My FreeBSD weblog

I started out Tuesday 12/16 with the adventure to do something different over the holidays. One of the things I needed to do is bring up a backup mail server. i researched using something non-microsoft because this backup mail server wouldn't get a lot of traffic and was just needed in case my primary mail servers went down. i looked into using Red Hat and sendmail, being new to *nix I wanted a real challenge. I just returned from vacation(a cruise to the bahamas - another story sometime) and had as many Red Hat alerts/exploits in my Inbox as Windows. I already patch one operating system (Windows) enough and didn't really desire using OS to have to keep an eye like I do Windows 2000. There are many other linux disto's but didn't seem to fit. This discussion could lead into an OS flame war and all I have to say is I know how to lock Windows 2000/.NET servers down. Enough said. A while back I was reading Microsoft released a project called <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dndotnet/html/mssharsourcecli.asp" target="_blank">Rotor</a> to run on Windows, FreeBSD. This CLI would allow a non-commercial license to run .NET code on a non-MS OS. Not knowing too much about FreeBSD except many firewall products (Checkpoint for one) run on this platform. I know OS/X Mac is based on a BSD. This sounded like something I might want to take on. I downloaded FreeBSD 4.7 from <a href="http://www.freebsd.org" target="_blank">www.freebsd.org</a>. OMGosh was the install terse! I was un-successful installing on my old dev server at home! (p300 128 meg of ram) at first but wasn't giving up. More to come!<p> </p><p><hr size="1" width="50%" align="left" />*----------------------------------------*<br>* Steve Schofield<br>* steve@aspfree.com<br>*<br>* Microsoft MVP - ASP.NET<br>* http://www.aspfree.com<br>* <br>*----------------------------------------*</p>

After failing a couple of times getting FreeBSD installed just trying to wing it. Time to get some help I did some research and found a couple of good books. Here are the books I bought, <br><br><br></br><br><a href="http://www.bsdmall.com/absolutebsd.html" target="_blank">Absolute BSD</a><br><br></br><br><a href="http://www.bsdmall.com/freebun.html" target="_blank"> FreeBSD Unleashed</a><p> </p><p><hr size="1" width="50%" align="left" />*----------------------------------------*<br>* Steve Schofield<br>* steve@aspfree.com<br>*<br>* Microsoft MVP - ASP.NET<br>* http://www.aspfree.com<br>* <br>*----------------------------------------*</p>

Few useful links like to share with others<br><br><a href="http://lantech.geekvenue.net/chucktips/" target="_blank">http://lantech.geekvenue.net/chucktips/</a> - This is a newbie friendly FreeBSD site. A fair amount of basic articles for newbies like me. <br><br><a href="http://www.freebsddiary.org/" target="_blank">FreeBSD Diary</a> - Straight forward site with many questions I had.<br><br><a href="http://www.google.com" target="_blank">Of course Google!</a> - Can forget Google!<p> </p><p><hr size="1" width="50%" align="left" />*----------------------------------------*<br>* Steve Schofield<br>* steve@aspfree.com<br>*<br>* Microsoft MVP - ASP.NET<br>* http://www.aspfree.com<br>* <br>*----------------------------------------*</p>

Todays task, download, extract and get apache 2.0.43 version running. Here are the bare commands to remember.<br><br>Compiling and Installing<br><br>Download $ lynx http://www.apache.org/dist/httpd/httpd-2_0_NN.tar.gz <br>Extract $ gzip -d httpd-2_0_NN.tar.gz<br>$ tar xvf httpd-2_0_NN.tar <br>Configure $ ./configure --prefix=PREFIX <br>Compile $ make <br>Install $ make install <br>Customize $ vi PREFIX/conf/httpd.conf <br>Test $ PREFIX/bin/apachectl start

Things are going great, i can export my display to a remote machine, being from windows navigating the file system using the command line is a bit foreign. One thing linux dist's have is when your changing directories it lists what directory your in. In BSD this isn't done by default however you can add a variable to the .profile and .bashrc files so this will show up. For real newbies like me, the .bashrc file has to be created in the same directory as .profile which resides in /home/foo directory. you'll have to do a ls -a to list hidden files. replace foo with the user id your logged in as.<br><br>PS1="[u@h w]\$ "

