MariaDB is a enhanced open source and drop-in replacement for MySQL. It is developed by MariaDB community and available under the terms of the GPL v2 license. Software Security is the main focus for the MariaDB developers. They maintain its own set of security patches for each MariaDB releases. When any critical security issues are discovered, the developers introduces a new release of MariaDB to get the fix out as soon as possible.

MariaDB is always up-to-date with the latest MySQL releases. It is highly compatible and works exactly like the MySQL. Almost all commands, data, table definition files, Client APIs, protocols, interfaces, structures, filenames, binaries, ports, database storage locations etc are same as the MySQL. It isn’t even needed to convert databases to switch to MariaDB.

Advantages of MariaDB

• Truly Open source
• More quicker and transparent security releases
• Highly Compatible with MySQL
• Improved Performance
• More storage engines compared to MySQL

In this article, I provides guidelines on how to upgrade MySQL 5.5 to the latest MariaDB on a CentOS 7 CPanel server. Let’s walk through the Pre-installation steps.

Pre-requisites:

1. Stop current MySQL Service

root@server1 [/var/# mysql
Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 5859
Server version: 5.5.47-cll MySQL Community Server (GPL)

Copyright (c) 2000, 2015, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its
affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
owners.

Type ‘help;’ or ‘\h’ for help. Type ‘\c’ to clear the current input statement.

root@server1 [~]# systemctl stop mysql
root@server1 [~]# systemctl status mysql
● mysql.service – LSB: start and stop MySQL
Loaded: loaded (/etc/rc.d/init.d/mysql)
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Sun 2016-01-31 10:00:02 UTC; 1min 31s ago
Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
Main PID: 23430 (code=exited, status=203/EXEC)

Jan 31 10:00:02 server1.centos7-test.com systemd[1]: Started MySQL Server.
Jan 31 10:00:02 server1.centos7-test.com systemd[1]: Starting MySQL Server…
Jan 31 10:00:02 server1.centos7-test.com systemd[1]: mysql.service: main process exited, code=exited, status=203/EXEC
Jan 31 10:00:02 server1.centos7-test.com systemd[1]: Unit mysql.service entered failed state.
Jan 31 10:00:02 server1.centos7-test.com systemd[1]: mysql.service failed.

2. Move all configuration files and databases prior to the upgrade

Move the DB storage path and MySQL configuration files

root@server1 [~]# cp -Rf /var/lib/mysql /var/lib/mysql-old

root@server1 [/var/lib/mysql]# cat /etc/my.cnf
[mysqld]
default-storage-engine=MyISAM
innodb_file_per_table=1
max_allowed_packet=268435456
open_files_limit=10000

root@server1 [~]#mv /etc/my.cnf /etc/my.cnf-old

3. Remove and uninstall all MySQL rpms from the server

Run the following commands to disable the MySQL RPM targets. By running this commands, cPanel will no longer handle MySQL updates, and mark these rpm.versions as uninstalled on the system.

/scripts/update_local_rpm_versions –edit target_settings.MySQL50 uninstalled
/scripts/update_local_rpm_versions –edit target_settings.MySQL51 uninstalled
/scripts/update_local_rpm_versions –edit target_settings.MySQL55 uninstalled
/scripts/update_local_rpm_versions –edit target_settings.MySQL56 uninstalled

Now run the this command:

/scripts/check_cpanel_rpms –fix –targets=MySQL50,MySQL51,MySQL55,MySQL56 to remove all existing MySQL rpms on the server and leave a clean environment for MariaDB installation. Please see its output below:

root@server1 [/var/lib/mysql]# /scripts/check_cpanel_rpms –fix –targets=MySQL50,MySQL51,MySQL55,MySQL56
[2016-01-31 09:53:59 +0000]
[2016-01-31 09:53:59 +0000] Problems were detected with cPanel-provided files which are RPM controlled.
[2016-01-31 09:53:59 +0000] If you did not make these changes intentionally, you can correct them by running:
[2016-01-31 09:53:59 +0000]
[2016-01-31 09:53:59 +0000] > /usr/local/cpanel/scripts/check_cpanel_rpms –fix
[2016-01-31 09:53:59 +0000]
[2016-01-31 09:53:59 +0000] The following RPMs are unneeded on your system and should be uninstalled:
[2016-01-31 09:53:59 +0000] MySQL55-client-5.5.47-1.cp1148
[2016-01-31 09:53:59 +0000] MySQL55-devel-5.5.47-1.cp1148
[2016-01-31 09:53:59 +0000] MySQL55-server-5.5.47-1.cp1148
[2016-01-31 09:53:59 +0000] MySQL55-shared-5.5.47-1.cp1148
[2016-01-31 09:53:59 +0000] MySQL55-test-5.5.47-1.cp1148
[2016-01-31 09:53:59 +0000] compat-MySQL50-shared-5.0.96-4.cp1136
[2016-01-31 09:53:59 +0000] compat-MySQL51-shared-5.1.73-1.cp1150
[2016-01-31 09:53:59 +0000] Removing 0 broken rpms:
[2016-01-31 09:53:59 +0000] rpm: no packages given for erase
[2016-01-31 09:53:59 +0000] No new RPMS needed for install
[2016-01-31 09:53:59 +0000] Disabling service monitoring.
[2016-01-31 09:54:01 +0000] Uninstalling unneeded rpms: MySQL55-test MySQL55-server MySQL55-client compat-MySQL51-shared compat-MySQL50-shared MySQL55-shared MySQL55-devel
[2016-01-31 09:54:04 +0000] Removed symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/mysql.service.
[2016-01-31 09:54:04 +0000] Restoring service monitoring.

With these steps, we’ve uninstalled existing MySQL RPMs, marked targets to prevent further MySQL updates and made the server ready and clean for the MariaDB installation.

To startup with the installation, we need to create a yum repository for MariaDB depending on the MariaDB & CentOS versions. This is how I did it!

Installation procedures:

Step 1: Creating a YUM repository.

root@server1 [~]# vim /etc/yum.repos.d/MariaDB.repo
[mariadb]
name = MariaDB
baseurl = http://yum.mariadb.org/10.0/centos7-amd64/
gpgkey=https://yum.mariadb.org/RPM-GPG-KEY-MariaDB
gpgcheck=1
root@server1 [/etc/yum.repos.d]# cat /etc/yum.repos.d/MariaDB.repo
[mariadb]
name = MariaDB
baseurl = http://yum.mariadb.org/10.0/centos7-amd64/
gpgkey=https://yum.mariadb.org/RPM-GPG-KEY-MariaDB
gpgcheck=1

Step 2: Open the /etc/yum.conf and modify the exclude line as below:

Remove this line exclude=courier* dovecot* exim* filesystem httpd* mod_ssl* mydns* mysql* nsd* php* proftpd* pure-ftpd* spamassassin* squirrelmail*

And replace with this line exclude=courier* dovecot* exim* filesystem httpd* mod_ssl* mydns* nsd* proftpd* pure-ftpd* spamassassin* squirrelmail*
**IMPORTANT ***

We need to make sure, we’ve removed the MySQL and PHP from the exclude list.

