Red Hat Desktop – one of the first Linux distributions that was mostly used until 2003, when by surprisingly they announced the it discontinue the current system by focusing on Red Hat Enterprise, which was the distribution especially developed for business use and the support and certification programs that were mostly responsible for company’s sales.

The discontinuance of Red Hat Desktop has elevated serious doubts about the viability of using Linux on desktops, however all the doubts were quickly dispelled by the announcement of Fedora project, which became the authorized heir to the Red Hat Desktop, that was going to be developed by a community with the support and contributions from the developers at Red Hat.

The initial idea was of announcing the Fedora development for Red Hat was to lower the cost of distribution and at the same time, inspire community contributions, making the project grow. The reason behind not using the name “Red Hat” for its new release has more to do with its marketing. The Red Hat brand is generally used only in commercial products as a way to inspire the purchase.

The desktop of Fedora operating system is quite similar to the Ubuntu, since both the distribution are based on GNOME and use the classic looks, with two bars.

All the modern versions of Fedora OS uses the Network Manager for network setup, and beyond, you will observe that it also has several other tools in common with Ubuntu which makes both the distribution much closer. Its because most of these utilities both the distributions offers were developed by the Red Hat team and Fedora and thenceforth integrated into other distributions that use GNOME.

Even if you don’t prefer the Fedora OS, we must thank the original developers of it, as many of the innovations we see in the recent distributions to make our lives simple, were originally created and improved by the Fedora team.

Despite of not having a good user base, it shows how the Fedora distribution is important for the growth of the system, serving as a production base for the development of many elements that were lately integrated into other distributions.

The most appealing feature of Fedora is the frenetic pace of updates. The system is not only updated every six months, but also includes a set of spectacularly updated packages as compare to the Windows versions.

Fedora is one of the distributions highly prefered in dedicated server hosting plans. The main reason behind it is that the packets related to servers acquire more attention and are well tested. The approach to the active contribution on Fedora, and prioritizing the development of server related functions have surprisingly made Fedora as the best distribution in corporate servers.

If you wish to use a highly stable desktop, you can prefer Fedora for a long time and just install the security pathches and minor updates that are frequently released. Using the Ubuntu or Debian would be less desirable options. If you want to enjoy new features and have access to all the new versions of packages before they are available in other distributions, then Fedora is what you must choose.

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Snort is a network intrusion prevention and detection system for Unix, Linux and Windows Dedicated Hosting servers. Snort has the ability to perform a real-time traffic analysis and packet logging on IP networks. Most of the people use Snort to detect probes or attacks on server.

Installing Snort – a Network Intrusion Detection System is very easy. Open your command line and enter the following command to download Snort’s latest version “snort-2.9.1.2.tar.gz”.

wget http://www.snort.org/dl/snort-current/snort-2.9.1.2.tar.gz -O snort-2.9.1.2.tar.gz

Extract it using the following tar command:

tar zxf snort-2.9.1.2.tar.gz

Enter in to the directory using the following command:

cd snort-2.9.1.2

Enter the following command:

./configure

The above command configures the makefile, compiles the code, and installs the executable in the appropriate place.

Now, enter the following commands:

make
make install

It will show you the following error if the supported library is not installed.

ERROR! Libpcap library/headers (libpcap.a (or .so)/pcap.h) not found

In order to install the required library, use the following command:

yum install libpcap libpcap-devel

After the library is installed, repeat the following steps:

./configure –with-libpcap-*
make
make install

It will successfully Install Snort on your dedicated Server.

Once the installation is done, copy the <snort-2.9.1.2>/etc/snort.conf file to /etc/snort/snort.conf on your server. Edit the settings according to your requirements.

Later, download the rules from the Snort’s official site and put it in to the /etc/snort/rules folder on your uk web hosting server.

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The PEAR stands for PHP  Extension and Application Repository, which is a repository of PHP software code. Installing PEAR package for PHP is very simple. It allows you to install various PHP extensions without compiling the source packages.

