(Suse/ Open SUSE) : How To Setup FTP Server On openSUSE 13.2/13.1

How To Setup FTP Server On openSUSE 13.2/13.1

This tutorial will describe how to install and configure a basic simple FTP server on openSUSE 13.2/13.1 using VSFTD.

vsftpd (Very Secure File Transport Protocol Daemon) is a secure, fast FTP server for Unix/Linux systems.

Install vsftpd

Login as root user using command:

su

Enter the following the following command to vsftpd package.

zypper in vsftpd

Start vsftpd service, and make it to start automatically on every reboot.

systemctl enable vsftpd
systemctl start vsftpd

Configure vsftpd

Create a folder for ftp users.

mkdir /srv/ftp

Create a group called ftp-users.

groupadd ftp-users

Create a sample user called unixmen with home directory /srv/ftp/, and assign the user to ftp-users group.

useradd -g ftp-users -d /srv/ftp/ unixmen

Set password for the new user.

passwd unixmen

Make the ftp home directory /srv/ftp/ accessible by ftp users.

chmod 750 /srv/ftp/
chown unixmen:ftp-users /srv/ftp/

Edit file vsftpd.conf,

nano /etc/vsftpd.conf

Make the changes as shown below.

[...]
# Uncomment and  Set YES to enable write.
write_enable=YES
[...]
# Uncomment and Set banner name for your website
ftpd_banner=Welcome to Unixmen FTP service.
[...]
# Uncomment
ls_recurse_enable=YES
[...]
# Uncomment and set YES to allow local users to log in.
local_enable=YES
[...]
# To disable anonymous access, set NO.
anonymous_enable=NO
[...]
# Uncomment to enable ascii download and upload.
ascii_upload_enable=YES
ascii_download_enable=YES
[...]
## Add at the end of this  file ##
use_localtime=YES

Save and exit file.

Test FTP Server in the local system itself

First let us try to login to our FTP server as shown below.

ftp localhost

Sample Output:

Trying ::1:21 ...
Connected to localhost.
220 (vsFTPd 3.0.2)
Name (localhost:skopensuse): unixmen  ## FTP user name
331 Please specify the password.
Password:   ## FTP user password
230 Login successful.
Remote system type is UNIX.
Using binary mode to transfer files.
ftp>

As you in the above output, we will be able to login to ftp server using unixmen user. Type quit to exit from ftp console.

Test FTP Server from a remote system

By default, openSUSE built-in firewall won’t allow to login to FTP from remote systems. So let us allow vsftpd service through suse firewall. To do that go to Yast -> Security and Users -> Firewall.

In the Firewall section, go to Allowed Services. In the zone selection drop down box, select External Zone and in Service to Allow drop-down box, select vsftpd server and click add.

Click Next, and close Yast Control center.

Now, try to connect from a remote system.

In my case, I tried from my Ubuntu desktop.

ftp 192.168.1.150

Sample output:

Connected to 192.168.1.150.
220 (vsFTPd 3.0.2)
Name (192.168.1.150:sk): unixmen
331 Please specify the password.
Password:
230 Login successful.
Remote system type is UNIX.
Using binary mode to transfer files.
ftp>

As you see in the above output, I will be able to connect to FTP server. If you didn’t allow the vsftpd service through firewall, you may get a Connection timed out error.

Connect from Browser

Open up your browser and Navigate to ftp://ip-address/. Enter the ftp user name and password.

Connect to FTP server using FileZilla

Working from command-line mode might be little bit annoying to newbies. So let us install a graphical FTP client called Filezilla to get things done quite easier:

Mostly, fileZilla is available on almost all Linux distributions default repositories.

On Ubuntu based systems:

sudo apt-get install filezilla

On Fedora/Redhat systems:

sudo yum install filezilla

On openSUSE/SUSE:

zypper in filezilla

After installing filezilla, open it, and enter the ftp server IP address, user name and password and clickquickconnect.

