Reaper-X » Web Servers

4 Things you should know, before moving into VPS

Reaper-X — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 18:44:46 +0000

You are interested on moving your site into VPS based hosting (i called VPS as second level hosting, while shared hosting as first level), but you’re still confused on how your site are going to perform under VPS, is it going to be worse than shared hosting or is it going to be a lot better than before. And to make explain few things about it, i’ve decided to write this post

Okay here are what you should know before moving into VPS hosting :

Control Panel

Most shared hosting use CPanel for their client, and that mean if you want a smooth transition from your old shared hosting account into your new vps, your best option is of course to choose the vps hosting account that is using the same control panel like your previous control panel, beside you already familiar with it

Guaranteed Memory / RAM

Back then you don’t need to worry about RAM / Memory problem because most shared hosting use 4GB RAM (at least on my Hostgator account) for their customers, although it’s shared with hundreds or thousands other customers and your memory usage is capped at certain level. But that things won’t happen anymore at VPS, because you’ll get what you pay for

And as a note, memory is the most important things you should consider before getting your vps other than the control panel itself, and trust me if your vps doesn’t have enough memory you’ll see lots of services aren’t going to start / often fail, like the HTTPD (Apache Webserver in my case)

PHPSuexec vs mod_php

Many shared hosting use PHPSuexec on their server, because it is necessary for them to do that as security purpose which is good. Unfortunately, your new vps aren’t going to use the same setup like your previous hosting (most of the time you’re going to use PHP which is loaded as apache module by default on your VPS) so you’ll need to make some modification to your new vps account before started using it

And just in case you didn’t know what is PHPSuexec, i’ll give you an example on what PHPSuexec actually does :

For example, you were running some php script / cms / blogging software that requires you to change permission (using chmod 777 command / change permission using your ftp program) on some directories / files in order to give access to write something into that directory or file

Back then when you’re under PHPSuexec, you can just safely ignore that instruction that tell you to chmod certain files / directories to 777, beside when you run under PHPSuexec you’re going to get a server error message if you try to chmod some files into 777 because PHPSuexec doesn’t want you to run a script with insecure permission

in other words, by using phpsuexec, because it’s (the script) run under your own userid, you can write anything in your own directory (files, etc) without having to chmod it first into world writable permission (777)

As a side note, if i should choose between running php as apache module (mod_php) and phpsuexec, i’d definitely choose to use phpsuexec although that mean i’m losing the server performance and taking up lots of server resources

Basic / Intermediate Knowledge on how to set up things on your VPS

Even though you’re using a managed VPS, you’ll need to know some basic unix / linux command (if you choose linux vps hosting) also knowledge on how to configure something by yourself. Because most web hosting company aren’t going to help you on optimizing your VPS

So what’s the conclusion ?

Based from the above paragraphs, i think you’ve guessed that shared hosting is the best and the easiest way to get your website up and running perfectly. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use a vps, because vps is the way to go when you’re serious about your website

0x87485B96 | Tags : Web Hosting, Web Servers, Website

PHP-FastCGI, Suexec, and XCache Installed

Reaper-X — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 02:27:17 +0000

After 1 week thinking about on should i install PHP-FastCGI with Suexec combined with XCache (PHP OP-Code Cache) because my current host aren’t going to support it (although they say, they can help me installing it) if i’m going this way, i’ve decided to use them all together eventhough i have to do it all by myself (as learning purpose of course) … and after 6 hours (or more) playing around with it … i managed to set them all nicely

Btw if you ask me, why i really want to use PHP-FastCGI with Suexec and XCache eventhough my host aren’t going to support it, the answers are :

Running PHP as Apache Module isn’t really good (although it’s the fastest and the easiest to configure with), because it’s running under Apache userid not your own userid. But if it’s for me, i do not like to chmod some of my files / directory into world writeable
PHPSuexec takes too many resources although it’s secure (from security point of view), but it has the other advantage, because if you run PHPSuexec, you don’t need to chmod some of your files / directory into 777 (beside chmod 777 is not going to work with PHPSuexec). Unfortunately the downside from this method is … i can’t use any PHP OPCode cache / any php accelerator out there

So based on that conclusion, i try reading various material about this stuff on the web, and found that the best solution is to use PHP-FastCGI with Suexec enabled to run under your own userid, and the good side from this method is you can use PHP Accelerator. Fortunately there’s someone who’s using an almost identical server setup like mine so i can simply follow his guide (although i need to do some little modification because i can’t seem to get the .fcgi script to run if i’m not putting it in some directory that is allowed to execute CGI) :D