20.4.2 Disable sendmail<br>The procedure used to start sendmail changed significantly between 4.5-RELEASE and 4.6-RELEASE. Therefore, the procedure used to disable it is subtly different.<br><br>20.4.2.1 FreeBSD 4.5-STABLE before 2002/4/4 and earlier (including 4.5-RELEASE and earlier)<br>Enter:<br><br> sendmail_enable="NO"<br>into /etc/rc.conf. This will disable sendmail's incoming mail service, but if /etc/mail/mailer.conf (see below) is not changed, sendmail will still be used to send e-mail.<br><br>20.4.2.2 FreeBSD 4.5-STABLE after 2002/4/4 (including 4.6-RELEASE and later)<br>In order to completely disable sendmail you must use<br><br> sendmail_enable="NONE"<br>in /etc/rc.conf.<br><br>Warning: If you disable sendmail's outgoing mail service in this way, it is important that you replace it with a fully working alternative mail delivery system. If you choose not to, system functions such as periodic(8) will be unable to deliver their results by e-mail as they would normally expect to. Many parts of your system may expect to have a functional sendmail-compatible system. If applications continue to use sendmail's binaries to try and send e-mail after you have disabled them, mail could go into an inactive sendmail queue, and never be delivered.<br><br>If you only want to disable sendmail's incoming mail service, you should set<br><br> sendmail_enable="NO"<br>in /etc/rc.conf. More information on sendmail's startup options is available from the rc.sendmail(8) manual page.

http://cr.yp.to/ucspi-tcp.html - this is a wrapper of sorts for qmail. <br><br>tcpserver and tcpclient are easy-to-use command-line tools for building TCP client-server applications. <br><br>tcpserver waits for incoming connections and, for each connection, runs a program of your choice. Your program receives environment variables showing the local and remote host names, IP addresses, and port numbers.

http://www.freebsddiary.org/qmail.php another good link with config info with commands switching over from sendmail to qmail.

been a few days, hopefully the new year was a happy for everyone! I've successfully figured out how to install FreeBSD, download, un-compress and install Apache2. I've dedicated http://bgeek.com to my non-ms website, it has only one webpage but was a HUGE victory being able to get it setup and installed.. Anyone reading this that knows little or nothing bout linux or bsd. Make darn sure you know the hardware your loading these OS's on. My experiences with Red Hat usually installs even easier than Windows but knowing windows real well i know what to work around. The server that is running http://bgeek.com i spent one whole night trying to get a seagate 8420 8.6 gig hard drive to take the / and swap file systems. I had a seagate 1.2 gig hd and a western digital 40 gig would install BSD just fine. Windows 2000 would format and install on the 8.6 gig hd, this HD also had windows 98 installed on it for 3 + years. I spent a few hours looking on google and couldn't find an answer. i tried all the jumpers, tried everything in BIOS without success. I had a 4.3 seagate that eventually put into the http://bgeek.com server. This was good because I learned a lot and had fun. Finally the hardware is k6 2/450, 128 meg of ram, 4.3 drive. FreeBSD 4.7, apache. <br><br>During the installation of FreeBSD 4.7, hit the prntscrn button to scroll throw different screens and I actually used the scroll lock button. In all my years i've never used that key. My next venture is get Qmail installed and configured. I also discovered a product that has a web interface called WEBMIN. http://www.webmin.com is a set of perl scripts that have pre-built menus that you use to configure the conf files instead of doing it inside a text editor. It is slow to work with, makes me appreciate the speed of ASP.NET but again this is Free w/o restrictions. It also leaves another port that could be left open on a server if installed. The original reason to install FreeBSD in the first place was to bring up a backup mail server. The rotor project released by microsoft can also be installed on FreeBSD. The one book I bought called Absolute BSD has small section mentioned about the sscli getting it installed. I'll write more on that later, i'm hoping the Portal .NET, MONO project will get the .NET framework and ASP.NET working on BSD or unix. ASPFree.com is running on .NET RC 2 which has been very stable. I'm just excited for the fact .NET will be available for *nix but we'll see. Another thing someone mentioned was PHP, this is an scripting engine Freely available for BSD/Linux world. What turned out to be "lets bring up a backup mail server on BSD" has turned out to be an exercise how other non-ms technologies are. I'm sure if an experienced Linux/BSD guru would say its bout time Steve! Better late or never I say. <br><br>few things on the to-do list<br>1 - configure qmail<br>2 - install php and learn basics of scripting with PHP<br>3 - install, configure mysql. <br>4 - figure out Samba.<br><br>more to come!<br><br>Steve Schofield<br>steve@aspfree.com