For added security, you can restrict FTP access to certain users by adding them to /etc/vsftpd.chroot_list file.

Edit vsftpd.conf file,

nano /etc/vsftpd.conf

Make the changes as shown below.

[...]
# Uncomment and set YES
chroot_local_user=YES
chroot_list_enable=YES
chroot_list_file=/etc/vsftpd.chroot_list
[...]

Create a new file /etc/vsftpd.chroot_list,

nano /etc/vsftpd.chroot_list

Add the users that you want to give access to FTP server. I added the user called unixmen.

unixmen

Restart ftp service.

systemctl restart vsftpd

Now you will be able to connect to FTP server with users in the chroot list file.

If you try to connect to FTP server with users other than in the chroot list, you may get the following error:

500 OOPS: could not read chroot() list file:/etc/vsftpd.chroot_list
ftp: Login failed

That’s it. Your FTP server is ready to use.

[Ubuntu]: System Program Problem Detected – How To Fix Or Remove It In Ubuntu?

System Program Problem Detected – How To Fix Or Remove It In Ubuntu?

if you’re an Ubuntu user, probably sometimes or often, you may get an error “System Program Problem detected”. Ubuntu has a built-in utility called Apport, which is used to notify you whenever a program crashes.

The Apport program will notify this error whenever you log in to your Ubuntu system. This is normal, you don’t have to panic or afraid of this error.

You have two choices to get rid of this error. By reporting this error, the developers may aware of the reasons that caused this error, and they might try to fix them in near future. Or you can simply disable this notifications permanently.

How To Fix It?

Well, you can’t fix this error yourself, but you can notify the developers to do it. This is the recommended way, and It doesn’t take too long. Click on the “Report Problem” button on the error dialog box. You’ll be asked to enter your administrative account password. Then, click Continue to send the error report to the developers to help fix this problem.

Make sure connected with an Internet connection. Once you submitted the error report, the developers might look into the reports, and try to fix the errors in the next releases.

After completing the submission, you can delete the crash report files from your local system. To view the list of crash report files, enter the following command:

ls /var/crash/

Sample output:

_usr_bin_gksu.1000.crash       _usr_sbin_fatresize.0.uploaded
_usr_bin_nm-applet.1000.crash  _usr_share_apport_apport-gtk.1000.crash
_usr_sbin_fatresize.0.crash    _usr_share_bleachbit_bleachbit.py.0.crash
_usr_sbin_fatresize.0.upload

Remove all of them using command:

sudo rm -fr /var/crash/*

Now, reboot the system, and check if that error comes again.

How To Disable it?

If the above method doesn’t help, and you’re keep getting the same error over and over, it is better to disable Apport feature permanently. Though it is not recommended, but you can keep away from this annoying error at every reboot.

To do that, edit file /etc/default/apport,

sudo nano /etc/default/apport

Find the line enabled=1, and change its value to 0(zero).

# set this to 0 to disable apport, or to 1 to enable it
# you can temporarily override this with
# sudo service apport start force_start=1
enabled=0

Save and close the file.

Then, stop the apport service.

sudo stop apport

Now, Apport won’t display any errors in future.

That’s it. Cheers!

[Ubuntu] : How To Automatically Disable Touchpad While Typing On Ubuntu

How To Automatically Disable Touchpad While Typing On Ubuntu

I am a technical writer, so I write a lot daily. I use my Dell Inspiron Laptop for writing articles. What actually my problem is when I type without focusing on my screen, after sometimes when I look at my computer’s screen, everything is just messed up, even some lines got deleted or some windows are closed unknowingly. This is because my palm of my left hand comes in contact to the Touchpad, and the cursor often changes it’s position, and it’s collapsed the whole content. It is really annoying and worst in some cases when I am focusing too much attention on my laptop keyboard without looking at the Screen.

So, I really need a app or tweak to disable Touchpad while typing. After searching in Google a bit, thankfully, there is an app called Touchpad-indicator, which is really useful tool to automatically disable Touchpad while typing or after connecting an external mouse. If you have the same problem like me, well, this tool will definitely help you.

