrophic losses of files in my samba shares when running ClarkConnect/ClearOS…and I didn’t draw the lines together  on these separate incidents until just recently.

The first loss came when an entire samba share was completely eradicated…13GB of music was just gone.  The second loss happened just the other day when tons of scanned pictures just VANISHED into thin air.  Each time these happened, I was using ClarkConnect/ClearOS.  Each time it happened a few users reported instability in the forums of those distributions.  I am not sure how it could have happened and I was caught completely off guard on the second time…my backups were not yet configured since it was a new server.  The first time it happened…I didn’t know the value of having a good backup routine.  So each time, no backups   Lesson learned the hard way but learned nonetheless.

I recall running Slackware on my server and NEVER having the problems I have had with ClarkConnect/ClearOS.  This got me rethinking my home server design.  Servers should be the epitome of stability.  One should be able to migrate from one version of the operating system to the next with few hiccups.  When considering each of these it is very apparent that I should be running Slackware core on my main samba server.

I will be making that transition in the next week or two and moving to a Slackware core based server.  I’m not sure what to use for backups across the network (I usually mirror the drive to an NTFS drive in my Windows based multimedia server) nor backups locally to other hard drives.  If you have any suggestions, I’d really like to hear them.  Also, I’d like to know what readers consider using for a server.  Please vote for your favorite below and drop me a comment letting me know specifics and thanks for your help!

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Rethinking Home Servers originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on April 17, 2010.

This post was originally published on 13 July, 2006.  This version has been updated.

I have a problem with facebook, myspace, and other social networking websites out there.  The problem is when I upload my data to their webservers….I don’t own it anymore.  They do.  And they can do whatever they want with it once it is there.

With this in mind, I’d rather setup my own twitter using Status.net or my own digg using Pligg.  But I’d do it on MY OWN SERVER.  That way, any content I upload is MINE.  It doesn’t reside on some server in California or DC and get recycled to advertisements.

I like to control my own stuff.  I don’t like to be cut out of the loop.  If you’re like me, then you’ll want to host your own domain, website and webserver so that your friends/family/shrink can quickly and easily connect up to see new photos, find out the latest family developments, and understand why you wear tinfoil hats every Thursday after 4pm.

Normally, to host your own webpage you would need to spend around 7 bucks to purchase a domain.  Next you would need a hosting plan that usually runs around 3-15 dollars per month to serve up your web pages.

What most don’t realize is that you can skip these steps all together…you don’t need to get dedicated hosting (this blog is hosted on dedicated hosting…but started out in my apartment!) to serve pages up to your friends and family.  You absolutely do not need to get domain name services through a provider.  You can even host your own webserver using a dialup connection (that’s right…I said dialup) although. I don’t recommend it (but I’ve done it using 56.6kbps).

Why would you want to do this?  The answer might be to stay connected to friends and family…perhaps install a gallery so that your grandparents can see pics of your new dog/car/tinfoil hat.  Sure, you could waste my time with MyWaste..er..space and facebook and be barraged daily by advertisers and solicitors and be inundated with the minutiae of what all your friends had to eat for the day …or you could roll your own web host, install a gallery or website, and provide media to your friends and family without costing yourself a dime.  That’s right, NO COST (except time spent getting it running).  Just remember, your website might not survive a digging or slashdotting if you run it yourself.  Keep that in mind  So without more chatter, let’s get to the meat and potatoes of things:

Meat and Potatoes

If you have Cable or DSL at home (not a business account) you have something called a dynamic connection.  Dynamic connection means that it can change every once in a while.  DSL and cable ISP’s purchase blocks of IP Addresses in the dynamic range so that they can keep consumers separate from businesses.  It’s also easier for them to manage dynamic pools of people than to have to remember static connections that don’t change for everyone.

Because of this problem…an ever changing connection for you at home…web servers and websites do not do very well.  The reason for this is because when you visit a website on a dynamic connection one day, it might be different the next day.  In order for visitors of a website to find you each and every single time, you need a “domain” or web name that points back to the address (IP Address) your internet service provider changes on a whim.  You’ll also need an update service to update your website each time your ISP decides to change things on you.

Believe it or not, there are free services out there to do that for you.  You just have to be willing to do a little extra work in the beginning to set things up.  You can also do this without spending 20-40 bucks a month on DNS service.

I’ll divide this up into 2 sections.  The first will deal with Linux hosting.  The second, Windows hosting.  This is only something that I’ve found easy to do and the price is just right (it’s free).  The only thing that I recommend is a dedicated internet connection (cable, DSL) but even this is not necessary as dialup can be used.  I recommend that you use the Linux way of doing things since it is more secure and doesn’t require a restart every time you patch it.

*note: I’m assuming that you aren’t behind a firewall/proxy of any kind and that your ISP doesn’t block port 80 traffic.  If your ISP blocks port 80, see the appendix at the end of this article.