hello again! well tonights task was to get ftp up and going. i'm just hope this exercise helps me in the future because every darn thing i have to do i'm spending time looking up the info. FreeBSD comes with an default FTP daemon. this port isn't available to the outside world but i tend to use this for quick and dirty methods of uploading files, this would be used until Samba is configured to my Win2k network. . I was successful in installing one of the ports ftp packages called proftpd. this was as simple as typing make install, however configuring it to take ftp connections was another story. i tried to quickly use WEBMIN to configure this but in my typical fashion i failed. a quick scan of the web couldn't find the hand holding directions. this will probably be my downfall of Open Source, you got to read everything to figure stuff out. i'm good at figuring stuff out however some of these instructions aren't too much directed towards folks like me. as i've said in numerous newsletters, a impatient person greatest asset is persistance! I'm going to persist until i get this figured out. for those wondering, the ports are another work for packages of applications that will automagically install on BSD. there are 1000's however i'm not an expert into this yet. red hat has most disto's beaten to death with this rpm technology to install packages. ole well. For those wondering chk out http://www.proftpd.org for more info on proftpd. to end this ramble, i was able to re-enable the ftp daemon in the /etc/inetd.conf file, kill the inet process and restart inetd. a port scan revealed port 21 alive and was able to ftp to it. As one of the freebies done by BSD is root isn't allowed to ftp. Night all and if anyone has info on configuring proftpd or wu-ftpd, articles would be welcome!<br>Until next time, keep geekin!<br><br>steve schofield<br>steve@aspfree.com

link for ipfilter, http://coombs.anu.edu.au/~avalon/ wonder why this isn't hosted by the domain name.

http://www.defcon1.org/~ghostrdr/FreeBSD-STABLE_and_IPFILTER.html is a detailed tutorial How to Build a FreeBSD-STABLE firewall with IPFILTER here are some other resources. <br><br>http://www.obfuscation.org/ipf/<br>http://false.net/ipfilter/<br>http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/

How do I configure FreeBSD to enable ipfilter at startup? <br>First, create a set of filter rules appropriate to your application and save them them the file /etc/ipf.conf.<br><br>Then, set the following variables in the /etc/rc.conf file:<br>ipfilter_enable="YES"<br>ipfilter_program="/sbin/ipf -Fa -f"<br>ipfilter_rules="/etc/ipf.conf"<br>ipfilter_flags=""<br>and reboot. The startup scripts will load the ipl kernel module (if it is not already in the kernel) and pass the rule file to the ipf program.<br><br>Note, however, if you are running FreeBSD 4.5+, the switches in ipfilter_program aren't needed, just put /sbin/ipf (Thanks to Adrian Portelli). <br>Forget the loadable kernel module stuff, how do I do compile IPF into my kernel? <br>Add the following lines to your custom kernel configuration file:<br><br>options IPFILTER<br>options IPFILTER_LOG<br><br>then compile and install the kernel using the procedure described in the FreeBSD Handbook.

Sorry I haven't updated the log in a while, things i'll write about shortly is my venture with IPFILTER, compiling it into the Kernel, proftpd, install php, firewall rules and more! Stay tuned<br><br>PHP and Apache 2 on Linux<br>Download the most recent version of Apache 2.0 and a fitting PHP version from the above mentioned places. This quick guide covers only the basics to get started with Apache 2.0 and PHP. For more information read the Apache Documentation. The version numbers have been omitted here, to ensure the instructions are not incorrect. You will need to replace the 'NN' here with the correct values from your files. <br><br>Example 3-6. Installation Instructions (Apache 2 Shared Module Version) <br><br>1. gzip -d httpd-2_0_NN.tar.gz<br>2. tar xvf httpd-2_0_NN.tar<br>3. gunzip php-NN.tar.gz<br>4. tar -xvf php-NN.tar<br>5. cd httpd-2_0_NN<br>6. ./configure --enable-so<br>7. make<br>8. make install<br><br> Now you have Apache 2.0.NN available under /usr/local/apache2,<br> configured with loadable module support and the standard MPM prefork.<br> To test the installation use your normal procedure for starting<br> the Apache server, e.g.:<br> /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl start<br> and stop the server to go on with the configuration for PHP:<br> /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl stop.<br><br>9. cd ../php4-NN<br>10. ./configure --with-apxs2=/usr/local/apache2/bin/apxs<br>11. make<br>12. make install<br>13. cp php.ini-dist /usr/local/lib/php.ini<br><br> Edit your php.ini file to set PHP options. If<br> you prefer this file in another location, use<br> --with-config-file-path=/path in step 10.<br><br>14. Edit your httpd.conf file and check that these lines are<br> present:<br> <br> LoadModule php4_module modules/libphp4.so<br> AddType application/x-httpd-php .php<br><br> You can choose any extension you wish here. .php is simply the one<br> we suggest.<br> <br> The path on the right hand side of the LoadModule statement must point<br> to the path of the PHP module on your system. The above statement is<br> correct for the steps shown above.<br><br>15. Use your normal procedure for starting the Apache server, e.g.:<br> /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl start

when installing apache2 using the /usr/port/www/apache2. the path to the apxs is /usr/local/sbin/apxs vs what is on the website directions posted in the previous post