Step 3: Run the following command to install MariaDB and related packages.

yum install MariaDB-server MariaDB-client MariaDB-devel php-mysql

root@server1 [~]#yum install MariaDB-server MariaDB-client MariaDB-devel php-mysql

Dependencies Resolved

===============================================================================================================================================
Package Arch Version Repository Size
===============================================================================================================================================
Installing:
MariaDB-client x86_64 10.0.23-1.el7.centos mariadb 10 M
MariaDB-devel x86_64 10.0.23-1.el7.centos mariadb 6.3 M
MariaDB-server x86_64 10.0.23-1.el7.centos mariadb 55 M
php-mysql x86_64 5.4.16-36.el7_1 base 99 k
Installing for dependencies:
MariaDB-common x86_64 10.0.23-1.el7.centos mariadb 43 k
MariaDB-shared x86_64 10.0.23-1.el7.centos mariadb 1.2 M
libzip x86_64 0.10.1-8.el7 base 48 k
php-common x86_64 5.4.16-36.el7_1 base 563 k
php-pdo x86_64 5.4.16-36.el7_1 base 97 k

Transaction Summary
===============================================================================================================================================
Install 4 Packages (+5 Dependent package)

Step 4: Restart and make sure the MySQL service is up.

root@server1 [~]# systemctl start mysql
root@server1 [~]#
root@server1 [~]#
root@server1 [~]# systemctl status mysql
● mysql.service – LSB: start and stop MySQL
Loaded: loaded (/etc/rc.d/init.d/mysql)
Active: active (exited) since Sun 2016-01-31 10:01:46 UTC; 3s ago
Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
Process: 23717 ExecStart=/etc/rc.d/init.d/mysql start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 23430 (code=exited, status=203/EXEC)

Jan 31 10:01:46 server1.centos7-test.com systemd[1]: Starting LSB: start and stop MySQL…
Jan 31 10:01:46 server1.centos7-test.com mysql[23717]: Starting MySQL SUCCESS!
Jan 31 10:01:46 server1.centos7-test.com systemd[1]: Started LSB: start and stop MySQL.

Step 5 : Run mysql_upgrade command

It will examine all tables in all databases for incompatibilities with the current installed version and upgrades the system tables if necessary to take advantage of new privileges or capabilities that might have added with the current version.

root@server1 [~]# mysql_upgrade
MySQL upgrade detected
Phase 1/6: Checking and upgrading mysql database
Processing databases
mysql
mysql.columns_priv OK
mysql.db OK
mysql.event OK
mysql.func OK
mysql.help_category OK
mysql.help_keyword OK
mysql.help_relation OK
mysql.help_topic OK
mysql.host OK
mysql.ndb_binlog_index OK
mysql.plugin OK
mysql.proc OK
mysql.procs_priv OK
mysql.proxies_priv OK
mysql.servers OK
mysql.tables_priv OK
mysql.time_zone OK
mysql.time_zone_leap_second OK
mysql.time_zone_name OK
mysql.time_zone_transition OK
mysql.time_zone_transition_type OK
mysql.user OK
Phase 2/6: Fixing views from mysql
Phase 3/6: Running ‘mysql_fix_privilege_tables’
Phase 4/6: Fixing table and database names
Phase 5/6: Checking and upgrading tables
Processing databases
cphulkd
cphulkd.auths OK
cphulkd.blacklist OK
cphulkd.brutes OK
cphulkd.good_logins OK
cphulkd.ip_lists OK
cphulkd.known_netblocks OK
cphulkd.login_track OK
cphulkd.logins OK
cphulkd.report OK
cphulkd.whitelist OK
eximstats
eximstats.defers OK
eximstats.failures OK
eximstats.sends OK
eximstats.smtp OK
information_schema
leechprotect
leechprotect.hits OK
modsec
modsec.hits OK
performance_schema
roundcube
roundcube.cache OK
roundcube.cache_index OK
roundcube.cache_messages OK
roundcube.cache_shared OK
roundcube.cache_thread OK
roundcube.contactgroupmembers OK
roundcube.contactgroups OK
roundcube.contacts OK
roundcube.cp_schema_version OK
roundcube.dictionary OK
roundcube.identities OK
roundcube.searches OK
roundcube.session OK
roundcube.system OK
roundcube.users OK
saheetha_test
saheetha_test.authors OK
whmxfer
whmxfer.sessions OK
Phase 6/6: Running ‘FLUSH PRIVILEGES’
OK

Step 6 : Restart the MySQL service once again to ensure everything works perfect.

root@server1 [~]# systemctl restart mysql
root@server1 [~]#
root@server1 [~]# systemctl status mysql
● mysql.service – LSB: start and stop MySQL
Loaded: loaded (/etc/rc.d/init.d/mysql)
Active: active (running) since Sun 2016-01-31 10:04:11 UTC; 9s ago
Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
Process: 23831 ExecStop=/etc/rc.d/init.d/mysql stop (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Process: 23854 ExecStart=/etc/rc.d/init.d/mysql start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 23430 (code=exited, status=203/EXEC)
CGroup: /system.slice/mysql.service
├─23861 /bin/sh /usr/bin/mysqld_safe –datadir=/var/lib/mysql –pid-file=/var/lib/mysql/server1.centos7-test.com.pid
└─23933 /usr/sbin/mysqld –basedir=/usr –datadir=/var/lib/mysql –plugin-dir=/usr/lib64/mysql/plugin –user=mysql –log-error=/v…

Jan 31 10:04:10 server1.centos7-test.com systemd[1]: Starting LSB: start and stop MySQL…
Jan 31 10:04:11 server1.centos7-test.com mysql[23854]: Starting MySQL. SUCCESS!
Jan 31 10:04:11 server1.centos7-test.com systemd[1]: Started LSB: start and stop MySQL.

Step 7: Run EasyApache to rebuild Apache/PHP with MariaDB and ensure all PHP modules remains intact.

root@server1 [~]#/scripts/easyapache –build

****IMPORTANT *****
If you forget to rebuild Apache/PHP after the MariaDB installation, it will report the library error as below:

root@server1 [/etc/my.cnf.d]# php -v
php: error while loading shared libraries: libmysqlclient.so.18: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Step 8: Now verify the installation and databases.

root@server1 [/var/lib/mysql]# mysql
Welcome to the MariaDB monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MariaDB connection id is 15
Server version: 10.0.23-MariaDB MariaDB Server

Copyright (c) 2000, 2015, Oracle, MariaDB Corporation Ab and others.

Type ‘help;’ or ‘\h’ for help. Type ‘\c’ to clear the current input statement.

MariaDB [(none)]> show storage engines;
+——————–+———+—————————————————————————-+————–+——+————+
| Engine | Support | Comment | Transactions | XA | Savepoints |
+——————–+———+—————————————————————————-+————–+——+————+
| CSV | YES | CSV storage engine | NO | NO | NO |
| MRG_MyISAM | YES | Collection of identical MyISAM tables | NO | NO | NO |
| MEMORY | YES | Hash based, stored in memory, useful for temporary tables | NO | NO | NO |
| BLACKHOLE | YES | /dev/null storage engine (anything you write to it disappears) | NO | NO | NO |
| MyISAM | YES | MyISAM storage engine | NO | NO | NO |
| InnoDB | DEFAULT | Percona-XtraDB, Supports transactions, row-level locking, and foreign keys | YES | YES | YES |
| ARCHIVE | YES | Archive storage engine | NO | NO | NO |
| FEDERATED | YES | FederatedX pluggable storage engine | YES | NO | YES |
| PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA | YES | Performance Schema | NO | NO | NO |
| Aria | YES | Crash-safe tables with MyISAM heritage | NO | NO | NO |
+——————–+———+—————————————————————————-+————–+——+————+
10 rows in set (0.00 sec)

That’s all :). Now we’re all set to go with MariaDB with its improved and efficient features. Hope you enjoyed reading this documentation. I would recommend your valuable suggestions and feedback on this!

CURL is a simple module that allows you to connect and communicate to various types of servers using various types of protocols. Curl mainly supports http, https, ftp, gopher, telnet, dict, file, and ldap protocols. It also supports SMB, SMBS, IMAP, IMAPS, POP3, POP3S, RTMP, RTSP, SCP, SFTP, TFT, HTTPS certificates, HTTP POST, HTTP PUT, FTP uploading, HTTP form based upload, proxies, cookies, and user/password authentication.

We know that, an increasing amount of web applications has made the HTTP scripting more frequently requested and necessary. There is a high demand for such a tool which helps us to automatically extract information from the Web, upload, proxy or POST data to the web servers.

