Archive for September, 2008

Nick

Disable open_basedir in Plesk

This explanation tells you how to disable open_basedir in plesk without breaking/commenting your current httpd.conf basedir lines.

Create a new file, called vhost.conf
This file will include anything you want to disable from httpd.conf main config from your virtual host.

  1. # touch /var/www/vhosts/yourdomain.com/conf/vhost.conf

Now we edit the file and we add the following,

  1. # vi /var/www/vhosts/yourdomain.com/conf/vhost.conf

<Directory /var/www/vhosts/yourdomain.com/httpdocs>
php_admin_value open_basedir none
</Directory>

Once you finish adding the mentioned lines, its time to reconfigure and restart the webserver config.

  1. # /usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/websrvmng -v -a

open_basedir for yourdomain.com should be disabled by now.

Quick steps to install YUM on the mentioned OS versions.

First off you will need to install a key from the centos mirrors:

rpm –import http://mirror.centos.org/centos/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-4

Download all the necessary packages:

wget http://mirror.centos.org/centos/4/os/i386/CentOS/RPMS/libxml2-2.6.16-12.6.i386.rpm
wget http://mirror.centos.org/centos/4/os/i386/CentOS/RPMS/libxml2-python-2.6.16-12.6.i386.rpm
wget http://mirror.centos.org/centos/4/os/i386/CentOS/RPMS/python-elementtree-1.2.6-5.el4.centos.i386.rpm
wget http://mirror.centos.org/centos/4/os/i386/CentOS/RPMS/sqlite-3.3.6-2.i386.rpm
wget http://mirror.centos.org/centos/4/os/i386/CentOS/RPMS/python-sqlite-1.1.7-1.2.1.i386.rpm
wget http://mirror.centos.org/centos/4/os/i386/CentOS/RPMS/rpm-python-4.3.3-32_nonptl.i386.rpm
wget http://mirror.centos.org/centos/4/os/i386/CentOS/RPMS/python-urlgrabber-2.9.8-2.noarch.rpm
wget http://mirror.centos.org/centos/4/os/i386/CentOS/RPMS/yum-2.4.3-4.el4.centos.noarch.rpm

Install all the packages

rpm -Uvh libxml2-2.6.16-12.6.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh libxml2-python-2.6.16-12.6.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh python-elementtree-1.2.6-5.el4.centos.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh sqlite-3.3.6-2.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh python-sqlite-1.1.7-1.2.1.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh rpm-python-4.3.3-32_nonptl.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh python-urlgrabber-2.9.8-2.noarch.rpm

Finally install YUM,

rpm -Uvh yyum-2.4.3-4.el4.centos.noarch.rpm

YUM should be installed by then.

Finally, type:

yum update

to put your system up to date.

Sometimes when you issue a yum install ‘package’ yum stalls on ‘Parsing package install arguments’ message without downloading any package or showing us anything.

To quickly fix this do the following:

First, type ctrl+c and quit the yum process

  1. killall -9 yum
  2. rm -Rf /var/lib/rpm/__db.*

At this point, retrying the hung yum command should succeed.
You will probably need to run ‘yum clean all’ after cleaning up the above mess before yum can make progress.

On this post we are going to show how to quickly patch a common PCI Vulnerability Alert that says something like this:
“The remote service appears to encrypt traffic using SSL protocol version 2″.

In Apache common ports 80 and 443, you need to modify the SSLCipherSuite directive in the httpd.conf or ssl.conf file.
An example would be editing the following lines to something like:

  1. SSLProtocol -ALL +SSLv3 +TLSv1
  2. SSLCipherSuite ALL:!ADH:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM:-LOW:-SSLv2:-EXP

After you have done this, if you see you are still getting PCI Compliance vulnerability emails regarding to this issue its probably that cPanel is still allowing SSLv2 on their ports.

To quickly disable SSL version 2 on cPanel ports: 2082, 2083, 2086, 2087, 2095, 2096. You will need to do the following:

edit /var/cpanel/cpanel.config and change nativessl=1 to nativessl=0

This will make cPanel to use sTunnel.

edit /usr/local/cpanel/etc/stunnel/default/stunnel.conf

and add:

  1. options = NO_SSLv2

just below the “Authentication stuff” tab.

After you have done all this you will need to restart cPanel:

  1. /etc/init.d/cpanel restart

Done!

How to quickly check this?

SSH to your server and type the following commands

  1. root@cPanel [~]# openssl s_client -ssl2 -connect localhost:2096
  2. root@cPanel [~]# openssl s_client -ssl2 -connect localhost:2083
  3. root@cPanel [~]# openssl s_client -ssl2 -connect localhost:2087
  4. root@cPanel [~]# openssl s_client -ssl2 -connect localhost:2086

If everything is fine you should receive something like this,

  1. root@cPanel [~]# openssl s_client -ssl2 -connect localhost:2096
  2. CONNECTED(00000003)
  3. write:errno=104

We highly recommend to all our customers to enable SpamAssassin on any cPanel account (server-wide).
SpamAssassin is a mail filter installed on a server to identify spam.
It checks for spam using many pre-set rules that check the header, body, and sender of all email messages sent to your domain mailbox.
SpamAssassin generates a score for each email. Score above the spam threshold and the mail is marked as spam.

There are a number of different actions related to reducing spam with SpamAssassin.

To enable SpamAssassin on your cPanel account do the following:

  1. Log into your cPanel account
  2. Click the Mail icon
  3. Click the Spam Assassin link (towards the bottom)
  4. Click Enable Spam Assassin button
  5. Spam Assassin should be now enabled on this account!

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