Open Tech Notes

Setup Clam Antivirus & SpamAssassin

I followed the original setup guide (part 14) and will make some modifications here

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vi /etc/clamd.conf

"Example" - should already be commented out. However, if it is not, make sure that it is commented out (#)
"LogFile" - should be set to /var/log/clamav/clamd.log
"LogTime" - should be uncommmented.
"LogSyslog" - should be uncommented.
"User" - should be set to qscand
"ScanMail" - should be uncommented.

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Because the user is set to qscand, I have to change the owner and group of /var/log/clamav to qscand. the commands as follow:

chgrp -R qscand /var/log/clamav
chown -R qscand /var/log/clamav

otherwise, it won’t start.

And

I need grant write permission to others, otherwise the virus definition update can’t proceed. the command is:

chmond -R o=rwx /var/log/clamav   (the original permission is rx)

Furthermore, here is the good place to download the latest version of Clamav

http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/clamav/

Setup Qmail on CentOS 4.4

Although Eric Siegel have done great job on how to setup Qmail on Liunx, I’d like to make a notes on how to setup Qmail on CentOS 4.4 Final.

Because of " CentOS is an open source free GNU Linux distribution which aims to be 100% compatible with and based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. " , I choose "Red hat" (from the flavor list)  to start.

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After I run ./config-fast newemail
I got this  message, it might be useful in the feature.

./configure –enable-cgibindir=/opt/lampp/cgi-bin –enable-htmldir=/opt/lampp/htdocs

<Directory "/opt/lampp/cgi-bin/vqadmin">
deny from all
Options ExecCGI
AllowOverride AuthConfig
Order deny,allow
</Directory>

In /opt/lampp/cgi-bin/vqadmin/, there is a file .htaccess, edit it as follow

AuthType Basic
AuthUserFile /opt/lampp/etc/.htpasswd
AuthName vQadmin
require valid-user
satisfy any

and run
chown nobody .htaccess  ( for the apache friends case, the username running apache is nobody)
htpasswd -bc /opt/lampp/etc/.htpasswd admin ‘admin_password’

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In part 8

Incompetent power supply could cause hard drive error

It’s very interesting! see someone discussed it here

If you are serious on  your business, don’t save money on the hardware, you will pay more on the labor cost!

By the way, this command might be useful on checking hard drive

smartctl

For example:

smartctl -a /dev/* (* can be hda, hdb, sda, sdb etc.)

Sync time with the time server

Just some command to remember

ntpdate ca.pool.ntp.org (or rdate -s ca.pool.ntp.org)
date
hwclock –systohc
hwclock

Improving MySQL database backup script

The original script is here

Reason: As usual, I checked the database backup file and found the size was really small. It meant the backup script had some problems. After then, I was told that the database’s root password had been changed. Oh, that was the culprit!

Now that I know what the problem is, how can I improve it?

The first thing comes to my mind is: I must add a flow controller statement which will tell me (by email)  if the backup process is successful.  But what if I read the email too late and the backup time is missed? Fortunately, the password is stored in a configuration file. Whenever the DB admin changes the password, she has to change the configuration file. So the better solution is: read the password from the configuration file instead of hard code in the script file.