CURL is a simple commandline tool which can be used to do all these URL manipulations and data transfers. It is powered by libcurl, which is a library created by Daniel Stenberg.

It is mandatory to keep such softwares always updated, since there is a chance of hacking attempts, data diddling or loop holes due to old insecure versions. In this article, I’m discussing a simple method on how to update the Curl in a more efficient way to the latest available versions on a cPanel server.

First of all, check the current version installed on the server. Please see the current CURL version in my server below:

root@server1 [/usr/local/src]# /usr/bin/curl -V
curl 7.38.0 (x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu) libcurl/7.38.0 NSS/3.19.1 Basic ECC zlib/1.2.7 libidn/1.28 libssh2/1.4.3
Protocols: dict file ftp ftps gopher http https imap imaps ldap ldaps pop3 pop3s rtsp scp sftp smtp smtps telnet tftp
Features: IDN IPv6 Largefile NTLM NTLM_WB SSL UnixSockets

As you can see the CURL version is 7.38 and is compiled to support these many protocols like dict, file, ftp, ftps, gopher, http, https, imap, imaps, ldap, ldaps, pop3, pop3s, rtsp, scp, sftp, smtp, smtps, telnet and tftp.

We are going to configure CURL with Asynchronous DNS to improve its performance and make the requests more faster without any delays. Let’s start our update process now.

Step 1. Download the latest Curl and Asynchronous DNS Package from their website and extract.

root@server1 [~]# cd /usr/local/src/
root@server1 [/usr/local/src]# wget http://c-ares.haxx.se/download/c-ares-1.10.0.tar.gz
–2016-01-26 06:29:25– http://c-ares.haxx.se/download/c-ares-1.10.0.tar.gz
Resolving c-ares.haxx.se (c-ares.haxx.se)… 2a00:1a28:1200:9::2, 80.67.6.50
Connecting to c-ares.haxx.se (c-ares.haxx.se)|2a00:1a28:1200:9::2|:80… connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 200 OK
Length: 809073 (790K) [application/x-gzip]
Saving to: ‘c-ares-1.10.0.tar.gz’

100%[=====================================================================================================>] 8,09,073 1.18MB/s in 0.7s

2016-01-26 06:29:26 (1.18 MB/s) – ‘c-ares-1.10.0.tar.gz’ saved [809073/809073]

root@server1 [/usr/local/src]#tar -xvf c-ares-1.10.0.tar.gz
root@server1 [/usr/local/src]# wget http://curl.haxx.se/download/curl-7.46.0.tar.gz
–2016-01-26 06:29:59– http://curl.haxx.se/download/curl-7.46.0.tar.gz
Resolving curl.haxx.se (curl.haxx.se)… 2a00:1a28:1200:9::2, 80.67.6.50
Connecting to curl.haxx.se (curl.haxx.se)|2a00:1a28:1200:9::2|:80… connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 200 OK
Length: 4551902 (4.3M) [application/x-gzip]
Saving to: ‘curl-7.46.0.tar.gz’

100%[=====================================================================================================>] 45,51,902 3.79MB/s in 1.1s

2016-01-26 06:30:01 (3.79 MB/s) – ‘curl-7.46.0.tar.gz’ saved [4551902/4551902]

root@server1 [/usr/local/src]#tar -xvf curl-7.46.0.tar.gz

Step 2. Configure, make and install the Asynchronous DNS package.

root@server1 [/usr/local/src/c-ares-1.10.0]# ./configure

root@server1 [/usr/local/src/c-ares-1.10.0]# make
make all-am
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/local/src/c-ares-1.10.0′
/bin/sh ./libtool –tag=CC –mode=compile gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -DCARES_BUILDING_LIBRARY -DCARES_SYMBOL_HIDING -fvisibility=hidden -g0 -O2 -Wno-system-headers -MT libcares_la-ares__close_sockets.lo -MD -MP -MF .deps/libcares_la-ares__close_sockets.Tpo -c -o libcares_la-ares__close_sockets.lo `test -f ‘ares__close_sockets.c’ || echo ‘./’`ares__close_sockets.c
libtool: compile: gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -DCARES_BUILDING_LIBRARY -DCARES_SYMBOL_HIDING -fvisibility=hidden -g0 -O2 -Wno-system-headers -MT libcares_la-ares__close_sockets.lo -MD -MP -MF .deps/libcares_la-ares__close_sockets.Tpo -c ares__close_sockets.c -fPIC -DPIC -o .libs/libcares_la-ares__close_sockets.o
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/src/c-ares-1.10.0’

root@server1 [/usr/local/src/c-ares-1.10.0]# make install

/usr/bin/install -c -m 644 ares_version.3 ares_inet_pton.3 ares_inet_ntop.3 ‘/usr/local/share/man/man3’
/usr/bin/mkdir -p ‘/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig’
/usr/bin/install -c -m 644 libcares.pc ‘/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig’
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/src/c-ares-1.10.0′

Step 3. Now configure CURL with Asynchornous DNS and all other required Protocols.

root@server1 [/usr/local/src/curl-7.46.0]# ./configure –enable-ares=/usr/local/src/c-ares-1.10.0 –enable-http –enable-imap –enable-pop3 –enable-ftp –enable-proxy –enable-tftp –enable-ntlm –enable-static –with-ssl=/usr/local/ssl –enable-ipv6 –enable-shared –disable-ldap –enable-gobher –enable-smtp –with-libidn –disable-rtsp –without-zlib
root@server1 [/usr/local/src/curl-7.46.0]#make
curl version: 7.46.0
Host setup: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
Install prefix: /usr/local
Compiler: gcc
SSL support: enabled (OpenSSL)
SSH support: no (–with-libssh2)
zlib support: no (–with-zlib)
GSS-API support: no (–with-gssapi)
TLS-SRP support: no (–enable-tls-srp)
resolver: c-ares
IPv6 support: enabled
Unix sockets support: enabled
IDN support: enabled
Build libcurl: Shared=yes, Static=yes
Built-in manual: enabled
–libcurl option: enabled (–disable-libcurl-option)
Verbose errors: enabled (–disable-verbose)
SSPI support: no (–enable-sspi)
ca cert bundle: /etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt
ca cert path: no
LDAP support: no (–enable-ldap / –with-ldap-lib / –with-lber-lib)
LDAPS support: no (–enable-ldaps)
RTSP support: no (–enable-rtsp)
RTMP support: no (–with-librtmp)
metalink support: no (–with-libmetalink)
PSL support: no (libpsl not found)
HTTP2 support: disabled (–with-nghttp2)
Protocols: DICT FILE FTP FTPS GOPHER HTTP HTTPS IMAP IMAPS POP3 POP3S SMB SMBS SMTP SMTPS TELNET TFTP
root@server1 [/usr/local/src/curl-7.46.0]# make install
Making install in lib
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/local/src/curl-7.46.0/lib’
make[2]: Entering directory `/usr/local/src/curl-7.46.0/lib’
/usr/bin/mkdir -p ‘/usr/local/lib’
/bin/sh ../libtool –mode=install /usr/bin/install -c libcurl.la ‘/usr/local/lib’
libtool: install: /usr/bin/install -c .libs/libcurl.so.4.4.0 /usr/local/lib/libcurl.so.4.4.0
libtool: install: (cd /usr/local/lib && { ln -s -f libcurl.so.4.4.0 libcurl.so.4 || { rm -f libcurl.so.4 && ln -s libcurl.so.4.4.0 libcurl.so.4; }; })
libtool: install: (cd /usr/local/lib && { ln -s -f libcurl.so.4.4.0 libcurl.so || { rm -f libcurl.so && ln -s libcurl.so.4.4.0 libcurl.so; }; })
libtool: install: /usr/bin/install -c .libs/libcurl.lai /usr/local/lib/libcurl.la
libtool: install: /usr/bin/install -c .libs/libcurl.a /usr/local/lib/libcurl.a
libtool: install: chmod 644 /usr/local/lib/libcurl.a
libtool: install: ranlib /usr/local/lib/libcurl.a
libtool: finish: PATH=”/usr/local/jdk/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/root/bin:/sbin” ldconfig -n /usr/local/lib
———————————————————————-
Libraries have been installed in:
/usr/local/lib

