Archive for the ‘Controlpanels’ Category

Many webmasters want to redirect users that access their websites with “domain.tld” automatically to “www.domain.tld”. If you use the Apache web server, you can do this by using Apache rewrite rules.

Add a .htaccess file with the following content in the root directory of the website:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.domain\.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.domain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

If you use ISPConfig as hosting control panel, you can add these rules also in the Apache directives field of the website instead of a .htaccess file

Have you ever searched where the virtual host of a website is defined in the apache config files? There is a handy option of the apache2ctl script which might help then. When you run the command:

apache2ctl -S

on the shell, you will get a list of all virtual hosts and default servers incl. the line number where it is defined. Example:

~# apache2ctl -S
VirtualHost configuration:
wildcard NameVirtualHosts and _default_ servers:
*:8080                 is a NameVirtualHost
default server ispconfig.local (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-ispconfig.vhost:10)
port 8080 namevhost ispconfig.local (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-ispconfig.vhost:10)
*:8081                 is a NameVirtualHost
default server ispconfig.local (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-apps.vhost:10)
port 8081 namevhost ispconfig.local (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-apps.vhost:10)
*:80                   is a NameVirtualHost
default server ispconfig.local (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default:1)
port 80 namevhost ispconfig.local (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default:1)
port 80 namevhost example.com (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/example.com.vhost:7)
Syntax OK

Thanks to Planetfox for this tipp.

If you use mod_security on your server you might encounter that a website script is not compatible with mod_security. To disable mod_security (v2) for a website, add the following code into the apache directives field:


SecRuleEngine Off

For the older mod_security 1 version, use these configuration directives:


SecFilterEngine Off

Thanks to Planetfox for this tipp.

How to Update ISPConfig 3

Friday, February 19, 2010 posted by Till

The ISPConfig update script is a easy way to update a ISPConfig 3 installation. If you want to create a manual backup of ISPConfig, take a look at the instructions at the end of the article.

To update ISPConfig 3, login as root user on the shell of your server and run the command:

ispconfig_update.sh

>> Update

Please choose the update method. For production systems select ‘stable’.
The update from svn is only for development systems and may break your current setup.

Select update method (stable,svn) [stable]:

You should always select “stable” on a production system. The “svn” version is only suitable for ISPConfig 3 development.

The updater will then check the version of your system, download the latest update and starts the update process.

This application will update ISPConfig 3 on your server.

Shall the script create a ISPConfig backup in /var/backup/ now? (yes,no) [yes]:

You should choose “yes” here. This will create a backup of the ISPConfig scripts (/usr/local/ispconfig), the /etc directory and the ISPC0nfig MySQL database in the directory /var/backup/

Creating backup of “/usr/local/ispconfig” directory…
Creating backup of “/etc” directory…
Checking ISPConfig database .. OK
Starting incremental database update.

The update script will then start to install incremental database updates for ISPConfig, if required.

Reconfigure Permissions in master database? (yes,no) [no]:

If this is a slave server in a multiserver setup, then choose “yes” here on at least one of the slave servers. For single server installations, choose ‘no’. Then you were asked if the services shall be reconfigured:

Reconfigure Services? (yes,no) [yes]:

You should choose “yes” here, only if you modified your system configuration manually, it might be better to choose no. But in this case, new features in ISPConfig might not work or functions might stop working until you adjusted the config files manually. So its always a good choice to select ‘yes’ here. In the next step, select the ispconfig port:

ISPConfig Port [8080]:

Port 8080 is the default, if you have not changed it, press enter. Otherwise enter the port number and then press enter. As the last step, you wre asked if the crontab shall get reconfigured, you can select yes here by just pressing return.

Create new ISPConfig SSL certificate (yes,no) [no]:

If your SSL certificate for the ISPConfig interface has been expired and you want to renew it or if you want to enable SSL encryption for the ISPConfig interface, then choose “yes”. If you dont need a new SSL certificate, take the default (no).

Reconfigure Crontab? (yes,no) [yes]:

The ISPConfig updater will then update the ispconfig files and restart services, if the configuration has been changed.