Touchpad-indicator is developed by Mr.Lorenzo Carbonell. It is used to show the status of the Touchpad, and to enable or disable the Touchpad.

Installation

Thankfully, the author has created a PPA to ease the installation of Touchpad-indicator in Ubuntu and it’s variants. To install it, enter the following commands one by one from your Terminal. I tested this PPA on Ubuntu 14.04, and it worked well. Not sure about, Ubuntu 14.10 and 15.04.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:atareao/atareao
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install touchpad-indicator

Usage

Launch Toucpad-indicator either from the Unity dash or Menu.

You can use the system tray Touchpad-indicator icon to manually enable or disable the Touchpad, hide the icon, or to exit Touchpad-indicator.

From the Touchpad-indicator Preferences window, you can set a custom shortcut key to disable the Touchpad-indicator.

To auto start it at system start up, go to General options, and check the box that says: Autostart.

Also, you can hide it by clicking on the checkbox that indicates: Start hidden.

To change the system tray icon theme.go to Theme tab, and select your desired theme.

Also, you can disable the Touchpad when an external mouse plugged or when typing.

What do you expect more? It will really worth and useful tool for hardcore writers, document creators. Go, get it.

Cheers!

[CentOS/ RedHat]: Setup Document Management System Using OpenDocMan On CentOS 6.5

Setup Document Management System Using OpenDocMan On CentOS 6.5

Introduction

OpenDocMan is a free, web based, open source document management system written in PHP. It is licensed under GPL, which means you can use it freely and modify the source code any way you wish. It has multi-language support, and features web based access, fine grained control of access to files, and automated install and upgrades. If you’re looking for a centralized and robust document management system (DMS) for your organization, then OpenDocMan is definitely a good choice.

Features

- Add any type of documents to the system.
- No FTP or any special tools required. Upload directly from your browser.
- Meta data fields for each file.
- Assign a department/category to each file.
- Check-out feature to prevent over-writing of edits.
- Revision history.
- Documents are stored physically on the server.
- File expiration.
- Create custom document properties to match your companies needs.
- Automated document review process.
- Automated file expiration process.
- Reviewer can approve or reject a new document or a changed document.
- E-mail notification options prior to and after a review.
- Quick-browse search by author, department, or category.
- Full search by meta-data, author, department, category, file name, comments,etc.
- No external indexing processes required.

Prerequisites

Before installing OpenDocMan, your server should have a working LAMP stack. If you don’t have LAMP server installed on your server, refer any one of the following links to setup LAMP server.

- Install LAMP (Apache, MySQL, PHP) On CentOS / RHEL / Scientific Linux 6

Or

- Install LAMP (Apache, MariaDB, PHP) On CentOS / RHEL / Scientific Linux 6

Create database for OpenDocMan

Log in to mysql as root user:

mysql -u root -p

Create a database and user for OpenDocMan. For example, here I am going to create database called“opendocmandb” and database user called “opendocmanuser” respectively. Change these values as your liking.

Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or g.
Your MySQL connection id is 2
Server version: 5.5.35 MySQL Community Server (GPL) by Remi

Copyright (c) 2000, 2013, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its
affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
owners.

Type 'help;' or 'h' for help. Type 'c' to clear the current input statement.

mysql> create database opendocmandb;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.03 sec)

mysql> GRANT ALL ON opendocmandb.* TO opendocmanuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'centos';

mysql> flush privileges;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> exit
Bye

Adjust SELinux to avoid “403 forbidden error” while installing OpenDocMan. To do that, run the following commands from the Terminal:

setsebool -P httpd_enable_homedirs true
chcon -R -t httpd_sys_content_t /var/www/html/opendocman/

Download OpenDocMan

Download the latest version from this link.

wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/opendocman/files/opendocman/1.2.7.2/opendocman-1.2.7.2.zip

Unzip and move the opendocman folder to your apache root folder.