Step 4 . Edit the file /var/cpanel/easy/apache/rawopts/all_php5 to enable custom CURL module with our downloaded latest asynchronous DNS package as below

root@server1 [~]# vim /var/cpanel/easy/apache/rawopts/all_php5
–with-gssapi
–with-curl=/usr/local/src/curl-7.46.0
–enable-ares=/usr/local/src/c-ares-1.10.0

Step 5. Run EasyApache to configure and install the latest CURL package.

root@server1 [~]#/scripts/easyapache

Step 6. Check and confirm the version and settings of the newly installed Curl version.

root@server1 [~]# curl-config –version
libcurl 7.46.0
root@server1 [/usr/local/src/curl-7.46.0]# curl-config –features –protocols
SSL
IPv6
UnixSockets
AsynchDNS
IDN
NTLM
NTLM_WB
DICT
FILE
FTP
FTPS
GOPHER
HTTP
HTTPS
IMAP
IMAPS
POP3
POP3S
SMB
SMBS
SMTP
SMTPS
TELNET
TFTP
root@server1 [/usr/local/src/curl-7.46.0]# curl –version
curl 7.46.0 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) libcurl/7.46.0 OpenSSL/1.0.1e c-ares/1.10.0 libidn/1.28
Protocols: dict file ftp ftps gopher http https imap imaps pop3 pop3s smb smbs smtp smtps telnet tftp
Features: AsynchDNS IDN IPv6 Largefile NTLM NTLM_WB SSL UnixSockets

Now you see our CURL is updated to the latest version available CURL 7.46.0 and it’s compiled with Asynchronous DNS to support all the required protocols. You can confirm the compiled curl status with a PHPINFO page.

PHP can be coded to make use of these asynchronous CURL requests to fasten the script execution more efficiently. I hope you find this article useful and informative. I would recommend your valuable comments and suggestions on this.

Enjoy!!

Nginx is one of the fastest and most powerful web-server. It is known for its high performance and low resource utilization. It can be installed as both a standalone and a Reverse Proxy Web-server. In this article, I’m discussing about the installation of Nginx as a reverse proxy along with Apache on a CPanel server with latest CentOS 7 installed.

Nginx as a reverse proxy will work as a frontend webserver serving static contents along with Apache serving the dynamic files in backend. This setup will boost up the overall server performance.

Let’s walk through the installation steps for Nginx as reverse proxy in CentOS7 x86_64 bit server with cPanel 11.52 installed.

First of all, we need to install the EPEL repo to start-up with the process.

Step 1 : Install the EPEL repo.

root@server1 [/usr]# yum -y install epel-release
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, tsflags, universal-hooks
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
* EA4: 66.23.237.210
* base: mirrors.linode.com
* extras: mirrors.linode.com
* updates: mirrors.linode.com
Resolving Dependencies
–> Running transaction check
—> Package epel-release.noarch 0:7-5 will be installed
–> Finished Dependency Resolution

Dependencies Resolved

===============================================================================================================================================
Package Arch Version Repository Size
===============================================================================================================================================
Installing:
epel-release noarch 7-5 extras 14 k

Step 2: After installing the repo, we can start with the installation of the nDeploy RPM repo for CentOS to install our required nDeploy Webstack and Nginx plugin.

root@server1 [/usr]# yum -y install http://rpm.piserve.com/nDeploy-release-centos-1.0-1.noarch.rpm
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, tsflags, universal-hooks
nDeploy-release-centos-1.0-1.noarch.rpm | 1.7 kB 00:00:00
Examining /var/tmp/yum-root-ei5tWJ/nDeploy-release-centos-1.0-1.noarch.rpm: nDeploy-release-centos-1.0-1.noarch
Marking /var/tmp/yum-root-ei5tWJ/nDeploy-release-centos-1.0-1.noarch.rpm to be installed
Resolving Dependencies
–> Running transaction check
—> Package nDeploy-release-centos.noarch 0:1.0-1 will be installed
–> Finished Dependency Resolution

Dependencies Resolved

===============================================================================================================================================
Package Arch Version Repository Size
===============================================================================================================================================
Installing:
nDeploy-release-centos noarch 1.0-1 /nDeploy-release-centos-1.0-1.noarch 110

Step 3: Install the nDeploy and Nginx nDeploy plugins.

root@server1 [/usr]# yum –enablerepo=ndeploy install nginx-nDeploy nDeploy
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, tsflags, universal-hooks
epel/x86_64/metalink | 9.9 kB 00:00:00
epel | 4.3 kB 00:00:00
ndeploy | 2.9 kB 00:00:00
(1/4): ndeploy/7/x86_64/primary_db | 14 kB 00:00:00
(2/4): epel/x86_64/group_gz | 169 kB 00:00:00
(3/4): epel/x86_64/primary_db | 3.7 MB 00:00:02

Dependencies Resolved

===============================================================================================================================================
Package Arch Version Repository Size
===============================================================================================================================================
Installing:
nDeploy noarch 2.0-11.el7 ndeploy 80 k
nginx-nDeploy x86_64 1.8.0-34.el7 ndeploy 36 M
Installing for dependencies:
PyYAML x86_64 3.10-11.el7 base 153 k
libevent x86_64 2.0.21-4.el7 base 214 k
memcached x86_64 1.4.15-9.el7 base 84 k
python-inotify noarch 0.9.4-4.el7 base 49 k
python-lxml x86_64 3.2.1-4.el7 base 758 k

Transaction Summary
===============================================================================================================================================
Install 2 Packages (+5 Dependent packages)

With these steps, we’ve completed with the installation of Nginx plugin in our server. Now we need to configure Nginx as reverse proxy and create the virtualhost for the existing cPanel user accounts. For that we can run the following script.

Step 4: To enable Nginx as a front end Web Server and create the default configuration files.

root@server1 [/usr]# /opt/nDeploy/scripts/cpanel-nDeploy-setup.sh enable
Modifying apache http and https port in cpanel

httpd restarted successfully.
Created symlink from /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/nginx.service to /usr/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service.
Created symlink from /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/ndeploy_watcher.service to /usr/lib/systemd/system/ndeploy_watcher.service.
Created symlink from /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/ndeploy_backends.service to /usr/lib/systemd/system/ndeploy_backends.service.
ConfGen:: saheetha
ConfGen:: satest

As you can see these script will modify the Apache port from 80 to another port to make Nginx run as a front end web server and create the virtual host configuration files for the existing cPanel accounts. Once it is done, confirm the status of both Apache and Nginx.

Apache Status:

root@server1 [/var/run/httpd]# systemctl status httpd
● httpd.service – Apache Web Server
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/httpd.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
Active: active (running) since Mon 2016-01-18 06:34:23 UTC; 12s ago
Process: 25606 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/apachectl start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 24760 (httpd)
CGroup: /system.slice/httpd.service
‣ 24760 /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd -k start

Jan 18 06:34:23 server1.centos7-test.com systemd[1]: Starting Apache Web Server…
Jan 18 06:34:23 server1.centos7-test.com apachectl[25606]: httpd (pid 24760) already running
Jan 18 06:34:23 server1.centos7-test.com systemd[1]: Started Apache Web Server.

