Articles by Till Brehm

About Till Brehm

Over 20 years of experience as a software developer and Linux system administrator. Till Brehm is the founder and lead developer of the ISPConfig hosting control panel software (since 2000) and he founded HowtoForge in 2005 as a place to share Linux knowledge with other Linux enthusiasts.

• ISP Server Setup - OpenSUSE 10

  Author: Till Brehm • Tags: ispconfig, suse • Comments: 24

  ISP Server Setup - OpenSUSE 10 This is a detailed description about the steps to be taken to setup a OpenSUSE 10.0 based server that offers all services needed by ISPs and hosters (web server (SSL-capable), mail server (with SMTP-AUTH and TLS!), DNS server, FTP server, MySQL server, POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, etc.) and the ISPConfig control panel.

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• The Perfect Server - OpenSUSE 11

  Author: Till Brehm • Tags: ispconfig, suse • Comments: 5

  The Perfect Server - OpenSUSE 11 This is a detailed description about how to set up an OpenSUSE 11 server that offers all services needed by ISPs and hosters: Apache web server (SSL-capable), Postfix mail server with SMTP-AUTH and TLS, BIND DNS server, Proftpd FTP server, MySQL server, Dovecot POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, etc. This tutorial is written for the 32-bit version of OpenSUSE 11, but should apply to the 64-bit version with very little modifications as well.

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• The Perfect Setup - CentOS 4.4 (32-bit)

  Author: Till Brehm • Tags: centos, ispconfig • Comments: 13

  The Perfect Setup - CentOS 4.4 (32-bit) This is a detailed description about how to set up a CentOS 4.4 based server that offers all services needed by ISPs and hosters (web server (SSL-capable), mail server (with SMTP-AUTH and TLS!), DNS server, FTP server, MySQL server, POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, etc.). This tutorial is written for the 32-bit version of CentOS 4.4, but should apply to the 64-bit version with very little modifications as well.

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• MyDNS with MyDNSConfig Control Panel and DNSMasq on Ubuntu 6.10

  Author: Till Brehm • Tags: control panels, dns, mydns, ubuntu • Comments: 3

  MyDNS with MyDNSConfig Control Panel and DNSMasq on Ubuntu 6.10 In this tutorial I will describe how to install and configure MyDNS and MyDNSConfig. MyDNS is a DNS server that uses a MySQL database as backend instead of configuration files like, for example, Bind or djbdns. The advantage is that MyDNS simply reads the records from the database, and it does not have to be restarted/reloaded when DNS records change or zones are created/edited/deleted. A secondary nameserver can be easily set up by installing a second instance of MyDNS that accesses the same database or, to be more redundant, uses the MySQL master / slave replication features to replicate the data to the secondary nameserver.

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• How To Install VMware Server On Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake)

  Author: Till Brehm • Tags: ubuntu, virtualization, vmware • Comments: 23

  How To Install VMware Server On Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake)VMware has just released version 1.0 of its free VMware Server. With VMware Server you can create and run guest operating systems ("virtual machines") such as Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, etc. under a host operating system. This has the benefit that you can run multiple operating systems on the same hardware which saves a lot of money, and you can move virtual machines from one VMware Server to the next one (or to a system that has the VMware Player which is also free). In this article we use Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake) as the host operating system.

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• Building A Virtual Server (VPS) With Debian 3.1 (Sarge) And OpenVZ

  Author: Till Brehm • Tags: debian, openvz, virtualization • Comments: 8

  Building A Virtual Server (VPS) With Debian 3.1 (Sarge) And OpenVZ In this HowTo I will describe the steps to be taken to prepare a server for OpenVZ virtual machines on Debian 3.1 (Sarge) 32Bit Linux. With OpenVZ you can create multiple Virtual Private Servers (VPS) on the same hardware, similar to Xen and the Linux Vserver project. OpenVZ is the open-source branch of Virtuozzo, a commercial virtualization solution used by many providers that offer virtual servers. The OpenVZ kernel patch is licensed under the GPL license, and the user-level tools are under the QPL license.

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• Using XenExpress To Virtualize Your Server

  Author: Till Brehm • Tags: virtualization, xen • Comments: 1

  Using XenExpress To Virtualize Your Server This Howto covers the installation of XenExpress and the creation of virtual machines with the XenServer Administrator Console. XenExpress is the free virtualization platform from XenSource, the company behind the well known Xen virtualization engine. XenExpress makes it easy to create, run and manage Xen virtual machines with the XenServer Administrator Console. XenExpress can run up to 4 virtual machines at the same time with a max. total amount of 4GB RAM. The XenExpress installation CD contains a full Linux distribution which is customized to run XenExpress.

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• How To Install VMware Server On Debian 4.0 (Etch)

  Author: Till Brehm • Tags: debian, virtualization, vmware • Comments: 18

  How To Install VMware Server On Debian 4.0 (Etch) This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions about how to install the free VMware Server (version 1.0.2) on a Debian Etch system. With VMware Server you can create and run guest operating systems ("virtual machines") such as Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, etc. under a host operating system. This has the benefit that you can run multiple operating systems on the same hardware which saves a lot of money, and you can move virtual machines from one VMware Server to the next one (or to a system that has the VMware Player which is also free). In this article we use Debian Etch (4.0) as the host operating system.

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• How To Log Emails Sent With PHP's mail() Function To Detect Form Spam

  Author: till • Tags: apache, php, security, debian, email • Comments: 56

  How To Log Emails Sent With PHP's mail() Function To Detect Form Spam If you are running a webserver you might have faced the problem already: somewhere on your server is a vulnerable contact form or CMS system written in PHP that gets abused by spammers to send emails trough your server. If you have more than a few websites, it is a pain to detect which of the sites is vulnerable and sends the spam emails. This tutorial explains the installation of a small wrapper script which logs email messages sent trough the PHP mail() function.

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• Filtering PDF-/XLS-/Image-Spam With ClamAV (And ISPConfig) On Debian/Ubuntu

  Author: Till Brehm • Tags: antivirus, debian, email, ubuntu • Comments: 4

  Filtering PDF-/XLS-/Image-Spam With ClamAV (And ISPConfig) On Debian/Ubuntu There is currently a lot of spam where the spam "information" is attached as .pdf or .xls files, sometime also hidden inside a .zip file. While these spam mails are not easy to catch with e.g. SpamAssassin or a Bayes filter, the ClamAV virus scanner can catch them easily when it is fed with the correct signatures as ClamAV is built to scan mail attachments.

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