unzip opendocman-1.2.7.2.zip
mv opendocman-1.2.7.2/ /var/www/html/opendocman

Create a folder outside of your public html folder that will contain your data files. This will be your “dataDir” folder in the config.

mkdir /var/www/odm_data/

Make sure the permissions and ownership of the data folder will allow for the web server to write to it.

chown apache:apache /var/www/odm_data/
chmod -R ugo+w /var/www/odm_data/

Make sure there is a templates_c folder, and the templates_c folder is writable. If the folder doesn’t exists, create it.

chmod -R ugo+w /var/www/html/opendocman/templates_c/

Begin Installation

Open up your browser and navigate to URL http://ip-address/opendocman. The following screen should appear.

Click on Create Configuration File link.

Click on the link that says: Let’s go.

Fill up the database details and administrator password. Also, replace the path of the data folder with correct one. In our example, we use /var/www/odm_data/ as our data directory. And then, click Submit.

If the installer can’t create config.php file itself, it will throw the following warning message.

Don’t panic! Create a config.php file with contents as given in the above dialogue box.

vi /var/www/html/opendocman/config.php

Copy the text given in the above dialog box.

<?php
/*
config.php - OpenDocMan database config file
Copyright (C) 2011 Stephen Lawrence Jr.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307, USA.
*/

// Eliminate multiple inclusion of config.php
if( !defined('config') )
{
    define('config', 'true', false);

// config.php - useful variables/functions

// ** MySQL settings - You can get this info from your web host ** //
/** The name of the database for [OpenDocMan */
define('DB_NAME', 'opendocmandb');

/** MySQL database username */
define('DB_USER', 'opendocmanuser');

/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASS', 'centos');

/** MySQL hostname */
/* The MySQL server. It can also include a port number. e.g. "hostname:port" or a path to a 
 * local socket e.g. ":/path/to/socket" for the localhost.  */
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');

/**
 * Prefix to append to each table name in the database (ex. odm_ would make the tables
 * named "odm_users", "odm_data" etc. Leave this set to the default if you want to keep
 * it the way it was. If you do change this to a different value, make sure it is either
 * a clean-install, or you manually go through and re-name the database tables to match.
 * @DEFAULT 'odm_'
 * @ARG String
 */
$GLOBALS['CONFIG']['db_prefix'] = 'odm_';

/*** DO NOT EDIT BELOW THIS LINE ***/

/** Absolute path to the OpenDocMan directory. */
if ( !defined('ABSPATH') )
    define('ABSPATH', dirname(__FILE__) . '/');
}

Save and close the file. Then click Proceed to the installer button in the previous wizard.

Now you will get the following screen. Click on the link that starts with “New installation….” text. Please be mindful that the new installation will destroy all data’s. If you’re upgrading from older version to newer version, click on the links that starts with texts “Upgrade from….”.

Congratulations! We have successfully installed OpenDocMan.

Click on the link that says Click HERE to edit your site settings to log in to the OpenDocMan dashboard. Log in with the default user name admin and the password you created while creating config.php file.

This is how my administrative dashboard looked.

After installing/upgrading OpenDocMan, don’t forget to remove the install folder.

rm -fr /var/www/html/opendocman/install/

In the administrative section, you can adjust various things such as site title, maximum upload size, data directory etc. After defining all settings, hit the save button.

Admin Section

Click on the Admin tab on the top to navigate to Administrative section. In the admin section, you can add/delete/update users, department, category etc.

Also, you can adjust user permissions to access the particular files, departments and categories etc.

Adding Documents

Let us add a sample document. Navigate to Add Document section on the top.

Browse to the path to the document. Assign to the owner, department and select the Category etc. And, set the permissions to particular users if you want. Finally, click Submit to upload the document.

Now, the document is submitted to review. Once you submitted the document for review, your administrator can review and authorize documents.

To authorize the documents, log in as admin user. Go to the Admin tab, click on the link Reviews in the file section.

Select the document to review, and click Authorize to approve the document.

