Archive for the ‘System Management’ Category

Creating an encrypted file system with FreeBSD

The cryptographic tools in the FreeBSD operating system are able to protect data on file systems from highly motivated people with significant resources. Unlike other encryption methods, that encrypt individual files only, such as PGP, the cryptographic tools in FreeBSD transparently encrypt entire file systems. No clear text ever touches the hard drive.
In our example, [...]

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Key management for Pretty Good Privacy (PGP)

In order to begin protecting our privacy, such as protecting exchanging of private messages or protecting the storage of private files, by using signed and encrypted communication with the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) standard, we need to prepare our key rings, create our own key, share it and make it trustworthy.
Our key rings will consist [...]

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Data encryption and signing with The GNU Privacy Guard (GPG)

Privacy is being threatened.
The answer to this is to use software, that can

confirm, that messages is in fact from the expected sender,
confirm, that messages are authentic, and,
encrypt and decrypt messages, documents and files.

In terms of software, this is referred to as signed and encrypted messages. In order to do this, a pair of keys are [...]

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Updating the FreeBSD ports collection

here has been different ways to update the FreeBSD ports collection over time.
However, this is the recommended, simple, network friendly and firewall friendly procedure for updating the FreeBSD ports collection using the portsnap utility, which updates via internet from a FreeBSD mirror.
This procedure assumes, that the ports collection has been installed prior to updating, [...]

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Preparing internal and external storage for FreeBSD

Internal and external storage has to be prepared and formatted for the operating system FreeBSD to be able to use it. FreeBSD supports different ways to prepare storage. However, this is the recommended procedure for preparing and formatting internal or external storage for use with FreeBSD in a way, that is supported and compatible.
Create a [...]

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Open Source Days Community Day 2009

On Saturday, October 24th, Open Source Days will host the Community Day 2009 conference at Symbion in Copenhagen, which will include a number of simultanious talks on open source subjects.
The program has been published on the website.
The price is 145 DKK per guest and includes T-shirt and lunch.

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Configuring DHCP on a FreeBSD DNS server

The dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP) describes the means by which a system can connect to a network and obtain the necessary information for communication upon that network. The manual is available in the FreeBSD manual pages.
When the client is executed, it begins broadcasting requests for configuration information. By default, these requests are on UDP [...]

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Calculating CIDR notation from IP address netmask

If you need to calculate the classless inter domain routing notation (CIDR) from a given IP address netmask or IP address range, there are many free online calculators available, which will do the job.
CIDR simply replaces the subnet mask, such as 255.255.240.0, which expressed as CIDR notation is replaced with /20.
We recommend the calculator at [...]

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Upgrading WordPress

This is the procedure for upgrading a WordPress installation. It is based on the procedure from WordPress. However, this procedure is optimized for those, who has direct shell access to their web server.
Backup the database.
Backup the WordPress directory, download and install the new version.
cp -r www.foobar.com www.foobar.com-backup
cd www.foobar.com
rm -rf *
ftp http://wordpress.org/latest.zip
unzip latest.zip
rm latest.zip
mv wordpress/* .
rmdir [...]

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Setting up a new dynamic website, that uses a content management system

In our example, we want to set up a website, that has a log, a static page and a content management system behind it. We want to be able to change between different theme designs.
There are many of such open source systems around. We will choose WordPress for this example.
It is assumed, that system account [...]

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