The SME Server is a great Linux distribution for small to medium sized businesses. I’ve been doing some emergency sysadmin stuff quite a while ago and encountered the upgrade-hell from 7.1 to version 7.4. Since updating the operating system from 7.1 to 7.4 wasn’t easy I decided to write a quick blog post to save you from tinkering.
I once had to install a custom PHP extension on a 1&1 managed server. In this case the company had already purchased a managed server which was running the corporate website. They wanted to install an extranet-like webapplication which needed the ImageMagick PHP extension. In the following post I will outlike how I compiled and installed this extension on the managed server without having administrative access.
Since I’m currently setting up a new server for hosting purposes I want to share some of my favourite sysadmin tools and practices.
The first featured tool is the shoreline firewall or shorewall. You can find the project at: http://www.shorewall.net/
Shorewall basically is a set of nice configuration files for iptables. Another benefit of shorewall is that it has no runtime part. You just fire up the tool, it configures your iptables and quits. This reduces the load and increases security. Additionally to the technical features there is one thing that makes shorewall really stand out: It has extensive, well-written and understandable documentation. You rarely find a use-case which is not already described in the documentation.
Read on to find out how to set up shorewall in minutes.
I recently discovered runkit for PHP and thought it could be a solution for a few problems I ran into during my work on various projects.
At heart runkit allows you do to stuff with PHP you shouldn’t, but eventually want to, do. In my case this is basically Sandboxing and redefining (even PHP-internal) functions. It really adds some cool stuff to your PHP toolbox. Have a look at the function reference for the complete list.
Sadly enough the runkit PECL package does not work on Debian Etch (because Etch uses PHP 5.2.0+) so I had to build the package myself. Read on to find out how to build and install runkit on Debian etch and things to keep in mind when using runkit.
Important: If you are unsure of using runkit have a look at The sections The Caveat and Final Remarks before you walk through the hassle of installing it.