0x87485B96 | Tags : Linux, PHP, Web Servers

Client denied by Server Configuration

Reaper-X — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 12:31:04 +0000

This is perhaps might be useful especially to those who’s using managed server / managed vps (or have anything related to core system component installed and configured for you) and keep seeing client denied by server configuration message on your site error_log (via CPanel or other method) … because that’s what happened to me today

I keep seeing someone trying to access this site and get blocked immediately, but what makes it strange this error message only appear on some of my pages. Although when i tried to access those pages, i can see it without problem at all (yes, i have mod_security installed), so that mean there’s something wrong somewhere in my apache configuration because if it’s caused by hotlink protection, i already make sure it still can be viewed by those who’s blocking their referer address

So after taking a good look into the httpd.conf, i found that my current host already configured apache to load some configuration rules outside the httpd.conf, and after checking each conf i found something i haven’t seen before

DOSHashTableSize 3097
DOSPageCount 2
DOSSiteCount 50
DOSPageInterval 1
DOSSiteInterval 1
DOSBlockingPeriod 10

Note : the above directives is a sample

Of course the next step would be searching what this configuration directive actually does, and then i find out that my host currently use mod_evasive as protection measure againts HTTP Ddos attack

So what do i do then ? of course after i read what those configuration directives do (you can see it from the readme file attached in the mod_evasive file), i reconfigured it by increasing it value slightly to make sure that it’s working properly

0x87485B96 | Tags : Linux, Web Servers

Installing and setting up Apache Webserver with PHP – Setting up Private WoW Server

Reaper-X — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 09:40:18 +0000

This is the fourth part of the Creating your own World of Warcraft Server using Mangos

The First part is all about Installing and Configuring MySQL on your Windows Machine
The Second part is about Configuring the WoW Mangos itself
The Third part is all about Setting up Private WOW Server for Lan Party
The Fourth part is all about Installing and Setting up Apache Webserver with PHP

Okay this is the last part of my guide about creating and setting up private wow server. And as the title said, this part is all about setting up webserver using apache on your pc that can be used to put the registration page for your private wow server

Previously i’ve said that i want to tell you on how to create the registration page for your wow server. Unfortunately, it seems impossible (if you know a good registration page that can be used for WoW Classic Server and TBC Server … please let me know) because different mangos version use different structure like column number differences between the wow classic server with the wow tbc server inside the realmd.account table. So in this guide im going to tell you to use the simple registration page created by Mangos-files.de that can be used for the registration page of your WoW Classic Server

But i think you don’t have to worry about that, because if you understand the steps required to set up webserver on your pc, basically you’ve done the important part with the exception you might need to edit / create the registration page by yourself

As a side note, you can also use your webserver for many other things like hosting your own webpages from your own computer :)

That’s all for the intro … now we’re going to start the guide

Requirements :

Apache HTTPD (Free / Open Source) – In this example i use Apache 1.3.3.7 (Apache 1 Series)
PHP Win32 Zip Version (Free / Open Source) – In this example i use PHP 4.4.3 (PHP4 Series)
Know how to setup port forwarding
A simple registration page for mangos (you can get it from here) / create one by yourself

Optional : Some people might prefer the easiest way of doing it … and if you like it that way then i’d suggest you to use XAMPP instead. But if you decided to use XAMPP and you already followed my previous mysql installation guide, you don’t need to enable the MySQL Service from XAMPP Control Panel

Note : i never tried using XAMPP but from the screenshot at XAMPP Website i think the XAMPP provides you a control panel / menu to enable or disable individual service from it

Important Note : Please take caution if you want to make your webserver accessible to everyone, because this guide only tell you the basic way of setting up webserver from your own computer

Installing Apache Webserver :

Since Apache installation for Windows is straightforward, you can just simply follow the setup process until this part, and then continue with the installation process until finished :

and don’t forget to remember the path where you’re going to install it

Installing PHP :

First of all you need to extract php into somewhere on your harddrive, and in this example the php location is at C:\PHP. And after you’ve finished extracting it, go to C:\PHP\Sapi from Windows Explorer and copy the php4apache.dll into the root of the php directory. If you choose to use Apache 2, then you need to copy the php4apache2.dll instead

Here’s what it should look like :

Installing PHP as module in Apache HTTPD :

Now after finished with the previous steps, you need to configure apache to load the php4 as a module. And here’s how to do it

1. Open httpd.conf in your Apache conf directory (in this example, the httpd.conf can be found at C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache\conf\httpd.conf)

2. Uncomment the :

LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

and add this line after all the loadmodule :

LoadModule php4_module “C:/php/php4apache.dll”