LINUX

No matter what version of Linux you run, chances are that you’ll be able to install the apache webserver.  This is good news as over half the websites of the world are run by apache. I’m not going to address the specifics of how to set up your apache…only how to get it a fixed address without buying a domain.  So, you have your html or php pages located into your webservers public directory…good…whatever application you have is installed on your server.  Now, how to resolve your IP…lets say it is…25.24.4.166 (for our example) and you want it to have a host.name.com to bind to.  Easy to resolve.  Go to http://www.no-ip.com/index.php and sign up.  You can get a site from noip that is like yourname.theirdomain.com/.net/.info.  They have cool names like sytes.net and servebeer.org…even workisboring.com.  Other services like dyndns.org also exist and provide the free service as well.

You’ll be able to choose your own top level name…for instance, Ithink.dnsiskinky.com could be your new domain name.  Next download a client from the download tab: https://www.no-ip.com/downloads.php

The linux client is a tar.gz source and is simple to install. Follow the instructions when installing.  You may have to install compilation tools (devel packages like GCC) to install the client.  You now are the proud owner of yoursite.theirsite.com and your IP will ALWAYS update (as long as noip.com is up) each time you log on/sign on/beam up or whatever it is you do.

How does this help you?  Well, if you’re like me, you have a dynamic IP address.  If you connect to the internet via cable, dialup, or dsl…you also have a dynamic IP address.  Dynamic means that it will change from time to time without warning.  So by binding yoursite.theirsite.com to your IP address…you don’t ever have to worry about what IP address you have anymore.  Instead, you’ll always be able to connect using yoursite.theirsite.com.  You can host a webserver using Apache and a virtual host in this style as well (look for another how-to on this subject later) so that everyone can visit a shiny website at yoursite.theirsite.com.

Now you can give your friends/family/dog walker/mailman the address to your new webserver…maybe it’s Ithink.dnsiskinky.com like we used in the example above.  Now when they visit that address in their web browser, your application or web page displays for them.  You also get bragging rights at being the most technical friend/relative/dog walker client/household that everyone knows.  Now let’s cover Windows.

WINDOWS

First you need a free and clear webserver since one is not included by default with windows. You can download Apache for this as well OR try the Abyss Webserver.

Interestingly enough, Abyss is also free!  I ran it while my linux machine was being worked on (bad hard disk…it was a Quantum 200MB drive from 1913…had to upgrade) and it worked just great off of Windows XP.  Download that puppy and install it.  Make sure you read all of the documentation and familiarize yourself with how Abyss does business.

The next step…getting a hostname… is even easier than the linux method because you don’t have to manually install the noip client…they have a windows installer.  Go to http://www.no-ip.com/index.php and sign up.  Choose the domain name you would like (see above examples in Linux section).  Next, download the noip client from the download tab: https://www.no-ip.com/downloads.php but this time choose the windows client.  From there, you’ll be able to install this with a simple double click.  Fill in all of your information (pretty self explanatory) and make sure that it will run with each time you sign on.  You’re set! Your IP will now resolve to the yourchoice.theirhostname.com

CONCLUSION

You don’t have to spend a dime to keep a domain bound to your IP.  This is perfect for the home user who just wants a gallery or homepage.  It’s even good for someone who has a weblog or enthusiast site.  It’s good for someone who wants to be able to find their files and music…setup Jinzora and stream all your music library to yourself anywhere you are!  Setup Amahi and have access to all the goodness it brings.

Please remember, this wouldn’t be good for a business to have.  You will probably violate your ISP’s terms and conditions for using their connection if you tried to run a business this way.  In that case, there are plenty of options for hosting your site on cheap servers.

It’s always good form to put a link of the stuff you are using on your website to direct traffic back to your software provider.  When I used noip, I included a noip link on my main page and also an abyss webserver icon as well.  It’s just good form and some companies/software providers necessitate the use of their logo or a link on sites that use their software/code.  Just be a nice person and give a link back to them.  Good luck! Have fun!

Also, please note that having hosted my own webserver for quite some time (circa 2001) I’ve found Linux and Apache as a combination to be more secure, faster, and more stable than any webserver I’ve hosted on the Windows Platform. I included information on Windows mainly to introduce you to the concept of free and open source software. If you thought getting a webserver for free was great, think about getting a whole operating system! Give it a try, you don’t even have to install it (use a Live CD).

APPENDIX

If your ISP blocks port 80 traffic, your webserver won’t work.  Before deciding that your ISP is blocking however, make sure your firewall has the appropriate rules to allow incoming traffic.  You can do a quick add to IPTABLES in the following manner:

iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT

iptables -A INPUT -j DROP

If you’ve opened up the appropriate ports and things still don’t work, it will be safe to say that you’ve determined the ISP is blocking port 80.  How you can get around this conundrum is to switch the listening port on the webserver to a different one and redirect traffic there.

1. See how to do this for IIS Webservers
2. See how to do this for Apache Webservers (normally in /etc/apache2/httpd.conf but your distro may vary.)
3. See how to do this for Abyss Webservers

If you still have problems, drop me a line in the comments section.  I may not be able to answer all questions but I can most likely get you to a person/place/thing that can.  Have fun and thanks for reading!

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Host Your Own Domain, Website and Webserver originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on February 13, 2010.

This article is from 2006!  The information here may not be the most current.  You can visit an updated version here!

Doesn’t sound like anything new right?  Well, some people may not know of this method.

