Everything from Virtual Private Server (VPS) tips, to CCTV and more.

I was just getting to grips with the wordpress theme, and installing some google ads, when I managed to break the theme somehow, clicking on any archive or category just took me to a blank page.

I dont have the time to sort that at the moment, so I just switched over to this theme, and stuck the ads in

Not sure what I did wrong, when I get some time, I may take a look, and try again.

There may be times where you need to restart mysql at the ssh prompt, rather than going to the trouble of logging into godaddy, and firing up the simple control panel.

You can do this with

/etc/init.d/mysql restart

It does as it implies, stopping and restarting the mysql server.

Adding domains to your VPS in the godaddy ’simple’ control panel is a quick and painless procedure (as long as you have not manualy edited the turbopanel.conf files!) - but when you do add a domain, dont add the www prefix at the start, as your site wont resolve when you try to go to it without the www in the url.

I tried adding a domain with www at the start, and it setup the turbopanel.conf file with the server at www.my–whatever–domain.com and the serveralias became

www.www.my–whatever–domain.com

So, miss off the www when you add the domains, but double check anyways that you can access both the www and the non www version of your site.

The server configuration I ordered did not come with the extra firewall godaddy offers (for extra money!), so I figured it would be pretty wise to do some server hardening as soon as possible.

For obvious reasons, I cant go into details of all the things I have done, but I will be posting some things that I have implemented to try to keep the bad guys and gals out..

Im still learning myself, so its possible some of you out there may know better ways, please feel free to comment if you do!

Unfortunately I didnt start this blog when I first started hardening the server, so I will have to spend some time hunting out all the things I have implemented, and posting about many of them as I find them.

Some of them were off the shelf solutions, some found on google, and some I just figured out and implemented myself. As theVPS is running Centos, hopefully the tips may come in useful to other centos users, or users with similar versions of linux.
Watch this category for more details to come!

I have just installed the All in One SEO pack plugin, to be honest, I did not do much research, so I dont know if its the ‘best’ of the shelf plugin available, but I wanted something quick and easy, especially as Im falling asleep at the moment

It was a remarkable easy install, and seems to be working.

I guess I will need to look into it more, perhaps tweak it more, but thats for another day.

I had a few manual, hand edited customisations to my turbopanel.conf file in the /etc/httpd/conf.d directory.

The modifications (things like gzip enabling etc) were working fine, until I managed to fix the ’system user not found’ message I wrote about in the last post.

As soon as I added a domain through the control panel,  it re-created the file from scratch and lost all my modifications - so the moral is, have a backup of that file before you add a domain, and redo any mods to it after you have added the domain.

Better yet, find the correct place to make those mods, so they do not get overwritten - its nearly 1 AM now, and I am too tired to find where that is at the moment, but I guess thats another thing to do when I get some time

Recently, after my attempts at server hardening, I tried to add a new domain in the Simple Control Panel that godaddy supplied with the VPS.

All went well, until the final stage, when it reported ‘System User not found’ and refused to go any further.

I really needed the URL setting up at that time, so I didnt have time to investigate what was going on at that point, so I had to manually edit the configuration files to get it working.

However, it was bugging me that I could not use the control panel to add new domains or system users, so I decided to investigate the problem.

After much experimentation, I discovered that the problem was with the passwd and group files in the /etc directory (may have also been the shadow file too, Im a little tired and cant recall!) .

I had set the immutable bit on these files, so no other user or group could alter them, this stopped the control panel from adding any users.

So, if you find you have ‘over’ hardened your server, check your immutable bit on those files and remove it for long enough to use the control panel to add your domains, before setting it back if you want to.

Welcome to Real-World_Security.com

I will be writing about my experiences with my godaddy VPS, and also try to cover security topics like CCTV and Alarms when time permits.

I am mainly using this to make notes of certain things I do, so I dont forget, but will write it for a audience, in case anyone wants to read it

Hope you enjoy what you read, if you spot any errors, or know of a better way of doing things, or like what you read then please comment!