Example image below :

3. At the addmodule section uncomment the :

AddModule mod_rewrite.c

and then at this line :

AddModule mod_php4.c

example image below :

4. At the addtype section add this line :

AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps

5. Now at the DirectoryIndex section add / replace the previous line with this one :

DirectoryIndex index.html index.php

From the above example, the index.html always get first priority over index.php file but you can change it as you like

Testing your Apache Installation :

As for the last, now you need to open the command prompt window (Start Menu -> Run -> type CMD) or Start Menu -> Accessories -> Command Prompt

and type :

Net stop apache
Net start apache

This is done to make apache reload the configuration files that have been changed

Now you’ve finished with all the process, but of course you need to make sure your webserver is working properly so now you need to test it by typing http://localhost via your browser and if you see something like above image, that means your webserver is working

You’ve finished setting up apache webserver, mysql and php on your computer .. Now what you should do next ? well … because this is part of the mangos series guide, of course now you need to put the registration page you’ve downloaded previously into your www document root directory

If you followed this guide, the document root can be found at C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache\htdocs … but since the webserver is located on the same location as where you are, you don’t need FTP Program to do it, you just need to copy / extract the simple registration page into that directory … simple isn’t it ?

0x87485B96 | Tags : Guide, How To, Tutorials, Web Servers

Hostgator affiliates … i like it

Reaper-X — Thu, 31 May 2007 11:03:18 +0000

Well … 1 or 2 weeks ago i received an email from my Hostgator affiliates account and it’s said that someone just registered to Hostgator hosting under my affiliate account, and thanks to that unknown person, i finally made something from affiliate program (i made $50 from one signup, and yes this is the first time i received something from affiliate program just as i said before)

But as you can see that i only made $50 that can be considered low especially if you do not have paypal account. But in my case, i have verified paypal account but i can only use it to send money only which is sad and the other problem is if i try to cashed that check, in the end i get nothing from it because of high bank fee, and any other fee included just to cash that check

So i decided to contact hostgator, and ask if there’re any other options to choose instead of sending the checks to me and the answer i get is quite surprising. Because Hostgator staff tell me that it is possible to use Wired Transfer to transfer the money to my bank account directly (of course i’m surprised because i did not see anything related to wired transfer option on their affiliates information page or my affiliates account page or Hostgator Blog), also they (Chad B. from Hostgator) said to me all future payments will be made via Wired Transfer

Well as for now i just hope that i can bring more potential customers to Hostgator side … :P (i think i need to learn more about Marketing and Promotional stuff)

As a note, if you currently searching for a good and reliable web hosting with friendly staff (based on my own experience) I’d recommend Hostgator. And if you want my own honest review about Hostgator (unlike many other review that just want to get money from affiliates), you can read my previous post about Hostgator review or read my post at Webhostingtalk

0x87485B96 | Tags : Income Sources, Making Money, Personal, Web Hosting, Web Servers

Digg Protection using htaccess

Reaper-X — Tue, 15 May 2007 11:00:22 +0000

Today i just saw a referer to this site coming from Digg Upcoming page (i guess someone submit this blog to Digg website) although i doubt that it’ll reach the main page, but i think it is better for me to prevent this site from going down (the worst case is my page changed into my host suspended page) just in case someone submit this site to various big website and it appear there

And now this is the method is use to try to redirect everyone who came to this site from big site such as slashdot. Btw i found this method via PlanetOzh at Joseph Scott’s Blog which is taken from Ottodestruct (although i get 404 error not found message when i tried to visit the page mentioned in Joseph Scott’s blog) … and of course Full Credits goes to them because all i do is just adding “/” add the end and modify it as necessary to use in this site also changed the port to 8090 because coral cache use that port now instead of the old 8080 :)

So here’s the code :

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^CoralWebPrx
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !(^|&)coral-no-serve$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?digg\.com [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?slashdot\.org [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?slashdot\.com [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?fark\.com [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?somethingawful\.com [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?kuro5hin\.org [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?boingboing\.net
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com.nyud.net:8090/$1 [R,L]

As always the IfModule used to prevent your site goes berserk by returning HTTP 500 Error Code when modrewrite is not loaded in Apache. And i already tested this on this site, by faking the referer address to www.digg.com and digg.com without www (and as you can see, that this method only work to those who’s not faking / forging their referer)

And of course there’s downside when using this method which is already explained here :

The problem, of course, is that Coral runs on port 8090, and how many people will be blocked from that?