Nginx Status:

root@server1 [~]# systemctl status nginx
● nginx.service – nginx-nDeploy – high performance web server
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
Active: active (running) since Sun 2016-01-17 17:18:29 UTC; 13h ago
Docs: http://nginx.org/en/docs/
Main PID: 3833 (nginx)
CGroup: /system.slice/nginx.service
├─ 3833 nginx: master process /usr/sbin/nginx -c /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
├─25473 nginx: worker process
├─25474 nginx: worker process
└─25475 nginx: cache manager process

Jan 17 17:18:29 server1.centos7-test.com systemd[1]: Starting nginx-nDeploy – high performance web server…
Jan 17 17:18:29 server1.centos7-test.com nginx[3804]: nginx: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok
Jan 17 17:18:29 server1.centos7-test.com nginx[3804]: nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful
Jan 17 17:18:29 server1.centos7-test.com systemd[1]: Started nginx-nDeploy – high performance web server.

Nginx act as a frontend webserver running on port 80 and Apache configuration is modified to listen on http port 9999 and https port 4430. Please see their status below:

root@server1 [/usr/local/src]# netstat -plan | grep httpd
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:4430 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 17270/httpd
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:9999 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 17270/httpd
tcp6 0 0 :::4430 :::* LISTEN 17270/httpd
tcp6 0 0 :::9999 :::* LISTEN 17270/httpd

root@server1 [/usr/local/src]# netstat -plan | grep nginx
tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:80 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 17802/nginx: master
tcp 0 0 45.79.183.73:80 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 17802/nginx: master

The virtualhost entries created for the existing users as located in the folder “/etc/nginx/sites-enabled“. This file path is included in the Nginx main configuration file.

root@server1 [/etc/nginx/sites-enabled]# ll | grep .conf
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 311 Jan 17 09:02 saheetha.com.conf
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 336 Jan 17 09:02 saheethastest.com.conf

Sample Vhost for a domain:

server {

listen 45.79.183.73:80;
#CPIPVSIX:80;

# ServerNames
server_name saheetha.com www.saheetha.com;
access_log /usr/local/apache/domlogs/saheetha.com main;
access_log /usr/local/apache/domlogs/saheetha.com-bytes_log bytes_log;

include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/saheetha.com.include;

}

We can confirm the working of the web server status by calling a website in the browser. Please see the web server information on my server after the installation.

root@server1 [/home]# ip a | grep -i eth0
3: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP qlen 1000
inet 45.79.183.73/24 brd 45.79.183.255 scope global dynamic eth0
root@server1 [/home]# nginx -v
nginx version: nginx/1.8.0

Nginx will create the virtual host automatically for any newly created accounts in cPanel. With these simple steps we can configure Nginx as reverse proxy on a CentOS 7/CPanel server.

Advantages of Nginx as Reverse Proxy:

1. Easy to install and configure
2. Performance and efficiency
3. Prevent DDOS attacks
4. Allows .htaccess PHP rewrite rules

I hope this article is useful for you guys. Thank you for referring to this. I would appreciate your valuable comments and suggestions on this for further improvements.

Hi All, In this article we are going to setup Laravel on CentOS 7 and Ubuntu 15.04. If you are a PHP web developer then you don’t need to worry about of all modern PHP frameworks, Laravel is the easiest to get up and running that saves your time and effort and makes web development a joy. Laravel embraces a general development philosophy that sets a high priority on creating maintainable code by following some simple guidelines, you should be able to keep a rapid pace of development and be free to change your code with little fear of breaking existing functionality.

Laravel’s PHP framework installation is not a big deal. You can simply follow the step by step guide in this article for your CentOS 7 or Ubuntu 15 server.

1) Server Requirements

Laravel depends upon a number of prerequisites that must be setup before installing it. Those prerequisites includes some basic tuning parameter of server like your system update, sudo rights and installation of required packages.

Once you are connected to your server make sure to configure the fully qualified domain name then run the commands below to enable EPEL Repo and update your server.

CentOS-7

# yum install epel-release

# rpm -Uvh https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm
# rpm -Uvh https://mirror.webtatic.com/yum/el7/webtatic-release.rpm

# yum update

Ubuntu

# apt-get install python-software-properties
# add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php5

# apt-get update

# apt-get install -y php5 mcrypt php5-mcrypt php5-gd

2) Firewall Setup

System Firewall and SELinux setup is an important part regarding the security of your applications in production. You can make firewall off if you are working on test server and keep SELinux to permissive mode using the below command, so that you installing setup won’t be affected by it.

# setenforce 0

3) Apache, MariaDB, PHP Setup

Laravel installation requires a complete LAMP stack with OpenSSL, PDO, Mbstring and Tokenizer PHP Extensions. If you are already running LAMP server then you can skip this step to move on and just make sure that the required PHP extensions are installed.

To install AMP stack you can use the below commands on your respective server.

CentOS

# yum install httpd mariadb-server php56w php56w-mysql php56w-mcrypt php56w-dom php56w-mbstring

To start and enable Apache web and MySQL/Mariadb services at bootup on CentOS 7 , we will use below commands.

# systemctl start httpd
# systemctl enable httpd

#systemctl start mysqld
#systemctl enable mysqld

After starting MariaDB service, we will configure its secured password with below command.

#mysql_secure_installation

Ubuntu

# apt-get install mysql-server apache2 libapache2-mod-php5 php5-mysql

4) Install Composer

Now we are going to install composer that is one of the most important requirement before starting the Laravel installation that helps in installing Laravel’s dependencies.

CentOS/Ubuntu
Run the below commands to setup ‘composer’ in CentOS/Ubuntu.

# curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
# mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer
# chmod +x /usr/local/bin/composer

5) Installing Laravel

Laravel’s installation package can be downloaded from github using the command below.

# wget https://github.com/laravel/laravel/archive/develop.zip

To extract the archived package and move into the document root directory use below commands.

# unzip develop.zip

# mv laravel-develop /var/www/

Now use the following compose command that will install all required dependencies for Laravel within its directory.

# cd /var/www/laravel-develop/
# composer install

6) Key Encryption

For encrypter service, we will be generating a 32 digit encryption key using the command below.

# php artisan key:generate

Application key [Lf54qK56s3qDh0ywgf9JdRxO2N0oV9qI] set successfully

Now put this key into the ‘app.php’ file as shown below.

# vim /var/www/laravel-develop/config/app.php

7) Virtua Host and Ownership

After composer installation assign the permissions and apache user ownership to the document root directory as shown.

# chmod 775 /var/www/laravel-develop/app/storage

# chown -R apache:apache /var/www/laravel-develop

Open the default configuration file of apache web server using any editor to add the following lines at the end file for new virtual host entry.

# vim /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

ServerName laravel-develop
DocumentRoot /var/www/laravel/public

start Directory /var/www/laravel
AllowOverride All
Directory close

Now the time is to restart apache web server services as shown below and then open your web browser to check your localhost page.

CentOS

# systemctl restart httpd

Ubuntu

# service apache2 restart

8) Laravel 5 Web Access

Open your web browser and give your server IP or Fully Qualified Domain name and you will see the default web page of Laravel 5 frame work.

Conclusion

Laravel Framework is a great tool to develop your web applications. So, at the end of this article you have learned its installation setup on Ubuntu 15 and CentOS 7 , Now start using this awesome PHP framework that provides you a lot of more features and comfort in your development work. Feel free to comment us back for your valuable suggestions an feedback to guide you in more specific and easiest way.

Direct Admin is a Graphical User Interface (GUI) web hosting control panel that provides you the administrative options for managing all the parts of your hosting account and can be used for the management of web hosting and making your users easier to perform common web hosting account management tasks. DirectAdmin automates the tasks for creating separate packages and defining your customized rules so that the web servers can be easily shared and give web site owners a way to quickly set-up and manage their web sites.

The DirectAdmin control panel is very low cost and has become one of the most popular web hosting control panel in use today that provided every feature that you would like to set up on your web site with shared hosting.

Preparing Servers

In this article we going to show you the complete installation steps for DirectAmin Web Hosting control Panel on CentOS 6 and CentOS 7 servers.