Now, you’ll see the authorized documents in the Home page.

That’s it! Your DMS is ready. Hope this helps. Good luck!

References:

OpenDocMan Home page

[Quick Tips] : How To Find IP Conflicts In Linux

How To Find IP Conflicts In Linux

You all know what IP addresses are, right? How they are assigned to devices on a network to represent them. They are assigned by DHCP servers and the change frequently. Now there are two kinds of IP’s. The dynamic ones who change frequently (a few times a day) and the static ones who, as the name suggests, are static, as in they don’t change. Sometimes that creates conflicts. When a dynamic IP is assigned and there is already another device on the network with the same static IP. Or it can happen when there are more than one DHCP servers giving IP’s on the same network from the same subnet. If you’re having connectivity issues and suspect it is due to IP conflict you can use a tool called arp-scan to detect them.

This tool sends ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) packets on local network to collect the addresses. If there is multiple MAC addresses claiming the same IP address, then there is conflict.

To install arp-scan on Ubuntu or Debian type:

$ sudo apt-get install arp-scan

For Fedora, CentOS or Redhat:

$ sudo yum install arp-scan

To detect IP conflicts, run the following:

$ sudo arp-scan –I eth0 -l

An output example:

192.168.1.10   00:1b:a9:63:a2:4c       BROTHER INDUSTRIES, LTD.
192.168.1.30   00:1e:8f:58:ec:49       CANON INC.
192.168.1.33   00:25:4b:1b:10:20       Apple, Inc
192.168.1.37   10:9a:dd:55:d7:95       Apple Inc
192.168.1.38   20:c9:d0:27:8d:56       (Unknown)
192.168.1.39   d4:85:64:4d:35:be       Hewlett Packard
192.168.1.39   00:0b:46:e4:8e:6d       Cisco (DUP: 2)
192.168.1.40   90:2b:34:18:59:c0       (Unknown)

In this instance, the 19.168.1.39 IP is in conflict since it appears twice.

[Quick Tips]: Monitorix – An Open Source, Lightweight System Monitoring Tool For Linux

Monitorix – An Open Source, Lightweight System Monitoring Tool For Linux

Introduction

Monitorix is a free, Open Source monitoring tool that can be used to monitor as many services and system resources as possible. Unlike other monitoring tools, it is very simple to install, configure and monitor the systems. Initially, it was developed to support only the RPM based systems such as Red Hat, CentOS etc., but, later it is expanded it’s support to other distributions like Debian/Ubuntu, and BSD systems such as FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD.

Since version 3.0, it comes with a built-in web server, so there is no need of any external webserver. It regularly collects the system and network resources of a Linux system, and displays the results as Graphs using RRDTool. It consists mainly of two programs called monitorix and monitorix.cgi. monitorix is a perl daemon which is started automatically just like as any system service, and monitorix.cgi is a CGI script. Monitorix is licensed under GNU GPLv2, so it is absolutely free to use, and distribute.

Features

Yet Monitorix is lightweight and simple, it has a comprehensive list of features like a enterprise network monitoring tools such as nagios or Zabbix.

Here is the list of features included in Monitorix.

• System load average and usage;
• Global kernel usage, Per-processor kernel usage;
• HP ProLiant System Health;
• LM-Sensors and GPU temperatures;
• NVIDIA temperatures and usage;
• Disk drive temperatures and health;
• Filesystem usage and I/O activity;
• Network traffic and usage;
• Display statistics of almost all services such as; Netstat, Process, mail, ftp, Apache, nginx, lighttpd, MySQL, Squid proxy web cache, NFS server/client, Bind, NTP, Fail2ban, Icecast streaming, Raspberry pi sensor, Alternative PHP Cache, Memcached, APC UPS, Wowza Media Server & Libvert etc.
• System services demand;
• Network port traffic;
• Users using the system;
• Support for monitoring remote servers;
• Alert capabilities supported;
• Ability to include additional configuration file(s);
• Ability to view statistics per day, week, month or year;
• Ability to view statistics in graphs or in plain text tables;
• Ability to zoom in any graph to see it in more detail;
• Ability to show network metrics in MBytes/sec or Mbits/sec;
• Ability to show temperatures in Celsius or in Fahrenheit;
• Ability to configure the number of years of historical data (up to 5 years);
• Web interface offers minimal learning, ubiquitous access;
• Configuration with only one text-plain file;
• Silent mode to be able to retrieve the graphs from scripts;
• And many more.