But i think it is still better than you got suspended by your host because your site causing high load on their server (if you’re using shared hosting) :D

0x87485B96 | Tags : Guide, Linux, Web Servers, Webmaster Tools, Website

Hostgator Tips : Temporarily disable ModSecurity

Reaper-X — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 04:11:54 +0000

If you’re hosted on Hostgator or any other host that use Modsecurity to protect their web server, you might notice some problems especially if you try to post something that has forbidden words / string in it (a good example is my previous post about Hostgator SSH Access). It seems the Hostgator modsecurity filter doesn’t allow some words in my previous post, so you’ll get HTTP 406 / Not Acceptable message (if you look at the http status header manually)

So what’s the best solution without compromising your system security ? .. you can add the below lines into .htaccess to disable modsecurity when you try to post something to your blog :

SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off

The above lines means : If modsecurity is found, it’ll disable the filtering function. If modsecurity not found it’ll do no harm to your server

And what’s next ? if you’re able to post to your blog successfully, you can remove the above lines from your .htaccess file or you can simply add # character before each line

0x87485B96 | Tags : Guide, How To, Linux, Tutorials, Web Hosting, Web Servers

SSH Access and WGET on Hostgator

Reaper-X — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 03:57:52 +0000

Previously i have said that Hostgator doesn’t allow you to have SSH access for your shared hosting account, but since Hostgator allows you to use Ruby on Rails on your shared hosting account, this policies have been changed completely. Because now you can get SSH access (Jailed SSH), or if you’re also interested on using Ruby on Rails web framework for your website, you can also use it (although i havent tried Ruby on Rails yet, … and to be honest i’m still playing and learning Ruby on Rails right now) and that’s all thanks to Hostgator by allowing the use of SSH access

Beside by using SSH (with WGet) you can also install various script easily without the need to upload each files again using FTP program (well this is really useful for me, because of my slow internet connection)

How to get SSH Access on your shared hosting account ?

It’s real simple, you just have to send a photo id to the Hostgator support team and provide your hosting account information.

For example, i’m sending out my KTP (Kartu Tanda Penduduk, the personal identification card used in Indonesia) information to the Hostgator Support team, and then you just have to wait for them to activate your ssh access

After Hostgator activated your ssh access, you’ll notice that if you try to use WGet you’ll see the permission denied message, that’s because you do not have the necessary priviledges to use WGET by default so in order to get WGET activated for your account, you can tell them to activate WGET too (if it is for me, i sent them 2 email message, the first message to activate my ssh access, and the second email message to activate WGET)

How to fetch / retrieve files from remote server using WGET ?

The easiest way to retrieve wget from remote server is by using this command :

wget http://remoteserver/sample/files.tgz

and to extract it you can simply type this :

tar zxf files.tgz

What about SVN ? can you use it too on Hostgator ?

Yes, you can use svn too. But if it’s for me i only use SVN to fetch the latest files from SVN repositories on remote server.

To fetch it (checkout), you can simply type this command :

svn co http://svn.server.com/files/trunk

And to update it, you can just type this command :

svn update

What about Ruby on Rails ?

You can use it too, but because i’m still learning about this topic, i prefer not to say it here maybe at a later time when i reached the begginer level (currently at novice level now) i could post another topic about this. So if you’re interested on learning about Ruby on rails you might try visiting their official website instead

Well .. that’s all about it :)

0x87485B96 | Tags : Guide, Internet, Linux, Web Hosting, Web Servers, Webmaster Tools

Media Temple Grid Server Review

Reaper-X — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 05:37:28 +0000

Finally Media Temple already approved the previously mentioned Grid Server account for my uncle’s today (when i posted this). And one thing for sure, the Media Temple GS Control Panel rocks ! i’ve never seen a custom control panel like this before (Godaddy use custom control panel too, but their control panel lack features)

And here’s my own review about Media Temple Grid Server (since my uncle account just got approved today, i can not give you report about Media Temple Uptime / performance), but i’ll give you a short review about their features (after few months with them, i’m going to make a review about their uptime too)

First of all, the first thing i did notice on their control panel is i can manually edit Zones for the domain name used .. and this is a big plus because Hostgator does not give you access to edit your domain zones manually, unless you’re on their dedicated server or using a reseller account. I know that this is not normally required by everyone but at least to those who know to edit their zones name by themself, this makes you feel a little bit better because you dont have to email them whenever you want to edit your zones file (actually i’m a shy type, and dont really like to email support team for something like this) lol

The other important thing is you can get SSH access to your Grid server account which is really useful especially if you dont want to FTP your script. And thanks to this, i can complete wordpress installation within short time :)

