Hardy Heron on VMware ESXi

Today I reinstall my home webserver again according to some file corruption problems. My web development hobby is become more and more critical and need to fix the mess around before moving forward. Otherwise I will have stupid simple problems later on. Then I decided to write the instruction how I made it to share and remind myself. My structure is Ubuntu 8.04.2 LTS on VMware ESXi 3.5 on Dell Optiplex SX280.

Ubuntu Server 8.04.2 installation on VMware ESXi 3.5

Intstall Ubuntu Server 8.04.2 LTS
Selected DNS Server, LAMP Server, Mail Server, OpenSSH Server, Samba Server

http://www.ibualoy.net//images/stories/itech/ubuntu/hardy-heron-install/software-selection/ubuntu-install-software-selection.gif

Update the aptitude

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Install Packages need for VMware Tools

sudo aptitude install build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r)

Install VMware Tools
Select Install/Upgrade VMware Tools in VMware Infrastructure Client
```
tar -vxzf VMwareTools*.gz
cd vmware-tools-distrib/
sudo ./vmware-install.pl
```

Note: Set normal partition disk setup, VMware is not support LVM.

Webmin Installation - Using the Webmin APT repository

If you like to install and update Webmin via APT, edit the /etc/apt/sources.list file on your system and add the line :

deb http://download.webmin.com/download/repository sarge contrib

You should also fetch and install my GPG key with which the repository is signed, with the commands :

 cd /root
 wget http://www.webmin.com/jcameron-key.asc
 apt-key add jcameron-key.asc

You will now be able to install with the commands :

apt-get update
apt-get install webmin

All dependencies should be resolved automatically.

Install additional packages

FTP Server - proftpd
MySQL Management - phpmyadmin
Image Library - php5-gd, imagemagick
DynDNS - ddclient

phpMyAdmin

Link: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/phpMyAdmin

Install phpMyAdmin from the Universe repository see InstallingSoftware for detailed instructions on using repositories and package managers.

From console:

sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin

If you're using Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy) or later select Apache2 from the "Configuring phpmyadmin" dialog box.

To set up under Apache all you need to do is include the following line in /etc/apache2/apache2.conf.

Include /etc/phpmyadmin/apache.conf

Once phpMyAdmin is installed point your browser to http://localhost/phpmyadmin to start using it. You should be able to login using any users you've setup in MySQL.

ddclient

Link: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DynamicDNS

More details required here. The documentation is good however, and there is a Ubuntu package for ddclient in the Ubuntu Universe.

Install ddclient and the package installer scripts will ask you for your information.

http://ddclient.sourceforge.net/?page=0

The following instructions is a wiki formatted excerpt from the ubuntu-users mailing list on the issue of repairing a ddclient setup: http://linux.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/Ubuntu/2007-12/msg01412.html Author: Unknown

1. Remove/purge all of the previous install attempts:

sudo apt-get remove --purge ddclient

2. Install ssh & ssh socket so that you can send your password via ssh instead of in the clear:

sudo apt-get install ssh libio-socket-ssl-perl

Note: ssh w/ddclient won't work without libio-socket-ssl-perl, so make sure that you install that even if you have ssh already installed.

2. Reinstall ddclient from the repo:

sudo apt-get install ddclient

At the prompts enter the appropriate values, for example:

Dynamic DNS service provider: www.dyndns.com DynDNS fully qualified domain names: your-hostname.dyndns.org Username for dynamic DNS service: your-username Password: your-password Enter the interface which is used for using dynamic DNS service: web

3. Modify the /etc/ddclient.conf to send the password using ssh and to properly check for the IP address:

gksu gedit /etc/ddclient.conf

Add entries for "daemon", "ssl" and replace "use=if, if=web" with "use=web" to match the following example:

# Configuration file for ddclient generated by debconf
#
# /etc/ddclient.conf

daemon=300
pid=/var/run/ddclient.pid
ssl=yes
use=web, web=checkip.dyndns.com/, web-skip='IP Address'
login=your-username
password=your-password
protocol=dyndns2
server=members.dyndns.org
your-hostname.dyndns.org

Reference for secure updates: https://www.dyndns.com/support/kb/using_ddclient_with_dyndns_services.html

Now ddclient is set to run as a daemon. Because you had other ddclient configs previously, check:

gksu gedit /etc/default/ddclient

Check to make sure it contains the following lines:

run_ipup="false"
run_daemon="true"
daemon_interval="300"

Note: you can set the interval shorter or longer, but if you do, also reset your /etc/ddclient.conf to match. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ddclient/+bug/152875

Now, just to be sure everything sticks I generally reboot at this point, then check the status afterwards:

sudo /etc/init.d/ddclient status

You should see:

Status of Dynamic DNS service update utility: ddclient is running

However, that may not always catch problems in the ddclient.conf file, so issue:

sudo /etc/init.d/ddclient restart

if you do not get an error similar to the following you probably are good to go:

WARNING: file /etc/ddclient.conf, line x

Then I obtain a new IP address/lease from my service provider (shutting off the modem, having my router request a new lease, whatever) & monitor https://www.dyndns.com/account/services/hosts/ to see if the change actually makes it to dyndns. Also monitor /var/log/syslog to watch the changes there as well.