Installing monitoring, cli and configuration software for a PERC5 raid controller on Debian Squeeze

Please add deb http://hwraid.le-vert.net/distrib branch main to /etc/apt/sources.list to access all packages.
distrib can be either debian or ubuntu.
branch can be lenny, squeeze, wheezy and sid for debian, or hardy, intrepid, jaunty and lucid for ubuntu.

In example, for current Debian stable release (Squeeze):
deb http://hwraid.le-vert.net/debian squeeze main

Theses packages are available for amd64 and i386 architectures. Sources packages are available as well (replace deb with deb-src).

Once you add the repo above do:

apt-get install megacli megaclisas-status megactl

To view the original doc: http://hwraid.le-vert.net/wiki/DebianPackages
To get the list of commands: http://hwraid.le-vert.net/wiki/LSIMegaRAIDSAS

Installing E-accelerator on Debain Squeeze

Download it

cd /tmp
wget http://www.debiantutorials.com/static/eaccelerator-0.9.6.1.tar.bz2

Unpack it

tar -xvjf eaccelerator-0.9.6.1.tar.bz2

Prepare for compiling it

apt-get install php5-dev make
cd eaccelerator-0.9.6.1
phpize

Compile it

Note: The extra option –without-eaccelerator-use-inode is a fix for problems of basedir-open/basedir-restrictions found with this version of eAccelerator.
See http://tipstricks.itmatrix.eu/?p=1297 for more details.

./configure --enable-eaccelerator=shared --without-eaccelerator-use-inode
make
make install

Add a configuration to it

Add the following configuration in: /etc/php5/conf.d/eaccelerator.ini

extension="eaccelerator.so"
eaccelerator.shm_size="16"
eaccelerator.cache_dir="/var/cache/eaccelerator"
eaccelerator.enable="1"
eaccelerator.optimizer="1"
eaccelerator.check_mtime="1"
eaccelerator.debug="0"
eaccelerator.filter=""
eaccelerator.shm_max="0"
eaccelerator.shm_ttl="0"
eaccelerator.shm_prune_period="0"
eaccelerator.shm_only="0"
eaccelerator.compress="1"
eaccelerator.compress_level="9"

Create the cache directory for it

mkdir -p /var/cache/eaccelerator
chmod 0777 /var/cache/eaccelerator

Restart Apache2
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

How to fix SSH timeouts

This is such a nuisance. I don't know of anything more annoying than to walk away to the bathroom, kitchen or whatever; and come back to find your terminal session disconnected.

This can also be helpful when running jobs that take a little longer, but I would really advise using SCREEN for that.

We will tackle this problem from both ends, the server and the client.

On the server

Edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config and add the line:


ClientAliveInterval 60

On the client

Edit /etc/ssh/ssh_config and add the line:

ServerAliveInterval 60

Installing Logwatch on Debian Squeeze

Logwatch is a good package that can send you emails every morning that you can peruse over your coffee. Is will run through your log file looking for anomalies.

It doesn't get much easier than this.

apt-get install logwatch

Config file here:

/usr/share/logwatch/default.conf/logwatch.conf

How to turn off IPv6 in Bind9 in Squeeze

In order to stop those nasty messages in your log files about not being able to find the route for IPV6 lookups, just do this:

nano /etc/default/bind9

Change OPTIONS to:

OPTIONS="-4 -u bind"

"-4" will tell bind to use ipv4 only.

How to turn off IPv6 in Debian Squeeze

Disabling IPv6 is not crucial however I like to keep my logs clean and to a minimum. 

Disable ipv6 in kernel :
echo net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6=1 > /etc/sysctl.d/disableipv6.conf will disable ipv6 at next reboot.

Installing Denyhosts on Debian Squeeze(6.0.7)

While trying to install Denyhosts on Debian(with SYNCING working), I ran around this guide: Preventing_ssh_dictionary_attacks_with_denyhosts on Debian on Howtoforge. It had be written in 2006. Time for an update.

The DenyHosts in the Debian Repos worked fine, if you are not interested in SYNCing. If your not using syncing in Denyhosts, you might as well use Fail2ban, as it covers more services that just SSH.

The sync feature really sets Denyhosts apart from the rest of the pack. Because as soon as an IP is detected and banned on a server half-way around the world, it will will shortly be pre-emptively banned on your server as well. So you are protected by, as well as helping to protect others.

Here is what worked for me:

1 Installation

DenyHosts is written in Python, therefore we must install Python and also the Python development files first:

apt-get install python2.6-dev python2.6

or you can probably get away with doing:

apt-get install python python-dev

I just happened to know that 2.6 was the latest in the repos anyways.

Then we download and install DenyHosts like this:
cd /tmp
wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/denyhosts/files/denyhosts/2.6/DenyHosts-2.6.tar.gz/download
tar xvfz DenyHosts-2.6.tar.gz 
cd DenyHosts-2.6
python setup.py install
This installs DenyHosts to /usr/share/denyhosts.

2 Configuration

Now we have to create the DenyHosts configuration file /usr/share/denyhosts/denyhosts.cfg. We can use the sample configuration file /usr/share/denyhosts/denyhosts.cfg-dist for this:

cd /usr/share/denyhosts
cp denyhosts.cfg-dist denyhosts.cfg

Make sure you set SECURE_LOG and LOCK_FILE to the correct values for your distribution! For Debian, these are:

SECURE_LOG = /var/log/auth.log
LOCK_FILE = /var/run/denyhosts.pid

As we want to run DenyHosts as a daemon, we need the daemon control script /usr/share/denyhosts/daemon-control. Again, we can use the sample script /usr/share/denyhosts/daemon-control-dist to create the needed file:

cp daemon-control-dist daemon-control
Edit /usr/share/denyhosts/daemon-control and make sure you set the correct values for DENYHOSTS_BIN, DENYHOSTS_LOCK, and DENYHOSTS_CFG. For Debian, these are:

DENYHOSTS_BIN   = "/usr/local/bin/denyhosts.py"
DENYHOSTS_LOCK  = "/var/run/denyhosts.pid"
DENYHOSTS_CFG   = "/usr/share/denyhosts/denyhosts.cfg"

Next we have to make that file executable:

chown root daemon-control
chmod 700 daemon-control
Afterwards, we create the system bootup links for DenyHosts do that it is started automatically when the system is booted:

cd /etc/init.d
ln -s /usr/share/denyhosts/daemon-control denyhosts
update-rc.d denyhosts defaults
Finally, we start DenyHosts:
/etc/init.d/denyhosts start
 
DenyHosts logs to /var/log/denyhosts, if you are interested in the logs. The SSH daemon logs to /var/log/auth.log on Debian. You can watch both logs and try to log in with an invalid user or with a valid user and incorrect password, etc. via SSH and see what happens. 

Credits to: Falko Timme <ft [at] falkotimme [dot] com> for writing the original guide I drew most of this text from.