Backup before updates

(This backup procedure is now integrated into the ISPConfig updater and gets executed automatically when you choose to create a backup during update)

Before you update a software, it is always a good idea to backup all relevant data. This enables you to restore the software version that you had before in case of an error. The steps to create a backup of the ispconfig software and settings are:

Create a backup folder:

mkdir /home/backup
chmod 700 /home/backup
cd /home/backup

Backup the database

mysqldump -u root -p dbispconfig > dbispconfig.sql

Backup the ISPConfig software

tar pcfz ispconfig_software.tar.gz /usr/local/ispconfig

Backup the configuration files in /etc

tar pcfz etc.tar.gz /etc

This backup does not include the emails and website data.

Keep the spamassassin filter rules up to date in ISPConfig 3

Friday, February 5, 2010 posted by Till

To update the spamassassin rules regularily on your ISPConfig 3 server, add the following line to the root crontab by running:

crontab -e

then insert the following line:

23 4 */2 * * /usr/bin/sa-update –no-gpg &> /dev/null

and save the file. The path to the sa-update script is /usr/bin/sa-update on Ubuntu and Debian Linux, if you use a different linux distrubution, run the command:

which sa-update

to find the location of the sa-update script and adjust the path in the crontab line above so that it matches the path on your system.

Since january 1 2010, spamassassin is falsely marking non spam emails as spam due to an error in the regular expression of the FH_DATE_PAST_20XX rule.

Description of the bug:

https://secure.grepular.com/blog/index.php/2010/01/01/spamassassin-2010-bug/

To fix this, run the following command on the shell as root user:

sa-update

If you use the software ISPConfig 2 on your server, run this command:

/home/admispconfig/ispconfig/tools/spamassassin/usr/bin/sa-update

How to reset the administrator password in ISPConfig 3

Friday, November 6, 2009 posted by Till

If you lost your ISPConfig 3 administrator password, you can reset it with the following SQL query.

UPDATE sys_user SET passwort = md5(‘admin’) WHERE username = ‘admin’;

The SQL query sets the password to “admin” for the user “admin”, it has to be executed in the ISPConfig mysql database, e.g. with phpmyadmin. If you dont have phpmyadmin installed, then the query can be executed with the mysql commandline utility as well:

Login to the mysql database.

mysql -u root -p

and enter the password of the mysql root user. To switch to the ISPConfig database, run this command:

use dbispconfig;

Now execute the SQL command:

UPDATE sys_user SET passwort = md5(‘admin’) WHERE username = ‘admin’;

and close the mysql shell:

quit;

How to enable port 465 (smtps) in postfix mailserver

Wednesday, October 28, 2009 posted by Till

More and more internet access providers are closing port 25 to reduce spam except for connections to their own mailservers. If you run your own mailserver and have problems to connect to it on port 25, you can enable port 465 (smtps) in postfix as a workaround. Edit the /etc/postfix/master.cf file:

vi /etc/postfix/master.cf

and remove the # in front of the smtps line. Example for Debain 5, change the line:

#smtps     inet  n       -       -       -       -       smtpd

to:

smtps     inet  n       -       -       -       -       smtpd

and restart postfix:

/etc/init.d/postfix restart

How to reset the MySQL root password

Wednesday, October 21, 2009 posted by Till

The following steps describe the procedure to reset the mysql root password on Linux.

1) Stop the mysql server

/etc/init.d/mysql stop

2) Start the mysql server manually without permission tables which allows us to login as root user without password:

mysqld_safe –skip-grant-tables &

3) Login into mysql as root user without a password and switch to the “mysql” database:

mysql -u root mysql

Then execute this SQL query to set a new password for the mysql root user:

update user set Password=PASSWORD(‘mynewpassword’) WHERE User=’root’;

(Replace “mynewpassword” with the new root password in the above command).

Then logout from the mysql prompt by typing:

exit

4) Now bring back the running mysql instance into the foreground by typing:

fg

and then press [ctrl] + c to kill the mysql process.

5) Start the mysql server again:

/etc/init.d/mysql start

The cronjobs (crontabs) for all system users in Debian and Ubuntu Linux are stored in the directory /var/spool/cron/crontabs. To make a backup with tar, use this command:

tar pcfz /root/user_crontabs.tar.gz /var/spool/cron/crontabs

The backup file user_crontabs.tar.gz is be stored in the /root/ folder.