Building a Debian-Based Webserver

Well, my server was recently compromised and used to perform a UPD flood Denial of Service attack (or so my provider claimed), so I’ve had to rebuild my server from scratch. Now, this seems like a daunting task, but it has actually been quite easy. I started out with a minimal Debian Linux system, and after a few apt-get install commands, and a few hours of uploading backups, I’m up and running again.

How’d I do it? Well, i just set up my apt-sources:

### debian
# stable
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free
deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US stable/non-US main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org stable/updates main contrib non-free
# testing
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free
# unstable
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free
### dotdeb
deb http://packages.dotdeb.org stable all
deb-src http://packages.dotdeb.org stable all

Then I ran the following apt-get commands:

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get install libperl5.8
apt-get install postgresql
apt-get install libapache2-mod-php4
apt-get install php4-pgsql
apt-get install gd
apt-get install php4-cli

And I’m all set! (yeah... I’ve still got a few PHP4 sites, and I grabbed the PHP GD library and the PHP command-line Interface). Notice that I updated my apt sources before I started installing packages... this is kind of important! I also knew that I needed some perl libraries before installing Postgresql (my preferred database) All in all, things went fairly well. The worst part of (re)building this server was uploading my backups! (AND I CANNOT EXPRESS THE IMPORTANCE OF BACKUPS!)

My Wife's New Laptop

Well, the semester has ended, so I've been working from home (trying to catch up on all of the "extra work", and, while out to the gym, My wife gives me a call and starts asking about laptop specs!? It turns out she's got her eye on a nice little bundle at Radio Shack!

It seems they had an HP Pavilion dv2000 notebook (Turion 64 - 2Ghz/512Mb Ram/100Gb HD/nvidia Geforce go 6150) with a bundled 6.0 megapixel digital camera, and a printer/scanner/copier for less than $1000! So, she makes a purchase, and the notebook is a surprisingly nice little machine. It's a little lacking on Memory, but luckily, it seems NewEgg has just what we need to fix that. I'm particularly impressed with the graphics capabilities of this machine (which are usually lacking in notebooks).

So, while looking around for something to test its capabilities, I ran across the War Rock demo. I thought I'd just try it out, and it plays quite nicely. Hopefully, a memory upgrade will provide even greater performance, though. Perhaps one of the best features of this notebook is its display - a widescreen 14 inch, which runs at 1280x800 by default. Despite the relatively small size, it offers a very nice view for a laptop computer. Overall, I'm quite proud of my wife's purchase, and I've probably used it more than she has!

Spammers never die!

I've recently received a lot of spam through my contact form, and it's starting to get on my nerves. Apparently the spammers have noticed that many developers are trying to thwart their attempts to sneak extra header information into PHP's mail function, so they've resorted to spamming websites directly! (or am I the only one?)

The messages I've been getting actually include a long list of URLs of the form: [URL=http:www.whatever.com]whatever[/URL], so I'm guessing some web app that uses this type of markup has a security hole... Time to patch that up developers!

That's Amazing

'Tiz the season... so today I went to Wal-Mart to get a Pre-Lit Christmas Tree. I'm still a little amazed at how easy this thing was to assemble when compared to a real tree of the same size. Sure it doesn't smell like a real tree, but I don't have to worry about watering it so that it doesn't become a fire hazard. Besides, the girls really liked it, and that's all that counts! In fact, Dakota (3yrs) walked into the den, looked at the tree, and just said "That's Amazing". Where does she learn these things!