Log Rotation Basics
Server logs record many of the events on your server. They record /var/log/messages, which has information about named, ftpd and other services, as well as mysql, just to name a few things. When there’s a problem with your server and the cause is unclear, the server logs are a great place to start sleuthing.
But your server log files will not contain all of the information for your server forever. If they tried, file sizes would get unmanageable and disk space would fill up, eventually causing problems. For example, Apache logs will cause Apache to crash if they reach over 2 gigs. To prevent this, the server logs’ older information disappears into the abyss unless you rotate the logs.
Log rotation is a wonderful function that you are probably using already and don’t even know about. In fact, if you are using cPanel as your server control panel you are definitely using log rotation. (Plesk offers log rotation too, but it is not enabled by default.) Log rotation takes the current logs, compresses them and stores them elsewhere for later reference. Read more
Taking the Chill out of Installing Icecast
What is Icecast?
Icecast is free software that allows you to stream audio over the Internet from you server. Icecast is compatible with Nullsoft’s Shoutcast.
Install Icecast
The simplest way to install Icecast is via yum. It’s quick and easy, and it’ll be manageable to maintain later. For this example, we’ll discuss installing Icecast on a CentOS server.
Note: This article involves installing software and editing files on the command line. If you’re unfamiliar with using the yum command, a text editor such as nano, or with working on the command line in general, check out this article on logging into your server as root or open a ticket in your ServInt customer portal and our team can complete a basic, unconfigured installation. Read more
Free Malware Protection from ServInt with StopTheHacker
All ServInt VPS and Flex accounts now come with free malware detection software from StopTheHacker — a service with an annual cash value of $120. Each customer receives one free subscription for each server they lease through ServInt.
The free StopTheHacker subscription for ServInt customers includes Basic STH service for one domain complete with a weekly scan utilizing standard malware detection measures.
The free malware detection software from StopTheHacker allows ServInt customers to determine whether the pages under monitored domains are being affected by known malware and viruses, and will also check to see if those domains are being blacklisted by major search engines. Read more
SSH Root Logins, Privilege Escalation and Server Security in cPanel
As you dig deeper into server administration, you’ll eventually need to log into your server via SSH as root. Logging into your server as root allows you to easily accomplish many tasks, but it demands a certain level of security precaution.
SSH root logins offer a huge potential security vulnerability. The root user is the administrative user of a server and has full access to the server. If compromised, the root account provides the malicious user with complete control. Anyone logged into a server with root access can write, erase, edit, upload or download any file. It is an all-access pass to your server, and simply guarding your root password isn’t enough to protect yourself.
There are two ways to mitigate this security concern. Read more
Whipping Bots into Shape
What is a bot?
Internet bots — or web robots — are software applications that run repetitive tasks across the web. And while they may sound like something out of sci-fi, they are, for the most part, less “Minority Report” than “Wall-E.” While it’s true that bots can be designed with malicious intentions, the most common bots — web crawlers and other web robots — are quite useful.
Internet search providers use web robots to index websites and turn those scans into searchable results. This is an essential function for people who care about search result rankings and SEO. Without bots, no one would find your website when they searched Google. In fact, there would be no Google.
However, there are circumstances when robots can have a negative impact on your site. Most of the time it is not their fault, they’re just doing what they’re designed to do, but if you have a bot or two indexing your site it can really slow things down.
A robots.txt file can help
That’s where the robots.txt file comes in. The robots.txt file is a file that robots look for, which dictates how a bot behaves on your site. Think of your robots.txt file as your website’s house rules. Most bots will look at this file and behave according to the rules you’ve laid out.
Most legitimate bots obey all of the rules in a robots.txt file, but some do not. Googlebot, for example, requires Google Webmaster Tools. Still, it’s important to manage as many bots as possible so it pays to have a robots.txt file in place. This way you can promote good SEO by allowing search engine bots to do their work, and prevent them from slowing your website down in the process. Read more
Netbeans to the Clouds
NetBeans IDE lets you quickly and easily develop Java desktop, mobile, and web applications, while also providing great tools for PHP developers. Now, with the Jelastic plugin for Netbeans IDE, you can develop, test and deploy your Java and PHP applications directly into the Jelastic cloud.