1) Hostname Setup

Let’s prepare your CentOS server with basic parameters by configuring its proper Host names and IP address. To configure the basic server parameters, login to your server using the root or sudo credentials and configure your host name using below commands.

CentOS 6

# vi /etc/sysconfig/network
HOSTNAME=cantos-6

# vi /etc/hosts
72.25.10.175 centos-6 centos-6.linoxide.com

CentOS 7

# Hostnamectl set-hostname centos-7

# vi /etc/hosts
72.25.10.173 centos-7 centos-7.linoxide.com

2) Firewall Settings

After host name setup configure your firewall and SELinux to permissive mode so that you won’t get any issue during your installation setup but keep a note that enable it back and allow only your required ports in firewall if you are working on production environment.

CentOS 6

# Service iptables start

# vi /etc/sysconfig/selinux
SELINUX=permissive

CentOS 7

# systemctl start firewalls

# setenforce 0

3) System Update

Now run the following command to update your CentOS 6/7 servers with latest patches and updates.

# yum update

You asked to press Y for Yes and N for No to exit from the update, so press “Y” key and hit enter to start installing missing packages and their updates.

4) Installing Packages

Before starting the DirectAdmin installation setup, we will be installing few packages that must be installed on your CentOS 6 or 7 server.

Let’s run the below command to install some dependent packages on your CentOS server.

CentOS 6

# yum install wget zip unzip gcc gcc-c++ flex bison quota make perl bind bind-libs bind-utils openssl openssl-devel libaio libcom_err-devel libcurl-devel gd zlib-devel libcap-devel cronie bzip2 autoconf automake libtool which patch mailx cyrus-sasl-devel perl-ExtUtils-Embed db4-devel

After successful execution of above command you will be asked whether to proceed for the installation of these packages including their dependencies and updates. So, press “Y” key to proceed the installation.

CentOS 7

In CentOS 7, we need to install the following dependencies for with addition to some general packages installation as shown below.

# yum install wget unzip psmisc net-tools libdb-devel perl-DBI systemd-devel

Downloading DirectAdmin

To download the latest installation script for DirectAdmin we will be using the following command on CentOS 6/7 servers as shown.

# wget http://www.directadmin.com/setup.sh

Assign the executable permissions to the downloaded script by using the below command.

# chmod 755 setup.sh

Now you can see by list your current directory that it should have the proper executable permissions.

Starting DirectAdmin Installation:

To start installation of DirectAdmin on CentOS 6/7, let’s point to installation script and execute it within your current direct directory where you have downloaded then press “Y” key to install the required pre installation packages as shown.

#./setup.sh

*** 64-bit OS ***

*****************************************************
*
* DirectAdmin requires certain packages, described here:
* http://help.directadmin.com/item.php?id=354
*
* Would you like to install these required pre-install packages? (y/n): y

This might take a while to install the prerequisites, after that you will be asked to configure some of the following settings. So, choose the best appropriate answers according to your environment and give correct Client ID and License ID that you have got from DirectAdmin against your public IP.

Complete!
*
*****************************************************

Please enter your Client ID : xxxxx
Please enter your License ID : xxxxxx
Please enter your hostname (server.domain.com)
It must be a Fully Qualified Domain Name
Do *not* use a domain you plan on using for the hostname:
eg. don’t use domain.com. Use server.domain.com instead.
Do not enter http:// or www

Enter your hostname (FQDN) : centos-7.linoxide.com
Client ID:
License ID:
Hostname: centos-007.linoxide.com
Is this correct? (y,n) : y
Is ens160 your network adaptor with the license IP (72.25.10.173)? (y,n) : y
Your external IP: xx.xx.xx.xx
The external IP should typically match your license IP.

Is 72.25.10.173 the IP in your license? (y,n) : y

DirectAdmin will now be installed on: Enterprise 7.1
Is this correct? (must match license) (y,n) : y
You have chosen custombuild 2.0.
–2015-12-08 22:13:35– http://files.directadmin.com/services/custombuild/2.0/custombuild/build
Resolving files.directadmin.com (files.directadmin.com)… 69.162.69.58, 208.167.226.3, 216.144.254.90
Connecting to files.directadmin.com (files.directadmin.com)|69.162.69.58|:80… connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 200 OK
Length: 617821 (603K)
Saving to: ‘/usr/local/directadmin/custombuild/build’

100%[====================================================================================>] 617,821 431KB/s in 1.4s

2015-12-08 22:13:37 (431 KB/s) – ‘/usr/local/directadmin/custombuild/build’ saved [617821/617821]

Would you like the default settings of apache 2.4 with mod_ruid2 and php 5.5 cli? (y/n):y

After downloading the updates and packages with your client id and license id for your IP address you see a multiple number of DirectAdmin processes taking place on your screen to complete the installation setup.

DirectAdmin Web Access

Upon successful completion of the installation setup of DirectAdmin, you can access its Web Console on your web browser with the FQDN of your server and port ‘2222’.

http://your-servers-ip:2222

Make sure that the port 80 and 2222 is allowed in your firewall/iptable settings.

Conclusion

In this article you have learned about installation of DirectAdmin on CentOS 6 and 7 server. DirectAdmin is one the best alternative to WHM-cPanel and its quite cheap and fairly easily to setup. Thank you for reading this article we hope you find it much helpful. Don’t forget to leave your valuable comments.

Hello Everybody! Welcome to our today’s article on one the most widely used, free of cost and Open Source Munin Network Resource Monitoring System. Its a perl software application can help you monitoring your each and every asset that keeps record of it and sends you the critical alerts of services for your servers, switches, applications, and any any other devices connected to your network whether its your computers, network, storage or the whole IT infrastructure. It shows all the information in graphs through a web interface that emphasis on plug and play capabilities.

Munin has a master/node architecture in which the master connects to all the nodes at regular intervals and asks them for data, then stores the data in RRD files to updates the graphs if needed. So, after completing its installation a high number of monitoring plugins will be playing with no more effort.

Prerequisites

Your systems hardware resources depends upon your own requirements while in this article we will be using the following system resource for Munin installation on CentOS 7.

Munin installation setup requires the basic web server packages to be installed on the server. So, after basic networking setup configure your hostname, IP address and firewall settings by keeping SELinux into permissive mode.

Then start installing packages by update your system first and enabling EPEL repository on it using below commands.

# yum install epel-release
# rpm –import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-EPEL-7

# yum update

You will be asked to press “Y” key and hit Enter to proceed for installing all required updates. Once the updates are successfully installed on your system then proceed to the installation of Apache Web server.

Apache Web Setup

To setup your Apache web server, we need to start by installing its package using the below ‘yum’ command.

# yum install httpd

Upon completion of packages installation, start and enable its service and check that its active and enabled using the following commands respectively.

# systemctl enable httpd
# systemctl start httpd
# systemctl status httpd

Installing Munin

We can install Munin and Munin Node using the below ‘yum’ command through its available repository on CentOS 7 as shown.

# yum install munin munin-node

Hit “Y” plus Enter key to start installation of Munin and Munin Noe including a large number its required dependencies.

Once the installation is complete, start its service and enable it at auto start during reboot by using the following commands.

Munin Configurations

Now configure Munin by open its default configuration using any editor as used in below command.

# vim /etc/munin/munin.conf

# a simple host tree, change localhost with your FQDN.

[localhost]
address 127.0.0.1
use_node_name yes
:wq!

After saving the Munin configuration file, Open its apache virtual host configuration file to add access permissions to your network.

# vim /etc/httpd/conf.d/munin.conf

After saving the configuration file changes , restart apache web server service using command below.

# systemctl restart httpd

Now we are going to add a new user and password to the /etc/munin/munin-htpasswd file as the Munin statistics are protected with a username and password, so we need to setup the basic Apache Authentication.