Go to the command line and enter the following command.

pear
pear – command not found

If you get a message “command not found” as shown above, it means PEAR is not installed on your server.

In order to install it, follow the steps given below:

Visit the following link and download the installation php file:

http://pear.php.net/go-pear

To download it, enter the following command line:

wget http://pear.php.net/go-pear

Once it downloads rename the file to .php using the following command:

cp go-pear go-pear.php

Enter the following command to run the php script:

php go-pear.php

The installation will start and the binary will get installed successfully. You can also check if there are any existing packages installed. To check, enter the following command:

pear list-all

The above command will list all the packages that are already installed. See examples below:

PACKAGE                  LATEST                   LOCAL
pear/Auth_HTTP        2.1.6                       HTTP authentication
pear/LiveUser           0.16.14                   User authentication and permission management framework

To check whether a specific package is installed on the server, use:

pear list-all | grep [Enter Package Name]

If you want to check information about a package, use the following command:

pear info [Enter Package Name]

If there are no packages installed, it will show a blank output once you enter the “list-all” command.

If you wish to upgrade an existing package use the following command:

pear upgrade [Enter Package Name]

To upgrade all existing packages enter the following command:

pear upgrade all

The above command will upgrade all the existing packages.

If there are no packages installed, you can install various php extensions using the following command:

pear install [Enter Package Name]

To uninstall a package, enter the following command:

pear uninstall [Enter Package Name]

The above command will uninstall that particular package from your Dedicated Server.

Hope it helps!!!

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Recently, we have heard a lot of hacking attempts done on to forums. If your forum was hacked, in such a case, what you should do? What do you need to know? This article is created to help you follow the correct steps on the way to relaunch.

You should be clear about one thing, if your business forum was hacked and is attacked by another person from your forum, you are held responsible for such deeds. Hence, it is necessary to quickly initiate countermeasures before you get even into big problems.

Your Forum Website:

First thing you should do is prevent the worst. Lock down your forum website. Following are the reasons to lock your forum:

• Prevent further use by the hacker
• Prevent endangerment of third parties (For example: Trojans)
• Limit the damage to their image

There are various methods to block a project, however the most known and quick method that works best is .Htaccess file. You can simply put a .htaccess file in the root directory of your project, including the following content:

Order Deny, Allow
Deny from all

Backup:

Once you are done putting the .htaccess file, you should immediately take a complete backup of your business forum. This backup also includes a backup of the database. Under any circumstances, you must not create the backups using software that was already installed on your web space. This backup can be used later for analysis, to figure out what gives the hacker access. Furthermore you need the backup as evidence, if one takes into consideration to initiate criminal proceedings.

Set New Passwords:

Make sure you reset all the passwords including FTP, web front-end web host, database, etc… Each and every password much be changed.

Find out How the Forum has been Compromised:

The most important thing ever to figure out is what gives the hacker access. If you do not have the latest forum software installed, that’s for a good place to search. Unfortunately, that is not enough if you only use the latest forum software. Each expansion pack (Mod / Hack) may represent the vulnerability. Since the extensions are usually written to be very bad, do not automatically assume that the latest version of the extension of the security hole is fixed. One reason is that most programmers who write extensions, see this as a hobby and do not have the necessary background knowledge to write security-aware software. It is therefore always practice caution when using extensions. Pay attention to the source of your extensions and refer to the person who created the extensions.

The security hole could also be an unsafe and / or cracked password of the moderators or administrators account. Therefore, it applies to all user accounts that have special privileges to assign a new password. Also, there are some possibilities of CSRF attacks (ie. cross-site request forgery also called as One-click attack) is a kind of malicious exploit of a website whereby unauthorized commands are transmitted from a trusted user of the website.

Backup or Restore Complete Reinstall of the Software:

If a  backup exists, it is enough to have the forum return to normal functionality. The only loss that is present then, is the lack of data between the last backup and the time of compromise. However, you must be aware that the security hole can still exist in the backup that has been taken.

