4 Adjust /etc/hosts

Next we edit /etc/hosts. Make it look like this:

vi /etc/hosts

# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1               localhost.localdomain localhost
192.168.0.100           server1.example.com server1
::1             localhost6.localdomain6 localhost6

It is important that you add a line for server1.example.com and remove server1.example.com and server1 from the 127.0.0.1 line.

5 Configure The Firewall

(You can skip this chapter if you have already disabled the firewall at the end of the basic system installation.)

I want to install ISPConfig at the end of this tutorial which comes with its own firewall. That's why I disable the default Fedora firewall now. Of course, you are free to leave it on and configure it to your needs (but then you shouldn't use any other firewall later on as it will most probably interfere with the Fedora firewall).

Run

system-config-firewall

and disable the firewall.

To check that the firewall has really been disabled, you can run

iptables -L

afterwards. The output should look like this:

[root@server1 ~]# iptables -L
Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination

Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination

Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination
[root@server1 ~]#

6 Disable SELinux

SELinux is a security extension of Fedora that should provide extended security. In my opinion you don't need it to configure a secure system, and it usually causes more problems than advantages (think of it after you have done a week of trouble-shooting because some service wasn't working as expected, and then you find out that everything was ok, only SELinux was causing the problem). Therefore I disable it (this is a must if you want to install ISPConfig later on).

Edit /etc/selinux/config and set SELINUX=disabled:

vi /etc/selinux/config

# This file controls the state of SELinux on the system.
# SELINUX= can take one of these three values:
#       enforcing - SELinux security policy is enforced.
#       permissive - SELinux prints warnings instead of enforcing.
#       disabled - No SELinux policy is loaded.
SELINUX=disabled
# SELINUXTYPE= can take one of these two values:
#       targeted - Targeted processes are protected,
#       mls - Multi Level Security protection.
SELINUXTYPE=targeted

Afterwards we must reboot the system:

reboot

7 Install Some Software

Next we update our existing packages on the system:

yum update

Now we install some software packages that are needed later on:

yum install fetchmail wget bzip2 unzip zip nmap openssl lynx fileutils ncftp gcc gcc-c++

8 Quota

(If you have chosen a different partitioning scheme than I did, you must adjust this chapter so that quota applies to the partitions where you need it.)

To install quota, we run this command:

yum install quota

Edit /etc/fstab and add ,usrquota,grpquota to the / partition (/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00):

vi /etc/fstab

#
# /etc/fstab
# Created by anaconda on Wed Nov 26 16:56:06 2008
#
# Accessible filesystems, by reference, are maintained under '/dev/disk'
# See man pages fstab(5), findfs(8), mount(8) and/or vol_id(8) for more info
#
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 /                       ext3    defaults,usrquota,grpquota        1 1
UUID=41be1fc5-8b1a-456d-9fb9-cd0f5d764f36 /boot                   ext3    defaults        1 2
tmpfs                   /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
devpts                  /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
sysfs                   /sys                    sysfs   defaults        0 0
proc                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01 swap                    swap    defaults        0 0

Then run

touch /aquota.user /aquota.group
chmod 600 /aquota.*
mount -o remount /
quotacheck -avugm
quotaon -avug

to enable quota.

9 Install A Chrooted DNS Server (BIND9)

To install a chrooted BIND9, we do this:

yum install bind-chroot

Next, we change a few permissions and start BIND:

chmod 755 /var/named/
chmod 775 /var/named/chroot/
chmod 775 /var/named/chroot/var/
chmod 775 /var/named/chroot/var/named/
chmod 775 /var/named/chroot/var/run/
chmod 777 /var/named/chroot/var/run/named/
cd /var/named/chroot/var/named/
ln -s ../../ chroot
chkconfig --levels 235 named on
/etc/init.d/named start

BIND will run in a chroot jail under /var/named/chroot/var/named/. I will use ISPConfig to configure BIND (zones, etc.).