Normally, to host your own webpage you would need to spend around 7 bucks to purchase a domain.  Next you would need a hosting plan that usually runs around 3-15 dollars per month to serve up your web pages.

What most don’t realize is that you can skip these steps all together…you don’t need to get dedicated hosting(this blog is hosted on dedicated hosting…but started out in my apartment!) to serve pages up to your friends and family.  You absolutely do not need to get domain name services through a provider.  You can even host your own webserver using a dialup connection (that’s right…I said dialup) although. I don’t recommend it (but I’ve done it using 56.6kbps).

Why would you want to do this?  My reply…to stay connected to friends and family…perhaps throw up a gallery so that your grandparents can see pics of your new dog/car/tinfoil hat.  Sure, you could waste my time with MyWaste..er..space and be barraged daily by advertisers and solicitors…or you could roll your own web host, install a gallery or website, and provide media to your friends and family without costing yourself a dime.  That’s right, NO COST (except time spent getting it running).  Just remember, your website might not survive a digging or slashdotting if you run it yourself.  Keep that in mind  So without more chatter, let’s get to the meat and potatoes of things:

Do you cringe at the thought of buying a domain and putting up with the headache of trying to make sure your IP address is up to date with your domain?  Do you hate the 40 dollars you spend on DNS service each year to resolve your IP address to your hostname?  Read on and learn the the flat-broke-and-busted way of maintaining a fixed hostname for your IP…even if you have dialup.

I’ll divide this up into 2 sections.  The first will deal with Linux.  The second, Windows.  This is only something that I’ve found easy to do and the price is just right (it’s free).  The only thing that I recommend is a dedicated internet connection (cable, DSL) but even this is not necessary as dialup can be used.  I recommend that you use the Linux way of doing things since it is more secure and doesn’t require a restart every time you patch it.

*note: I’m assuming that you aren’t behind a firewall/proxy of any kind and that your ISP doesn’t block port 80 traffic.  If your ISP blocks port 80, see the appendix at the end of this article.

LINUX

No matter what version of Linux you run, chances are that you’ll be able to install the apache webserver.  This is good news as over half the websites of the world are run by the extremely efficient and speedy apache. I’m not going to address the specifics of how to set up your website…only how to get it a fixed address without buying a domain.  So, you have your pages dropped into your webservers public directory…good.  Now, how to resolve your IP…lets say it is…25.24.4.166 (for our example) and you want it to have a host.name.com to bind to.  Easy to resolve.  Go to http://www.no-ip.com/index.php and sign up.  You can get a site from noip that is like yourname.theirdomain.com/.net/.info.  They have cool names like sytes.net and servebeer.org…even workisboring.com

You’ll be able to choose your own top level name…for instance, Ithink.dnsiskinky.com could be your new domain name.  Next download a client from the download tab: https://www.no-ip.com/downloads.php


The linux client is a tar.gz source and is simple to install. Follow the instructions when installing.  You may have to install compilation tools (devel packages like GCC) to install the client.  You now are the proud owner of yoursite.theirsite.com and your IP will ALWAYS update (as long as noip.com is up) each time you log on/sign on/beam up or whatever it is you do.

How does this help you?  Well, if you’re like me, you have a dynamic IP address.  If you connect to the internet via cable, dialup, or dsl…you also have a dynamic IP address.  Dynamic means that it will change from time to time without warning.  So by binding yoursite.theirsite.com to your IP address…you don’t ever have to worry about what IP address you have anymore.  Instead, you’ll always be able to connect using yoursite.theirsite.com.  You can host a webserver using Apache and a virtual host in this style as well (look for another how-to on this subject later) so that everyone can visit a shiny website at yoursite.theirsite.com.

WINDOWS

First you need a free and clear webserver since one is not included by default with windows. You can download Apache for this as well OR try the Abyss Webserver.

Interestingly enough, Abyss is also free!  I ran it while my linux machine was being worked on (bad hard disk…it was a Quantum 200MB drive from 1913…had to upgrade) and it worked just great off of Windows XP.  Download that puppy and install it.  Make sure you read all of the documentation and familiarize yourself with how Abyss does business.

The next step…getting a hostname… is even easier than the linux method because you don’t have to manually install the noip client…they have a windows installer.  Go to http://www.no-ip.com/index.php and sign up.  Choose the domain name you would like (see above examples in Linux section).  Next, download the noip client from the download tab: https://www.no-ip.com/downloads.php but this time choose the windows client.  From there, you’ll be able to install this with a simple double click.  Fill in all of your information (pretty self explanatory) and make sure that it will run with each time you sign on.  You’re set! Your IP will now resolve to the yourchoice.theirhostname.com

CONCLUSION

You don’t have to spend a dime to keep a domain bound to your IP.  This is perfect for the home user who just wants a gallery or homepage.  It’s even good for someone who has a weblog or enthusiast site.  I would not recommend this to anyone who has a business and wants to run a site.  Just remember that the best things in life are free.  Thanks open source!!!

