Tag Archives: server

Antinat outgoing ip

This post is the first in a series of posts about antinat. The posts will provide solutions for some "problems' with antinat. So here goes the first one ....

Problem

Antinat creates outgoing connection from the primary ip defined on the machine where it's running. There's a config option to make antinat listen on a specific ip but no config option to make it use a specific ip for outgoing connections.

Solution

The attached patch will make antinat use the same ip that it's listening on for outgoing connections. You specify the listening ip with the "interface" config option and now that ip will also be used for outgoing connections.

[download id="23"]

I assume you already know how to patch ... if not ... just ask in the comments or hire me to patch it for you 🙂

Build your own dynamic DNS service

Q: Why would you want to run your own dynamic DNS service?

A: Because you have your own domains that you want to use as the parent domains for your hosts and you already have all required ingredients ( a linux server with a static ip that's always up and runs bind and apache with php )

Q: How do you run your own dynamic DNS service?

A: get DDNS Server, read the README file and set it up. The nice thing about this script is that it uses the same protocol as the popular DynDNS service so any dynamic ip update client like ddclient would work with this script. Of course the client would have to allow you to specify the hostname or ip and port of the dynamic dns server.

Oh and one more thing, if you're running bind you're probably running it in a chroot environment so you'll have to apply the following patch to DDNS Server ( current version 1.0.0 ) to make it work with the chrooted bind :

[download id="21"]

This patch adds a new configuration option named BIND_CHROOT ( in config.php ) that has to be set to the path of the chroot environment where bind runs. Eg. on centos 5.3 this is /var/named/run-root .

For any questions or suggestions hit the comments.

Yet another perfect server

A of howtos start like that "The perfect Server" or "The Perfect Descktop" or "The perfect Setup". Howtoforge has lots of howtos like that. Their latest "the perfect server" literally shows you, ( because the howto has more screenshots then words 🙂 ) how to install Centos 4.5 and the servers that you need for hosting sites with mysql, php, email ftp and a control panel - ISPConfig.

A howto for each version

This is not their first "the perfect server for centos" howto, they had one for centos 4.4 and one for centos 5.0. Wonder how much different is Centos 4.4 from 4.5 and more exactly how much different if the howto for 4.4 from the one for 4.5? Well they replaced the version everywhere in the text and luckily the install gui was similar so they did not have to change the screenshots :). For 5.0 they did not have so much luck, they had to change the screenshots, and a add some more.

Made for Robots

What I don't like about these kind of howtos is that they don't explain much about the software you're installing, and they don't tell you why you do what they tell you to do. At some point they show you a screenshot and the only text is "in the next screen click next". That's not very useful, you don't learn anything like that. If something goes wrong or if you're trying to set things up on a different distro or disfferent OS you will not know what to do unless you're lucky to find a similar howto for your distro.

One other thing I don't like is that they show you even how to install Centos. Why not do a separate howto just for that, this way I will not get bored by those installation screenshots and they would get more space for writing some more/good details about what they are doing.