# htpasswd -c /etc/munin/munin-htpasswd admin

This will add a new user with the name “admin” and asks for the new password as shown.

# vi /etc/munin/munin-node.conf

host_name munin.linoxide.com

Save and close the file and restart munin-node services and access the following link by mentioning your FQDN or IP from the client which is in your network that was allowed in configuration file.

http://your_servers_IP/munin

Welcome to Munin Web Console

Here is the Munin dashboard, now you can check the graphs of your required servers.

We can customize Munin dashboard by adding different available plugins and add multiple node to it. While using its web console we have options to create multiple groups and categories according to the required group of services.

You can check and see the status of your critical service by opening its graph from the Munin web console that will show you the current and past data from its maintained hostory as shown in below image.

Conclusion

Munin installation has been setup. We hope you have enjoyed reading this article. The installation of Munin is quite simple, now simply add the client node and start monitoring your whole IT infrastructure using this awesome tool without paying any charges. Now enjoy using Munin on your environment and feel free to share your thoughts or suggestions in comments section.

This time we are going to talk about the Internet Relay Chat, or simply IRC. In the first part of this article we will review this protocol, how to use Irssi or XChat to connect on Freenode and other IRC networks,enter on channels and talk to people. After that, you will see how to start your own IRC service with UnrealIRCd.

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Connecting on IRC
• Basic IRC commands
• Serving IRC with UnrealIRCd

Introduction

You may remember the IRC chats, when there was no such thing as Facebook Google+ or LinkedIn and our social networks were IRC chat channels. Today we have a lot of alternatives to talk to someone on the internet, along with the social networks we have many popular messaging services, such as Whatsapp, Skype, Hangouts and so on.

However, despite IRC is not the main communication program on the internet, it is still alive and a great tool. It is a lightweight, widely deployed and  standardized protocol, originally created on 1988 by BBS users as a replacement and improvement for the talk program and that by its characteristics, saw the birth and death of many other messaging systems.

Connecting on IRC

To connect to an IRC network, you will need a client software. Here are some good clients for Linux.

Irssi

Irssi is a curses based IRC client, it is pretty great, customizable, allows the use of scripts and dismiss the need of a X server.

Install

yum install irssi

Connect to a network with the -c flag,

irssi -c irc.freenode.org

To switch between Irssi windows can be a little tricky at the first time,  you can use [Ctrl+n] to go to next window and [Ctrl+p] for the previous. the /window command.

/window [ next | previous ]

Use the list parameter to display a list with the open windows

/window list

You can then jump to the listed window number with [Alt+#], where # is the window number between 1-9. Another way to do this is with the goto parameter

/window goto [1-9]

You can also find good tips on how to use Irssi on quadpoint website.

XChat

XChat simplify the process for new comers by giving you point and click options to commands and most actions.

You can install XChat with yum

yum install xchat

Connect to IRC networks, using the dialog presented to you when you just start XChat, also accessible from  menu XChat->Network List [Ctrl+s]

As you sucessfully connect to the network, you can select one of the options to join to channels. You can also use the menu Server->List of Channels.

Basic IRC commands

Now you have a client ,here are some commands that you can use on IRC. When you first connect on a network, you will be given a nickname based on your system login by the client, and to change your nickname to Tuxman for instance, try this.

/nick Tuxman

With a new, you may want to enter on a channel. To list channels related to development try

/list #devel*

Once you find the channel you are interested on, try to join with /join #channelname.

/join #linux

OK, you are on a channel, you can start talking now, to know who is on the channel, do this with names

/names

Maybe you want to know more about who is someone on the network, try whois.

/whois MrRobot

Want to a chat window with someone? query.

/query MrRobot

Register you nick

You don’t need to create an account to chat on IRC networks. However, if you want to prevent your nickname of being be used by someone else, you must register you nickname on the network. This will also give you access to resources that require registered nicknames, such as cloaking and access to more channels.

Let’s suppose that you want to register the Tuxman nickname on Freenode. Ask the NickServ to REGISTER your nickname

/msg NickServ REGISTER password me@email.com

After that you must get your verification code that was sent to the email you provided and send it to NickServ

/msg NickServ VERIFY REGISTER nickname verifycode

You have registered your nickname, now you can identify yourself to the network

/msg NickServ IDENTIFY password

Connect and identify at Irssi startup with -n and -w flags.

irssi -c irc.freenode.net -n nickname -w password

You should also change your password from time to time, use the following command

/msg nickserv set password newpassword

Installing UnrealIRCd

Among other Ircd implementations there is the UnrealIRCd. It is fully featured, modular and highly documented, also the most implemented IRC server nowadays, corresponding to more than 50% of the currently running IRC servers.

Extra Requirements

Here is some requirements to get best of your UnrealIRCd, despite it is not required, it is strongly recommended as you will see.

Ntp – You must have correct time and date, ntp is your best choice to maintain time and date correct.

Install ntp

yum install ntp

Enable ntpd

chkconfig ntpd on

OpenSSL – This is also optional,  this will be used if you want SSL/TLS support.

yum install openssl

Zlib – This will let you to compress the network packets and reduce the load over the links.

yum install zlib

Get UnrealIRCd

Download Unrealircd.

wget –no-check-certificate https://www.unrealircd.org/downloads/Unreal3.2.10.5.tar.gz

Extact the tarball

tar zxvf Unreal3.2.10.5.tar.gz

Enter the sources tree

cd Unreal*

Enable chroot irc user and irc group (recommended)

This step is optional but strongly recommended as it will allow you to drop superuser rights and run UnreadIRCd under an unprivileged user account, inside a chrooted environment, and thus will make the whole setup much safer.

To do this you must edit include/config.h file within the sources directory.

Chroot environment feature is defined by the following directive

/* #define CHROOTDIR    */

Define the IRC_USER constant

/* #define IRC_USER  “<user name>” */

Define the IRC_GROUP constant

/* #define IRC_GROUP “<group name>” */

Create group for ircd

groupadd ircd

Create ircd user and add it to the ircd group.

useradd ircd -s /bin/false -g ircd

Set the password for the ircd user to make sure no one can enter.

passwd ircd

Configure the build

At this point you follow the questions on the screen,  and you can use default settings most of then, however, I advice you to answer Yes when asked to enable ssl support.

./config

Build the sources

make

Install files

make install

If you enabled the ircd user, group and chroot features, you should now change the ownership of UnrealIRCd directory.

chown -R ircd:ircd /home/ircd/UnrealIRCd

Configure

It is time to make your IRC daemon work. For this edit the unrealircd.conf, the configuration file for UnrealIRCd. You can find the well documented file doc/sample.conf under your UnrealIRCD directory tree, it may help you in your journey. I created this working snippets with a brief description.

me – This block sets some basic server settings, name, basic info and the numeric value that must be unique across server on the same network.

me {

name “irc.localhost”;
info “My Server”;
numeric 1;

};

admin –  Here you set who is the server administrator, its name, nickname and email.

admin {

“George Jedi”; /* Name */
“geroge”;/* Nick Name */
“george@heaven.net”; /* Email */

};

class clients/servers – This sets how clients and other servers are handled by the our server respectively. ping frequency, maximum of clients connections, frequency of reconnection tries, receive and send queues.

class clients {

pingfreq 90;
maxclients 500;
sendq 100000;
recvq 8000;

};’

class servers {

pingfreq 90;
maxclients 10; /* Max servers we can have linked at a time */
sendq 1000000;
connfreq 100; /* How many seconds between each connection attempt */

};

allow – Define who can connect to the server and how. First block allows user connections from any IP or hostname and limits the connections to 5 per IP. Second block allows only one authenticated connection to people from ugly.people.com

allow {

ip *;
hostname *;
class clients;
maxperip 5;

};

allow {

ip *@*;
hostname *@*.ugly.people.com;
class clients;
password “jayajaya”;
maxperip 1;