PS: It’s always good form to put a link of the stuff you are using on your website to direct traffic back to your software provider.  When I used noip, I included a noip link on my mainpage and also an abyss webserver icon as well.  It’s just good form and some companies/software providers necessitate the use of their logo or a link on sites that use their software/code.  Just be a nice person and give a linkback to them.  Good luck! Have fun!

PSS: Also, please note that having hosted my own webserver for quite some time (circa 2001) I’ve found Linux and Apache as a combination to be more secure, faster, and more stable than any webserver I’ve hosted on the Windows Platform. I included information on Windows mainly to introduce you to the concept of free and open source software. If you thought getting a webserver for free was great, think about getting a whole operating system! Give it a try, you don’t even have to install it (use a Live CD).


APPENDIX

If your ISP blocks port 80 traffic, your webserver won’t work.  Before deciding that your ISP is blocking however, make sure your firewall has the appropriate rules to allow incoming traffic.  You can do a quick add to IPTABLES in the following manner:

iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT

iptables -A INPUT -j DROP

If you’ve opened up the appropriate ports and things still don’t work, it will be safe to say that you’ve determined the ISP is blocking port 80.  How you can get around this conundrum is to switch the listening port on the webserver to a different one and redirect traffic there.

1. See how to do this for IIS Webservers
2. See how to do this for Apache Webservers (normally in /etc/apache2/httpd.conf but your distro may vary.)
3. See how to do this for Abyss Webservers

If you still have problems, drop me a line in the comments section.  I may not be able to answer all questions but I can most likely get you to a person/place/thing that can.  Have fun and thanks for reading!

This article was originally published on July 13, 2006 and has been updated and reposted.

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Host Your Own Domain and Webserver originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on December 13, 2008.

To replace this loud server I bought the E521-n series so Microsoft didn’t get any of my money. For those of you who don’t know, the N series desktops from Dell come with no operating system. Dell also claims that these computers are ‘ready for Linux’…but there are some problems associated with them. I was able to get ClarkConnect back on my server and pop in the IDE Controller PCI card (E521′s are completely SATA) after solving a couple of problems.

First and foremost, you have to make sure your E521 is running BIOS version 1.1.4 (Released January 2007). If you don’t, you’ll have USB problems all over the place. Second, when booting Linux, add the boot parameter acpi=noirq. If you can’t pass this parameter to your kernel you may need to completely turn off acpi using the ‘noacpi‘ parameter. The only downside to this is that your fan will run continuously and cause a bit more noise than it should.

When installing ClarkConnect 4.0, there is a routine for adding parameters to the kernel before GRUB writes to the MBR. I used this to pass the acpi=noirq parameter and after booting everything worked. Without passing this parameter, I received Kernel panics.

It’s also been reported that some kernels cannot find the broadcom module for the onboard LAN device. With ClarkConnect, this wasn’t a problem. I’ve heard that the Fedora Xen kernel has problems with this.

I’m going to list some links here for your reference that helped me in my quest:

ClarkConnect
Dell E521 and Linux Wiki Page
Yet Another Linux Blog and the USB Problem
Hardware Support for E521 N Series @ Ubuntu Forums

Hope this information helps someone with their problems! For those of you running Ubuntu, you’ll have to add ‘noapic irqpoll pci=routeirq’ to your boot parameters to get things rocking.

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Dell Dimension E521 with Linux originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on February 23, 2007.

The bottom line is…most routers, if not configured correctly and used to full potential, are wide open and provide only a few functions. If you’re like me, this just won’t do. To combat this in the past, I used to use Red Hat 7.2 on a PI 75Mhz like an appliance to provide DHCP addresses for the LAN and a tidy firewall via ipchains and later iptables. Now there is a Linux distro that is more robust, more organized, and much more dynamic than most Linux router/server configured systems and it provides MANY functions. That distro is ClarkConnect. Today, I’m going to take a look at ClarkConnect 3.2 and show you how you can secure your network using its web interface and excellent administration tools.

ClarkConnect is based on CentOS 4.X and offers a very robust set of tools organized into easy to navigate administration pages. The administration pages are very similar to those that you would find with IPCOP and Smoothwall. However, ClarkConnect throws in extras such as the ability to use Samba and set it up as a PDC (Primary Domain Controller), 2 click updates, a caching dns server, a transparent proxy to speed up web surfing, a pop up blocker built into the proxy, dansguardian with blacklisting, online log viewer…there just is a list of features WAY to long to list here. So I’ll link to the features page and you can read a few more things for yourself. Also, if you’re wondering Point Clark Network’s take on community and open source, please read this page. They’re committed to community AND open source.

I started using ClarkConnect at version 2.0. Back then, they used Red Hat Linux as their base. Today, they’ve ported over to CentOS packages…which are Red Hat Enterprise Linux binaries repackaged by the CentOS project. All in all, I’ve been extremely pleased with the performance and handy web interface ClarkConnect provides which enables me to monitor my home network from afar. One thing that truly impresses me is that the home version remains free and open source despite the rise in business that ClarkConnect is currently enjoying. The people at Point Clark networks have a strong sense of community and they are continuously helping in the forums. They are to be commended for keeping this version available to home users! Any problems you might have with CC can be and will be addressed in the community forums. If you get lost or need to understand something better at anytime, please check the userguides at clarkconnect.com. You can also download the Quickstart Guide to get things rolling as well.

