Building a secure web server with CentOS 5, part 1

Posted on 05.Jan 2010 by Ray Heffer in LAMP, Linux, Web Hosting

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Troubleshooting

Introduction
This is an updated version of my original LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL and Perl/PHP) guide that was based on CentOS 4. Now updated and tweaked for CentOS 5, I will take you through the steps required to build a secure Linux web server (LAMP) on CentOS 5.

I have a background working for an ISP, so I’ve based this build on the same configuration many hosting providers use. It supports virtual hosts (multiple websites), secure FTP access, locked down SSH access, and a sensible directory structure.

If you follow this guide, you will get a web server up and running within a couple of hours depending on whether you follow it step by step, or prefer to experiment first. If you are new to Linux then give it a try and learn something new, you never know you may surprise yourself!

Good luck!

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Building a secure web server with CentOS 5, part 2

Posted on 05.Jan 2010 by Ray Heffer in LAMP, Linux, Web Hosting

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Troubleshooting

Part 2: Configuring the Server

Configuring CentOS

  • Edit /etc/hosts and /etc/sysconfig/network with hostnames
  • Install Packages

Example of /etc/hosts:

# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1 localhost
67.34.32.11 www.mydomain.com

Example of /etc/sysconfig/network

NETWORKING=yes
HOSTNAME=www.mydomain.com

Installing Packages

# yum -y install httpd openssl-devel openssl mod_ssl vsftpd rpm-build rpm-devel autoconf automake lynx gcc
# yum -y install mysql mod_auth_mysql mysql-devel mysql-server
# yum -y install mod_python python python-devel
# yum -y install perl mod_perl mod_perl-devel openssl-perl perl-Convert-ASN1 perl-Date-Calc perl-DateManip perl-HTML-Parser perl-libwww-perl perl-CPAN perl-DBD-MySQL perl-XML-Parser
# yum -y install php-devel php php-domxml php-gd php-mbstring php-mysql php-ncurses php-pear
# yum -y install webalizer
# yum -y install sendmail sendmail-cf

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