Well, if you have no backups at hand, it looks very much out worse. In such case, the complete re-installation of the software is the only solution. Here I mean not only the forum software itself, but also all the mods / hacks that have been installed. One should not take the risk and trust that the hacker has already changed nothing in the files.

To correct and secure the current installation, you should perform the following things:

Server Configuration

• Install latest version of PHP
• Install latest version of MySQL
• Perform operating system updates
• Always prefer using a Dedicated Hosting platform
• Increase security by Installing Suhosin PHP protection security patch.
• Install ModSecurity. Installing ModSecurity may affect the performance of the server, so it is advised to use a caching system like APC or eAccelerator.
• Disable all unnecessary services

Securing PHP

• Disable PHP extensions
• expose_php = Off
• display_errors = Off
• enable_dl = Off
• allow_url_include = Off
• disable_functions = system, shell_exec, popen, pclose, proc_open, proc_close, proc_get_status, proc_nice, proc_terminate, exec, passthru, show_source, ReadFile, escapeshellcmd, escapeshellarg
• One must be careful when disabling these functions, because so many scripts need some of these functions. So you should run tests if PHP applications still work, if one excludes these functions.

Securing MySQL Database Server

• Set password for root user
• Administrators accounts only allow localhost
• Skip database access from external computers to prevent

Securing Apache Web server

• Disable all modules that are not required
• All security-relevant setting should be integrated directly in the httpd.conf, not in .htaccess file

Monitoring Measures:

Once the forum returns to normal and is functioning normally, you should carry out more in the first term monitoring measures. If you wish you can use a special software or use Snort which is a network intrusion detection system as well as modsecurity to derive a comprehensive overview of the occurring events. The monitoring should be performed at least half an year, before it should switch back to “normal status”.

Unfortunately, it is often the case that is due to a lack of backup, the compromised system can disappear entirely from the network. A reconstruction of a business forum or any other project is often no longer feasible – either financially or because of the enormous time and effort. If the user data is gone and you don’t have backup of it, it looks very bad. When you are in this situation again from scratch, then you must not lose hope. But once you know, learn from mistakes, and make sure you backup your data offsite using an offsite backup hosting plan.

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More and more online businesses that find themselves with growing traffic really need a better uk web hosting solution to meet their hosting requirements. But, before getting a dedicated server, you need to consider some points. This will ensure that you have not made any mistake and regret your decision.

Cost Factor

The freedom to move to your own server comes with a price. It is usually a lot of money and it is wise to do some cost estimates in advance to see if the dedicated server is affordable. Even if you have money to buy a dedicated server, but maybe you do not have the required technical skills. In such a case, you should hire an administrator who can address the server issues immediately and resolved it in no time. It simply means that you have to add maintenance cost to your budget. It is wise to plan your budget first and then see if the site is large enough to justify the cost before spending on a dedicated hosting plan.

An un-managed or Managed Server

This is an important point that must be considered when planning to buy a dedicated server. Managing a dedicated server can be usually difficult. If you have the technical skills to manage a server which is required to administer servers well, but cannot afford to spend a few hours a week to monitor and secure the server, in such a case, you can also hire an administrator to manage such things as it help a lot.

If you lack technical skills, the managed dedicated server hosting plan is what you should go with. The managed hosting ensures that everything from configuring and server setup to resolving problematic issues is taken care by the web hosting experts.

Bandwidth and its Requirements

One of the more important things to consider when you think of dedicated server is your requirement. It is recommended to choose a dedicated server only if you are short on bandwidth or if your web host cannot handle when the traffic is at its best.

Data Security

Security is an important factor influencing people to bet on a dedicated server, especially people who have highly confidential information on their website. Shared servers are locked down at a high level but the question remains, however, that the server is available to other authorized users, which means that it is a risky proposal.

Understand your need for a dedicated server by analyzing your daily use. Dedicated hosting should be considered only if your website is having high traffic and generates good revenue to support the high cost associated with a dedicated server.

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