You can download and burn the 3.2 Home version of ClarkConnect (or CC as it is commonly referred). When installing, you’ll be greeted by a variation of the old Red Hat Anaconda text installer. It’s relatively easy to follow and hardware detection is superb…although I’ve found some older computers (think 266Mhz ) do have a bit of trouble with the newer kernel (2.6 branch). I’ll assume that you can get it installed and up and running. Please be advised that in order to route traffic on your LAN, you’ll need at least two Network Cards in the computer you’ll be installing ClarkConnect on (see requirements)…one for internal and one for external traffic. Please also be advised that if you do install ClarkConnect onto a computer, it will wipe the entire hard disk of all operating systems. After installing, point your browser in a computer on your LAN to the IP address you assigned CC during install (should be an internal IP address). So you’d point your browser to https://192.168.1.X:81. The port number 81 and https are important…81 isn’t a standard web port and https means this is a secure transaction of information.

You should be greeted by the dashboard screen. –>

The dashboard tells you what your two (or how ever many you have) interfaces are (LAN and External Internet, DMZ, whatever) as well as gives you the opportunity to set languages, set system time, and see a quick overview of current intrusion attempts. Navigating to other areas is a snap with the menu bar at the top of the screen.

Updates

First, let’s move over and update the system. To do this, we’ll have to register with Point Clark Networks (who develop ClarkConnect) using their built in registration. Registering gives you a dynamic domain name (yourname.pointclark.net but hey, it’s automatically configured and allows you remote access to your box from the outside world). You can also piece together other services should you decide to purchase them. Of course, since I use the home version, I choose only the dynamic DNS service which is free so that I can connect from work to my box at home. So, back to updating the system. After you register, click on the sidebar item “Critical Updates”. Any updates that are critical to the system, including kernel patches, will update themselves here. To install the updates, turn off your popup blocker for this site, toggle the checkmarks, and click “go”. A window will pop up and show you apt-get progress. Close it when it states it is done. Feel free to browse other updates and install them at any time.

It’s important to note that all updates are pushed through this interface. This includes major updates to new versions as well. Updating to new versions is therefore extremely easy. The upcoming ClarkConnect 4.0 release is currently in beta and ClarkConnect is looking to release this in the very near future. Look for some new packages including Horde Webmail, Kollab groupware, ClamAV, and others.

Another handy thing that ClarkConnect does is keep track of those patches you’ve installed (as long as you go through the services tab on this webconfig). You can also update via apt and the shell (soon to be yum with the next release 4.0)…I use putty to connect via SSH to the box and update from time to time. You can cycle through other updates as well and even see some of the handy community contributed modules. Install any you’d like and head to the various resources that clarkconnect has to get you started such as the forums, the newbie guide, and Ya-FAQ.

Users
To take a look at the users present and to have control over whether or not your users have shell accounts available, etc. Head over to the users tab. Here you have ultimate control over all the users on your system. This makes it handy in situations where you’d like to setup a user for VPN but don’t want that user to have a shell account (for security reasons). I leave one user and make the password as complex as I possibly can. I also change the password about once every 3 months to keep things secure. Whatever your security policy is, the web interface makes things easy to administer and easy to use.

Reports

Now that we previously updated the system, let’s take a look at the overview of all hardware. Click on the reports tab and make sure “current status” is selected. This gives us a graphical overview of all hardware and current performance. As you can see from the screenshot, you don’t need a fast computer to power your ClarkConnect install (pictured is my emachines Celeron 900). I’ve had over 194 days of uptime with this current install of ClarkConnect (version 3.2). I don’t see any reason why it won’t continue other than a hardware fail. Overall, ClarkConnect is stable, secure, and the most handy server distro I’ve ever used. I trust it so much after using it these years as my main workhorse server that I’m prepping to start a side business installing and configuring ClarkConnect boxes for small businesses. Point Clark Networks is doing a great job helping small businesses have the functionality they need at an affordable price. Anyway, back to the review.

Back to the reports tab; In reports, you’ll be able to check out all the logs on your server. This makes reading logs less of a hassle and something you can do without cracking the shell.

Services

Click the services tab. In this view, we should be defaulted to “Running Services” which is the handiest page in the admin section. Here you will find a service listing of all the system services/software that can be toggled “on” the CC box. You can start, stop, enable at boot, or disable at boot any single service you see in this view. The color scheme will tell you what is enabled (Green) and what service is disabled (red). Take a look to make sure you have running what you need to have running…since CC defaults are safe, we can leave everything as it is or turn on whatever it is we need.

Backups

Next, let’s make a quick backup snapshot of all our settings. You can do this by staying in the services tab and clicking “backup/restore”. From there, you can backup all your settings in CC. This is handy if, like me, you’re thinking of starting a business. One click snapshots means less configuring. It also makes things nice if you are planning on reinstalling. You can take this backup snapshot you’re creating and upload it to a fresh install to restore settings. Please be advised though that this backup is configuration files only (in /etc and /usr) and only for CC default apps. If you install something else, CC won’t backup that install without hacking.