Installation

Install Monitorix in RPM based systems:

First of all, add EPEL repository in your server. In our case, I tested this how-to on CentOS 7 64bit.

• Install And Enable EPEL Repository On CentOS 7

If you use CentOS 6.x like systems, use the following link to install EPEL Repository.

• Install And Enable EPEL Repository On CentOS 6.x

Now, install the following prerequisites.

yum install rrdtool rrdtool-perl perl-libwww-perl perl-MailTools perl-MIME-Lite perl-CGI perl-DBI perl-XML-Simple perl-Config-General perl-HTTP-Server-Simple

Then, go to Monitorix download page, and get the the latest version. As of writing this, the most recent version was 3.6.0.

wget http://www.monitorix.org/monitorix-3.6.0-1.noarch.rpm

Now, install the downloaded Monitorix RPM file using the following command:

rpm -ivh monitorix-3.6.0-1.noarch.rpm

Once succesfully installed, please take a look into the configuration file /etc/monitorix.conf to set the options according your system and enable or disable graphs.

Finally start Monitorix service using command:

On CentOS 7:

systemctl start monitorix

On CentOS 6.x:

service monitorix start
chkconfig monitorix on

Be mindful that, some graphs might not be visible due to SELInux. So, disable it to view all graphs.

vi /etc/sysconfig/selinux

Change SELINUX=enforcing to SELINUX=disabled.

[...]
SELINUX=disabled
[...]

Reboot your system.

That’s it. Monitorix has been successfully installed on your system.

Install Monitorix in DEB based systems:

First, update your system:

sudo apt-get update

Install the following prerequisites:

sudo apt-get install rrdtool perl libwww-perl libmailtools-perl libmime-lite-perl librrds-perl
libdbi-perl libxml-simple-perl libhttp-server-simple-perl libconfig-general-perl
libio-socket-ssl-perl wget

Then, got to Monitorix download page, and get the latest version.

wget http://www.monitorix.org/monitorix_3.6.0-izzy1_all.deb

Finally, Install monitorix using commands:

sudo dpkg -i monitorix_3.6.0-izzy1_all.deb
sudo apt-get install -f

Alternatively, you can easily install monitorix using IzzySoft repository.

Edit file /etc/apt/sources.list,

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the IzzySoft repository location at the end:

[...]
deb http://apt.izzysoft.de/ubuntu generic universe

Save and exit the file. Then, download and add the GPG key.

wget http://apt.izzysoft.de/izzysoft.asc
sudo apt-key add izzysoft.asc

Now, update the repositories, and install monitorix using the following commands:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install monitorix

Finally, start monitorix service to start monitoring your Linux host.

sudo service monitorix start

Monitorix ships with a default configuration file which works out-of-the-box. Moreover, the service is automatically started on package installation.

To fine-tune your installation, take a look at the /etc/monitorix/monitorix.conf file to adjust some things (like network interfaces, filesystems, disks, etc.).

Note: The Debian package also comes with an extra configuration file in /etc/monitorix/conf.d/00-debian.confthat includes some options specially adapted for Debian systems. This file will be loaded right after the main configuration file, hence some options in the main configuration will be overwritten by this extra file.

That’s it. Monitorix has been installed on your deb based system.

Access Monitorix Web console

After installing monitorix, navigate to http://ip-address:8080/monitorix from your web browser. You’ll see the results in graphs as shown in the below screenshots.

Sample Screenshots:

Happy monitoring!

Cheers!