ServerBuddies Support Blog

The /usr/local Directory

“The /usr/local hierarchy is for use by the system administrator when installing software locally. It needs to be safe from being overwritten when the system software is updated. It may be used for programs and data that are shareable amongst a group of hosts, but not found in /usr.”

The /usr/local directory is similar in structure to the /usr directory. It has the following subdirectories, which are similar in purpose to those in the /usr directory.

Pros and Cons of Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)

The main benefit of using LDAP is the consolidation of certain types of information within your organization. For example, all of the different lists of users within your organization can be merged into one LDAP directory. This directory can be queried by any LDAP-enabled applications that need this information. It can also be used by users who need directory information.

Other LDAP benefits include its ease of implementation (compared to X.500) and its well-defined Application Programming Interface (API), which means that the number of LDAP-enabled applications and LDAP gateways should increase in the future.

On the negative side, if you want to use LDAP, you will need LDAP-enabled applications or the ability to use LDAP gateways. While LDAP usage should only increase, currently there are not very many LDAP-enabled applications available for Linux.

Running CGI scripts in the httpdocs directory without mod_perl in Plesk

To accomplish this on a per domain basis you will need to create a vhost.conf in the conf directory at /var/www/vhosts/serverbuddies.com/ with the following code.

<Directory /var/www/vhosts/mt-example.com/httpdocs>
<Files ~ (\.cgi$)>
SetHandler cgi-script
Options ExecCGI
allow from all
</Files>
</Directory>

Then run the following command to enable the change.

Now, all files with ‘.cgi’ extension will be executed as usual CGI scripts in /cgi-bin/.

To enable CGI in httpdocs for the whole server just uncomment the “AddHandler cgi-script .cgi” directive in httpd.conf and restart Apache.

Reference: http://parallels.com/

Hotfix for characters allowed as password in protected directory section

Only 20 characters allowed as password in protected directory section.

For RHEL4:

http://download.swsoft.com/ensim/download/pro/linux/10.0.0/hotfix/19/rhel4/epl-apache-10.0.0-31.rhel.4ES.i386.rpm

Installation Procedure:

Get the RPMs from the locations mentioned above.

2. Upgrade the RPMs.

For RHEL4ES:

3. service epld restart.

/etc/skel directory

The system will copy the contents of the /etc/skel directory to the user’s HOME directory.

The useradd command allows an administrator to create a default HOME directory configuration, then uses that as a template to create the new user’s HOME directory. This allows you to place default files for the system in every new user’s HOME directory automatically. On my Linux system, the /etc/skel directory has the following files.