Proxy Server

How about setting up a transparent proxy server to speed up your web browsing? Point Clark and CC have you covered in a couple of point-clicks. Head over to the Software tab. Select “Web Proxy” on the left side menu. From there, select the proxy to auto start if you’d like it to start at boot, then select to start the service. You can setup cache space, enable download size limits, and set maximum object size. Let’s set all to defaults for now…just make sure that if you plan on downloading larger files to set the maximum download file size to Unlimited. Also, if you want to use content filtering along with our transparent proxy, select “transparent + content filter” in the selection box titled “Transparent Mode.” You can clear your proxy out anytime by selecting “Reset Cache.”

Pop-Up Blocker

Now that you have the web proxy setup, let’s put the pop-up blocker on and look at content filtering. Select “Banner/Pop-up Blocker” from the menu on the right. Start it up by clicking on the links (Autostart if you choose). That’s it! Pretty simple eh? Let’s move over to content filtering. Click on “Content Filter” on the left side menu.

Content Filter

Now CC will automatically update your blacklists for content management for you. However, you’ll have to upgrade to one of the service levels to do so. Since I’m a home user and someone who’s run DansGuardian (the content filter system they use) for quite some time…I do my updates manually and pass on the upgrade in service. Point Clark networks has no problem with this, they simply have this in place to cater to their business clients to provide no-hassle management of their servers. Let’s get our update in place. Head over to the folks at URLBlacklist.com, specifically their download section. Download the bigblacklist.tar.gz. This is a one time free download for personal use. This is an up to date blacklisting that we can drop into our dansguardian directory to make sure that it is running with the latest and greatest. Drop all the contents of bigblacklist.tar.gz inside the /etc/dansguardian/blacklists directory. Remember, you will need to either purchase a subscription through dansguardian, urlblacklist.com, or go with purchasing the personal gateway service through clarkconnect to have a completely updated dansguardian blacklist. I’ve found that I don’t really need an up to date box…it does quite nicely on it’s own and I can add and remove sites as I see fit. Plus, you can do well to check out dmoz and their urlblacklists for squidguard which translate nicely into dansguardian (for advanced users only). You can enable dansguardian with a couple of clicks and set options for it on the Software Tab >> Content Filtering Menu.

Network

Now that we’ve seen some of the wizbang features built into ClarkConnect, let’s take a look at the rest of the tabs. You can see from the screenshot to the left of this paragraph that there is plenty other software that you can configure in CC, but let’s move over to the other tabs to show you just what you can control using the web interface. Click on the “Network” tab. ClarkConnect can operate in gateway mode (which is ‘router’ style mode with ipmasquerading, etc.), DMZ mode if you want to have a DMZ (demilitarized zone), standalone with firewall, and standalone without firewall. You can set these anytime you’d like to and control all of your network interfaces here. You can also go straight to DHCP configuration which will allow your CC box to give computers connected behind it a network address.

One thing that is a definitive plus for CC is the firewall manager. You can control incoming, outgoing, and port forwarding all from the web interface. I specifically like the group manager. Why? Because it is handy if I want to use torrents, I setup a group to open up ports 10000-60000 and forward to my desktop behind my CC box. When I’m done, I turn it off by disabling that group of rules. Handy eh?

Intrusion Detection/Prevention

Also contained in the network tab is intrusion detection and intrusion prevention. I enable both of these but will enter into the intrusion prevention exempt list my work IP address and all the addresses of my LAN. That way I don’t have my CC box thinking that I’m trying to break in and dropping my connections to it as I test things or connect to it using various methods (ftp, ssh, web, vpn, etc). Intrusion detection rules can be updated through Point Clark Networks by upgrading to gateway service level to SOHO which is around $10 USD a month. I just enable mine and let it go . Seems to do a fine job using the default rules and as long as I keep a watchful eye on my firewall rules, I’m just as safe as if I had a Security Enhanced Linux Fedora box running things. To read your intrusion detection and prevention logs, head over to your reports tab and then select the appropriate area on the left.

Bandwidth Management

One other area of interest here in the network tab is bandwidth management. Select “Bandwidth” from the left menu area. In this menu, you can enter in upload and download limits for bandwidth and take control of your network. Very handy if you have a multiple computer LAN and a teenager that downloads EVERYTHING. Play around with the settings and when you’re satisfied, let’s cinch things up with samba, ftp, and webserver.

Samba

CC comes ready to operate as a PDC (Primary Domain Controller) for your LAN. If you only operate a small LAN (1-2 computers) having a PDC is really for bragging rights only. Instead, you might want to configure your samba shares using CC’s handy web interface. Head over to the “Software” tab and click “Windows File Sharing”. ClarkConnect has common shares already in place for you. You can enable these or disable them. You can even add your own. It’s up to you. Starting samba is once again just a point click away. There is also an advanced setup option for those of you who are a bit more experienced with samba.

Personally, I don’t use the samba interface from ClarkConnect. I instead use Network Attached Storage which automatically is detected on my network by all my desktops (easy as connecting to another PC) so I haven’t found the need to implement samba on my CC box. In the future, when I expand to include a computer for my son, I will implement a PDC with roaming profiles so that all settings are backed up to ClarkConnect. Thus, if a computer fails, I still have all settings saved server side.

