RimuHosting Blog

Tag: Server administration

  • Tomcat 7 released, installer updated

    Tomcat is one the most popular Java servlet/JSP containers. Tomcat 6 has been out since 2006 and the Tomcat team has just announced the first stable release of Tomcat 7. At the time of writing version 7.06 is the latest stable release. Tomcat 7 implements the Servlet 3.0, JSP 2.2 and EL 2.2 specifications. Along…

  • Setting up Monit + with tomcat

    We get asked a lot by customers to install and setup monit. Its not an overly hard task, in fact its pretty darned easy. Monit is brilliant for monitoring and restarting services when they are down, it can alert you or just restart after 5 failed connects/attempts. It handles everything from disk space, to memory,…

  • Proftpd exploitable versions

    Due the severity of the proftp bug, and the mixed systems and versions in the VPSs, we many customers have switched to use vsftp, others just started using sftp, regardless that we have the following notes for customers willing to enable proftpd again: The bug affects versions >= 1.3.2rc3, for more information: http://bugs.proftpd.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3521 Here is…

  • Disabling exploitable proftpds

    A stack overflow bug has been identified in ProFTPd.  This bug allows users to gain remote access (usually root) to an attacker.  This bug requires immediate attention and potentially a restore to the last backup image of your server. Information on the bug can be found here: http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-4221 We have been handling the issue per…

  • Older versions of debian and updates

    We have come across several users who run older versions of debian. This is usually fine, sometimes for some reasons users are unable to update for some time but require a package to be installed. This is where the fun begins…

  • Security at home – encrypted home directories

    This isn’t directly server related at all, more for the home or office user who wants to make sure things are nice and secure. At the office we like to also make sure our desktops are fairly safe to connect from as well, mostly  in case the machines ever get stolen, we know our data…

  • Updating old installs – Plesk – and other nasty issues

    When choosing a VPS often people go with the distro that suits them best, usually one they find easy to manage. Whilst this is fine, you also need to remember that at some stage in the future you will need to reinstall or upgrade. Debian/Ubuntu based distros seem to scale and upgrade versions fine with…

  • Exploited VPS? phpmyadmin?

    Currently we are being inundated with scans and exploits looking for new machines to take over, most of these are using insecure phpmyadmin installs. If you are unsure if your box has been hacked then the things to look for are similar to this…

  • Old versions of PHPMyAdmin and Automated Scanning

    It has come to our attention that we have had a decent number of  alerts about machines scanning on our networks in the last day. All of them have been running hacks from /tmp named things like /tmp/dd_ssh etc. These files are owned and run by the apache user, and on further investigation all put…

  • WordPress Mass Upgrade Script 3.0.1

    This script will search /var/www (changeable in a variable) for any wordpress installs and make sure its upgraded to the latest version. It will run a backup to /root/wp_upgrade/ of all files and database before doing anything with the site in case of major catastrophe. It pays to check each site after the upgrade to…