};

listen – Which ports to listen for connections. On the block we are listening at port 6697 for user clients connecting over secure socket layer (SSL). Note also the line simple statement for plaintext connections at port 6667

listen *:6697 {

options {

ssl;
clientsonly;

};

};
#listen *:8067;
listen *:6667;
#listen *:6660-6669;

oper – Operator attributes, in this example we use an operator nicknamed george that can connect from anywhere with the “fuba” password

oper george {
class clients;
from {
userhost *@*;
};

password “fuba”;
flags {

netadmin;
can_gkline;
can_kline;
can_unkline;
can_gzline;
can_zline;
can_restart;
can_die;
can_rehash;
global;

};

swhois “Example of a whois mask”;
snomask cFfkoSsqNG;

};

loadmodule – Loads modules, these are the minimum recommended

loadmodule “modules/commands.so”;
loadmodule “modules/cloak.so”;

log – How log files will be written, on the example we log events flagged as errors, kills and so

log ircd.log {

maxsize 5MB;
flags {

errors;
kills;
oper;
tkl;

};

};

set – You may set many other things here, in our example we have a network at domain gaia.net called gaianet, that connect people to the #welcome channel, we set 3 different alphanumeric cloak keys, set the hosts on the network, create a #help  channel and other options that are detailed on nrealircd.org.

set {

kline-address my@email.address;
auto-join #welcome;
op

options {

hide-ulines;

};

maxchannelsperuser 10;
services-server         “services.gaia.net”;
default-server              “localhost”;
network-name                “gaianet”;
help-channel                “#help”;
hiddenhost-prefix           “gaia”;

cloak-keys {

“aoAr1O6fh3Q6w4Hnl3J7hVz4Zb7x4YwpW”;
“andaoAr1HnR6gl3sJ7uhVzO6fh3Q6w4oN3”;
“a2Ja2JO6fh3Q6w4oNs7O6fh3Q6w4oN3s7”;

};

hosts {

local           “locop.gaia.net”;
global          “ircop.gaia.net”;
coadmin         “coadmin.gaia.net”;
admin           “admin.gaia.net”;
servicesadmin   “csops.gaia.net”;
netadmin        “netadmin.gaia.net”;
host-on-oper-up “no”;

};

};

Start UnrealIRCd

With all things in place, you can start your IRC daemon now.  Add the following command on rc.local to start UnrealIRCd when your system starts.

/home/ircd/UnrealIRCd/unreal start

It should run with no problems, however if face any problem during the startup, read the error messages on the terminal and also on the ircd.log file to figure out what is wrong.

Conclusion

You are done for now, your client and server should be running now, you can talk to people worldwide using some of the global networks or using your own network. However, it is a good idea to learn more on the IRC protocol, how to manage networks, channels and users, etc. The following documents should help you.

RFC documents

The following RFC defines the standards for the IRC protocol. You should read this before you can get best of IRC.

RFC-1459, RFC-2810, RFC-2811, RFC-2812, RFC-2813, RFC-7194

UnrealIRCd support and docs

Refer official documentation of UnrealIRCd to acquire more information. It contains all details that are not described on this document. You can also get help from IRC by connecting on irc.unrealircd.org:6667 on the #unreal-support channel. Thanks for reading!

Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator)) is a free and open source compatibility layer software application for the implementation of Windows based applications to run on Linux. Different applications have their own dependencies to run on any operating system. Windows programs won’t run on Linux and Linux programs won’t run on the Windows applications because both are the different operating operating systems developed in their own languages. So, in order to run Windows based applications on UNIX like operating system we need an intermediate application called WINE to be installed on Linux. Using WINE whenever a Windows based program tries to perform a function that Linux doesn’t normally understand, it will translate that program’s instruction into one supported by the system.

There are multiple features of using WINE like on the thin clients by simply installing Wine on a Linux server and access from any X Windows terminal by make existing Windows applications available on the Web by using VNC and its Java client.

1) Prerequisites

To install the latest version of Wine 1.8 on your Ubuntu 15 and CentOS 7 operating system, you need to complete the basic OS requirements before moving to the installation setup.

First of all open the command line terminal from the the drop down ‘Applications’ from your Ubuntu 15 or CentOS 7 desktop menu and run the commands below using root privileges to update your operating system with base system and security update.

On Ubuntu:

#apt-get update

On CentOS:

#yum install update

2) Download Wine 1.8 Source

You can download latest package 1.8 version of Wine to download.

You can directly download it on your system using the ‘wget’ command by copying the source link address by using the command below that would be same for both Ubuntu and CentOS systems.

# wget http://dl.winehq.org/wine/source/1.8/wine-1.8.tar.bz2

3) Extract the Archive

Change your directory to the extracted folder of Wine and then configure the source package by running the below command.

# tar -xvjf wine-1.8.tar.bz2

4) Compiling Wine 1.8

You need to enable 32 bit architecture in your 64 bit operating system for installing 32 Bit supporting packages. So, run the below commands as per your requirements.

For 32 Bit:

# ./configure

For 64 Bit:

# ./configure –enable-win64

You might get few warnings about some missing libraries that you can install on your Desktop system upon requirements and then proceed to with the compilation process by using the below command in your system.

# make

The compilation process would take some time to complete its compilation process. Once the compilation completes the finally run this command to install Wine on your Ubuntu or CentOS 7 system.

# make install

5) Installing Wine 1.8 Through PPA

You have the option to install the latest version of Wine 1.8 from the Official PPA of Ubuntu by using the following below commands on Ubuntu 15.

Enable 32 Bit Architecture

To enable 32 Bit software architecture system run the below command.

#dpkg –add-architecture i386

After adding teh Wine PPA repository Update your system packages by using the below commands.

#apt-get update

# add-apt-repository ppa:wine/wine-builds

More info: https://launchpad.net/~wine/+archive/ubuntu/wine-builds
Press [ENTER] to continue or ctrl-c to cancel adding it

gpg: keyring `/tmp/tmp2c2c3jtl/secring.gpg’ created
gpg: keyring `/tmp/tmp2c2c3jtl/pubring.gpg’ created
gpg: requesting key 77C899CB from hkp server keyserver.ubuntu.com
gpg: /tmp/tmp2c2c3jtl/trustdb.gpg: trustdb created
gpg: key 77C899CB: public key “Launchpad PPA for Wine” imported
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg: imported: 1 (RSA: 1)
OK

# apt-get install –install-recommends winehq-devel

You will be prompted to accept or reject by choose from the available options whether to proceed with installation or not.

6) Using Wine 1.8

You can check the version of your currently installed Wine 1.8 by executing the below command and see its version as shown in the image.

For 32 Bit and 64 bit installation of Wine you can execute the following commands respectively on your installation

# wine –version

# wine64 –version

To get help about using the Wine you can run the following command.

root@ubuntu:~/wine-1.8# wine64 –help
Usage: wine PROGRAM [ARGUMENTS…] Run the specified program
wine –help Display this help and exit
wine –version Output version information and exit

To run any windows based application on your Ubuntu and CentOS 7 Desktop run the below command.

root@ubuntu:~/wine-1.8# wine64 vlc-2.2.1-win64.exe

root@ubuntu:~# wine putty.exe

You can run the windows based applications by doing a right click and openning it with “Wine Windows Program Loader” as shown in the image.

7) Configure Wine

You can configure your Wine application by opening its configuration panel by running the below command in the terminal and then configure is different settings like adding new applications and Drivers as shown.

Conclusion

That’s it, we are successful in installing the latest version on Wine 1.8 on Ubuntu 15 and CentOS 7 by following the simple steps mentioned in this post. Now you can easily run your window’s based software applications on your Linux system and enjoy with your best X window operating System on Linux. You will get every thing in your Linux System that you want from your Windows system. Let’s enjoy using Wine on Linux and feel free to leave your comment for your valuable suggestions and comments, Cheers.