We’ve covered a varying amount of information in this review and I won’t cover everything that CC has to offer either. But two other areas I wanted to discuss was ftp and webserver. CC uses proftp for their ftp server and apache 2 for their webserver. One thing I’ve found of value for the webserver (which I’ll discuss first) is their virtual host creator.

FTP and Webserver

The webserver interface is handy. Very handy. You can enable SSL for Apache by toggling a setting. You can setup a virtual host by typing in the webaddress. Dead easy. I’ve found that setting up virtual hosts via this interface is better than doing so through webmin because it configures all defaults for you a bit better than webmin does. No idea why, but I’ve had trouble with webmin in the past with vhosts. I usually create a vhost with CC on their web server interface…such as linuxblog.sytes.net shown in the picture. This was my old blog location when I hosted it at home (2004 with CC 2.2 I think). I now have a virtual host setup so that all requests for linuxblog.sytes.net go through my CC box…I’ve written a rewrite rule to forward all traffic from the old blog to this current blog. Handy and easy with ClarkConnect. Like I said, I create the vhosts with CC and then hand them off to webmin for more detailed configuration. It’s important to note that you can install webmin through your “services” tab.

If you notice in the picture in the previous paragraph, I have linuxblog.sytes.net as a virtual host. I use the no-ip service I previously blogged about to register this name. If you plugin the topic to that article with a ClarkConnect install…you can see that they’d be a fine fit together and that you can have your own webserver running in a matter of minutes. Put that together with Gallery, which CC is bundled with, and you’ve got yourself a family photo album!

Lastly, let’s look at the ftp server in CC. Click on the “Software” tab and then select “ftp server” from the menu on the left. You are a few clicks away from having a fully operational ftp server. Change the details you’d like to using the form provided by the web interface, then click to start and autostart the service. By default, CC shares /var/ftp. It is also open to anonymous connections. You’ll have to edit /etc/proftpd.conf to your liking to get your ftp server up and operational for other directories and users. Please see the proftp homepage for more details.

Summary

We’ve taken a semi-detailed look at ClarkConnect Home Edition 3.2 and how you can benefit both from the vast amount of software/programs already enabled on it and the ability to have an up and running router/server in as little as 30 minutes. Combine this with my previous article on using a no-ip domain and there isn’t any reason why you shouldn’t be able to show off a gallery or ftp server to your friends and relatives. If you have any problems, please head over to the ClarkConnect forums and ask…but not before using their search tool to see if the topic has been covered. As previously stated, there are two websites you can also connect to Ya-FAQ and the Newbie Portal. These two sites can provide you with good info as well as How-Tos made by the community.

I’d also like to take the time to let everyone know that I am in NO WAY being compensated for this article. I’ve used the software for quite some time and felt that I might be able to repay the people at Point Clark Networks by giving them props through this review. Whenever a new user is looking for a quick server oriented distribution, I always point them to ClarkConnect. In my opinion, it is the best distro out there to have for your home LAN. Hopefully, you’ll give it a test drive and come to the same conclusion.

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ClarkConnect – Enterprise Linux for Your Home originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on July 25, 2006.

I looked at their site report from Netcraft and saw that they have just changed within the last month. As I’ve spoken about in the past, some of these larger linux websites/news agencies have really gone down hill. I used to think LinuxWorld was a really great magazine/website. Then they go and pull something like this. Oddly enough, their website has been suffering as of late: According to Alexa, they’ve been on a steady decline since 2004. In fact, my lowly blog here has been garnering more traffic than their site according to Alexa. You do the math…if they can’t beat my silly little blog in traffic, they’re going out fast.

Don’t worry though, I at least have enough sense to always power this site with Open Source and on the Linux platform…even though my primary job is with Microsoft Windows 2000 and 2003 servers. I may be good at Windows AND Linux but I’m no sell out. I bet LinuxWorld wishes they could say the same. I’d cancel my tickets and reservations if you have a spot at that expo. Make sure you check out the heavy hitters that are there too and express your opinions to them on this subject.

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LinuxWorld, Powered by Windows? originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on May 12, 2006.

Of course, the real problem wasn’t getting the various software installed, the problem was doing it in the correct order. My advice to someone that wants to use mod_ntlm with Apache to pass parameters to a zope server for plone: Install zope and plone first…get a working site up and running on port 80 (intranet site that is) THEN install apache and work on mod_ntlm. I had trouble figuring this out as most of the instructions I found allowed for Apache to be working first before the zope server comes into play. Another thing you could do is turn off Apache during your zope/plone configuration.

Something else that is odd is that by default when you install zope in CentOS, it isn’t started. You can add it to automatic start using checkconfig in CentOS but finding out where the rpm installs zope is another story. Not being familiar with zope hindered my progress initially. After some fumbling I was able to get things working.

Overall on both the Ubuntu and CentOS installs, I was able to get things in working order but could not get Apache to use mod_ntlm correctly. Normally, if mod_ntlm is setup correctly and all directives are listed correctly (I was using .htaccess to house the ntlm directives) you’ll get to a page 404 not found if accessing the document root. Instead, I received 401 Unauthorized Access. This meant that I was not validating according to Apache to my active directory source.