The Jelastic plugin for Netbeans is a set of software development tools that simplifies the process of application management and development in NetBeans IDE in the form of projects at the Jelastic platform.
The Jelastic plugin for Netbeans makes development of web applications on the Jelastic platform much more convenient, since developers can now log into Jelastic and deploy the app in the cloud right from NetBeans IDE.
The Jelastic plug-in for NetBeans IDE provides you with the following useful functions:
- Deploy NetBeans IDE projects to Jelastic
- Access and manage server log files
- Manage user environments
- Work with application contexts
To learn how to install and use the Jelastic plugin for Netbeans IDE, please refer to the following KnowledgeBase articles:
-Installing the Jelastic Plugin for Netbeans IDE
-Working With Jelastic Environments via Netbeans IDE
Increasing or decreasing a customer’s disk space quota in cPanel
Sometimes, the easiest answers are the best.
For this week’s Tech Bench, we’re going to take a look at a very common question our VPS users have that happens to have a quite simple answer.
How do I increase or decrease my client’s disk space quota in cPanel? Read more
Magento in the Cloud
Editor’s note: A version of this post originally appeared on the Jelastic blog.
The online shopping industry is gaining popularity all over the world, and e-commerce sites are extremely popular. There are many options available online to build an e-commerce website, but Magento is considered to be one of the most robust, flexible and scalable open source e-commerce platforms on the market.
Magento also includes a wide range of tools to build and manage an online store. It is well known in the developer community for its use of object-oriented programming (OOP) and especially for its use of the EAV model. This allows Magento to be much more versatile than most e-commerce platforms at storing a large range of data.
Now, combine Magento with the the autoscaling of a cloud environment and you have a truly powerful e-commerce tool ready to scale to meet any traffic you generate.
Deploying your Magento to ServInt’s Jelastic cloud is simple, and requires no special coding. Just follow these few simple steps below. Read more
Configuring SpamAssassin in Plesk
A few week’s ago in the Tech Bench, our Director of Network Compliance, Mike Witty, discussed some of the finer points of preventing your important emails from ending up in your clients’ spam folders. Next, we looked at how to configure SpamAssassin in cPanel.
This week, it’s time to turn our attention to configuring SpamAssassin in Plesk.
ServInt VPS accounts using the Plesk control panel come with SpamAssassin as part of the standard installation. The default configuration has SpamAssassin enabled.
If you need to reenable SpamAssassin:
- In Plesk, click Tools and Settings on the left-hand navigation bar.
- In the Mail group, click “Spam Filter Settings.”
- Select the check box for “Switch on server-wide SpamAssassin spam filtering.” Read more
Configuring SpamAssassin in cPanel
Last time in the Tech Bench, our Director of Network Compliance, Mike Witty, discussed some of the finer points of preventing your important emails from ending up in your clients’ spam folders. For this edition, we thought we’d give you a quick how-to on using and configuring SpamAssassin — the spam software of choice — to actually grade your outgoing emails for you.
ServInt VPS accounts using the cPanel/WHM control panel come with SpamAssassin as part of the standard installation. The default configuration has SpamAssassin enabled.
If you need to reenable SpamAssassin:
- In WHM, under Server Configuration on the top of the left-hand navigation bar, click on Tweak Settings.
- Click the Mail tab.
- Select On for “Enable SpamAssassin spam filter.”
Note: ServInt recommends leaving “Enable BoxTrapper spam trap” set to Off.
To force all the users on your VPS to use SpamAssassin:
- Scroll down the left left hand navigation bar in WHM to Service Configuration and click on Exim Configuration Manager.
- Select the SpamAssassin tab.
- Set “Spam Assassin: Forced Global ON” to On.
This will filter all of your email for spam. It will not, however, force your users to do anything with it after it’s filtered. It will simply mark spam as spam, nothing more.
To prevent spam from being sent from your server: Read more