Other than that, media temple also use FastCGI on their Grid Server, so you can use a more restrictive permission on your php scripts. And they also update their php executable really fast, they’re currently using php 4.4.6 (at least that’s what i saw on my uncle’s server)

As for database, unlike on most CPanel based server which is using localhost as your MySQL database host, you must look carefully on what server your MySQL host located, here’s an example of what their MySQL database host looks like :

internal-db.*****.gridserver.com <= for internal access, and most of the time you’re going to use this address
external-db.*****.gridserver.com <= for external access, and do not forget to create access rules if you’re going to use this one

What about their other features ? well .. there’s one click script installation, web statistic, bandwidth report, etc. But i think most of you already knew about that because most web hosting company also provided standard tools like that

Although they gives so many features but there’s one thing that i do not really like from them, and that’s because their control panel using SSL and it slow down everything for me (maybe they should use SSL for login only instead of full SSL on control panel) … but i think that’s just because my internet connection .. s***s

And because of the above features, i recommend them but we’ll see about their downtime later on my next review about them :)

Update : I just got access to use jailed SSH access on my hostgator account after verifying myself with them :) .. hurray

0x87485B96 | Tags : Blog, Internet, Web Hosting, Web Servers, Website

Hostgator Review, a Personal Experience

Reaper-X — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 05:01:43 +0000

Small information about Hostgator, quoted from their about page. Hostgator is a privately owned company founded in 2002 that has no debt, is very profitable, and has NO intentions of selling any time soon. We provide service to over 400,000 websites on our shared and reseller plans. We are the world’s leading provider of reseller accounts with over 10,000 resellers who have chosen us to provide the network, servers, and support required to launch a hosting business

At the time i write this post, i’m currently hosted by Hostgator (dunno if in the future) i’m going to move into other web hosting company or not. But one thing for sure is, when i posted this .. i have been with hostgator for 8 months (until March 07). And without further ado, here’s my own complete hostgator review (including their server setup and so on), based on my personal experience with them :

Webhosting Plan Offered :

1. Hatchling Croc :

Price : $6.95 (paid yearly)
Storage : 50 GB
Bandwidth : 200 GB
Type : Shared Hosting

2. Baby Croc :

Price : $9.95 (monthly)
Storage : 100 GB
Bandwidth : 1 TB / 1000 GB
Type : Shared Hosting

3. Swap Croc :

Price : $14.95 (monthly)
Storage : 200 GB
Bandwidth : 2 TB / 2000 GB
Type : Shared Hosting

4. Semi Dedicated :

Price : $74.95 (monthly)
Storage : 25 GB
Bandwidth : 500 GB
Type : Shared Hosting, almost VPS like with the exception there’s no root access

Server Setup and Features :

Using CPanel and Fantastico that provides one click installation to various web application such as Wordpress
They are using PHPSuexec on their server which is a plus for security reason
You can choose whether you want PHP5 or PHP4 on your server
Using MySQL 4.1.xx as their SQL Database
Support Ruby on Rails
Adult supported (to those who’s interested on creating adult website)
On my current server i got this setup, Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 3.20GHz with 4242960384 KB RAM
They can also give you SSH access to your own account known as Jailed SSH, and to activate this features you can just simply give them your photo id as identification

Server / Resources Usage Limitation :

Can not use 25% or more of system resources for longer then 90 seconds
Can only run cron entries with intervals of less than 15 minutes
There is a 200 hourly email limit per domain this limit is also applied towards mailman
30 Maximum Concurrent Connection to MySQL
If you’re using Hostgator nameserver and using shared hosting, the only option to change your DNS settings is by emailing them and ask them to change it
~~No SSH (this is not necessary to those who’s not interested on unix command)~~

Personal Opinion About Hostgator :

They’re a good webhosting company, good respond time from their sales and support team. And the Level 3 Support team is really good and does the job very well (24 Hours support). And as a side note, i live in GMT +7 timezone

Good Uptime, although sometimes there’s downtime but i’m sure that every webhosting out there has downtime issue (last night there’s downtime for about 45 Minutes reported by Pingdom Monitoring, and Siteuptime). If you want to see the uptime of this website, you can check my sidebar for it

The only thing i do not like from them is i have to email them everytime whenever i want to change / add zones to my domain. Maybe they should give access to zones editing or such stuff so i can modify my zones manually without telling them to do it whenever i want to add something (for example adding CName)

Other thing i like is the SSH access to simplify thing, although im not a unix expert

And the conclusion is, if you seek a reliable web hosting company and can be trusted, you might try using the Hostgator service and see it for yourself

0x87485B96 | Tags : Linux, Opinion, Web Hosting, Web Servers