I worked on it for about 3-4 hours with no extra information coming to light. I even emailed a few people who I know are running a zope/plone/apache intranet page for their business. They got me to where I was but couldn’t really help me solve the problem. The only direction they could give me is that AD (active directory) was setup odd on my network. That could very well be. It is a bit odd here and will be until we switch across to W2K3 and Active Directory (I originally tried to plug Red Hat Enterprise Linux but no one even heard my ‘new employee’ voice squeeking in the wings…I also didn’t get a call back from Red Hat. There must be bigger fish to fry eh?). So, for now, it seems tha zope/plone/apache is not the combination to get a portal page up and running. I may try again when the Windows 2003 AD environment is finalized (a project I’ll most likely have to roll out )

It’s very sad that after a few weeks of looking and a few weeks of trying various open source CMS portals that I cannot get a single one implemented with single sign on. You’d think that this would be where Open Source could really make innroads into the enterprise. With the rise of the enterprise Wiki and the ability to pull code from other projects because of the fantastic GPL license, you’d think we would see single sign on modules popping up all over the place in one CMS and another. That isn’t so. As of the writing of this article, I know of only a few php based CMS that offer single sign on: Moodle, Midgard, and Plone. Of course, I haven’t attempted midgard. I’ll be saving this one for last. It truly is an area that open source needs attention in.

Now that I think about it though, most CMS are simply forums and news sites on the internet. They really don’t have a huge demand for single sign on. So it makes sense that most CMS don’t provide this ability. However, I would think that single sign on would be a very popular plugin to provide for any CMS to allow it to gain a larger audience.

Since Zope and Plone aren’t an alternative for me…I must move on to something that can be. I’ve found a couple of really nice java based open source content management systems and during the next couple of days I’ll be testing them out on Ubuntu and CentOS using Apache/Tomcat. I’ll post my findings of course and we’ll see where this takes me. I really wish plone/zope would have worked for me…I really liked the flexibility that it gave which would have proved beneficial later on when (not if) management changed its mind and wanted more than an info/document repository portal. Once again, suggestions are welcome and needed…tell me how silly I am and post your comments.

Devnet

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Brining Linux to Work – Portal Part 2 originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on May 9, 2006.

You’ve Got to Start Somewhere…

Recently, I’ve been investigating portal applications (CMS portals) for an intranet server at work. The portal will act as a document repository and project status report tool. It needs to plug into the framework we have in place currently…which is a Windows 2000 Active Directory environment. Instead of powering this with IIS or WinXp with Apache…I’ve elected to go with Linux and Apache. However, I didn’t really investigate much to figure out if this would be a possibility. Problems were rampant and still are. Allow me to explain.

I’ve been given the requirements that any intranet page must be single sign on, meaning that when a user visits the page, they don’t have to login…they’re simply there and logged in already. This can be done using the apache ntlm module. I can also pass this parameter using Tomcat and JOSS with php. However, the ntlm module won’t compile on Ubuntu or SuSe and hence won’t install. So, that took away my top two choices for Linux distros (not to mention, caused me to waste 2 days of time). JOSS requires that I write and plugin my own php script which is something I don’t want to do currently. So I’m back at square one. I’ve changed direction and am instaling CentOS 4 currently…we’ll see where that takes me. I’ve had more luck with CentOS as a server (my server at home has around 120 days for uptime currently and runs CentOS at its core).

Some of you are probably saying, “just use OpenLDAP any distro”. Well, that would be just fine if my requirements were to use the LDAP database for user authentication making the user sign on one time only…however, stipulations for me were ZERO sign in…hence single sign on…they login to our domain here and then never have to login again. So, ntlm is the only way currently. Finding a CMS is up next.

I’ve looked at midgard but am thinking it is way to complicated. I just want a simple page that can act as a document repository. I’ve looked at and installed knowledgetree but there currently is no single sign on support at all so it is out of the question. I’ve looked at Zope and Plone and found it to be right along the lines of what I need. The problem I hit is that I have to use Apache to pass the ntlm to the Zope server…so it’s going to take some configuring (this is the #1 candidate right now though).

So does anyone out there have any idea of a CMS that can use SSO (Single Sign On) in a Win2k Active directory environment with minimal configuration (as this needs to go up in about 2 weeks)? I’m all ears. The next update should be my attempt to use CentOS with ntlm and apache/zope/plone.

Wish me Luck,

Devnet

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Brining Linux to Work – Portal Part 1 originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on May 8, 2006.

cd /usr/bin

su mysql

mysql_install_db

Lastly, issue the command:

mysqld_safe &

What you’ve just done is logged into you Linux box as user mysql, then installed the default database…and then with the mysqld_safe & command you initiated the mysql daemon to run in the background. So, things should be good to go now. MySQL is running and you’ll be able to press on with things by adding users and databases.

A bit more info for you…creating databases and users can get tedious via the linux prompt. You can use phpmyadmin or webmin to automate this process and save yourself time and effort.

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I can’t get MySQL to work!!! Something about mysql.sock… originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on February 4, 2006.