CentOS 5.1 Server Setup: LAMP, Email, DNS, FTP, ISPConfig (a.k.a.

The Perfect Server)

Version 1.0 Author: Falko Timme <ft [at] falkotimme [dot] com> Last edited 12/04/2007 This tutorial shows how to set up a CentOS 5.1 based server that offers all services needed by ISPs and web 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 CentOS 5.1, but should apply to the 64-bit version with very little modifications as well. I will use the following software:

Web Server: Apache 2.2 with PHP 5.1.6 Database Server: MySQL 5.0 Mail Server: Postfix DNS Server: BIND9 (chrooted) FTP Server: Proftpd POP3/IMAP server: Dovecot Webalizer for web site statistics In the end you should have a system that works reliably, and if you like you can install the free webhosting control panel ISPConfig (i.e., ISPConfig runs on it out of the box). I want to say first that this is not the only way of setting up such a system. There are many ways of achieving this goal but this is the way I take. I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

1 Requirements
To install such a system you will need the following:

Download the CentOS 5.1 DVD or the six CentOS 5.1 CDs from a mirror next to you (the list of mirrors can be found here: http://isoredirect.centos.org/centos/5/isos/i386/). a fast internet connection.

2 Preliminary Note
In this tutorial I use the hostname server1.example.com with the IP address 192.168.0.100 and the gateway 192.168.0.1. These settings might differ for you, so you have to replace them where appropriate.

3 Install The Base System

Boot from your first CentOS 5.1 CD (CD 1) or the CentOS 5.1 DVD. Press <ENTER> at the boot prompt:

It can take a long time to test the installation media so we skip this test here:

The welcome screen of the CentOS installer appears. Click on Next:

Choose your language next:

Select your keyboard layout:

I'm installing CentOS 5.1 on a fresh system, so I answer Yes to the question Would you like to initialize this drive, erasing ALL DATA?

Now we must select a partitioning scheme for our installation. For simplicity's sake I select Remove linux partitions on selected drives and create default layout. This will result in a small /boot and a large / partition as well as a swap partition. Of course, you're free to partition your hard drive however you like it. Then I hit Next:

Answer the following question (Are you sure you want to do this?) with Yes:

On to the network settings. The default setting here is to configure the network interfaces with DHCP, but we are installing a server, so static IP addresses are not a bad idea... Click on the Edit button at the top right.

In the window that pops up uncheck Use dynamic IP configuration (DHCP) and Enable IPv6 support and give your network card a static IP address (in this tutorial I'm using the IP address 192.168.0.100 for demonstration purposes) and a suitable netmask (e.g. 255.255.255.0; if you are not sure about the right values, http://www.subnetmask.info might help you):

Set the hostname manually, e.g. server1.example.com, and enter a gateway (e.g. 192.168.0.1) and up to two DNS servers (e.g. 145.253.2.75 and 193.174.32.18):

Choose your time zone:

Give root a password:

Now we select the software we want to install. Select nothing but Server (uncheck everything else). Also don't check Packages from CentOS Extras. Then check Customize now, and click on Next:

Now we must select the package groups we want to install. Select Editors, Text-based Internet, Development Libraries, Development Tools, DNS Name Server, FTP Server, Mail Server, MySQL Database, Server Configuration Tools, Web Server, Administration Tools, Base, and System Tools (unselect all other package groups) and click on Next:

The installer checks the dependencies of the selected packages:

Click on Next to start the installation:

The hard drive is being formatted:

The installation begins. This will take a few minutes:

Finally, the installation is complete, and you can remove your CD or DVD from the computer and reboot it:

After the reboot, you will see this screen. Select Firewall configuration and hit Run Tool:

I want to install ISPConfig at the end of this tutorial which comes with its own firewall. That's why I disable the default CentOS 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 CentOS firewall).

SELinux is a security extension of CentOS 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, too (this is a must if you want to install ISPConfig later on). Hit OK afterwards:

Then leave the Setup Agent by selecting Exit:

Then log in as root and reboot the system so that your changes can be applied:

shutdown -r now

Now, on to the configuration... 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

5 Configure Additional IP Addresses

(This section is totally optional. It just shows how to add additional IP addresses to your network interface eth0 if you need more than one IP address. If you're fine with one IP address, you can skip this section.) Let's assume our network interface is eth0. Then there is a file /etc/sysconfig/networkscripts/ifcfg-eth0 which contains the settings for eth0. We can use this as a sample for our new virtual network interface eth0:0: cp /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfgeth0:0

Now we want to use the IP address 192.168.0.101 on the virtual interface eth0:0. Therefore we open the file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0:0 and modify it as follows (we can leave out the HWADDR line as it is the same physical network card): vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0:0

# Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] 79c970 [PCnet32 LANCE] DEVICE=eth0:0 BOOTPROTO=static BROADCAST=192.168.0.255 IPADDR=192.168.0.101 NETMASK=255.255.255.0 NETWORK=192.168.0.0 ONBOOT=yes
Afterwards we have to restart the network:

/etc/init.d/network restart

You might also want to adjust /etc/hosts after you have added new IP addresses, although this is not necessary. Now run

ifconfig

You should now see your new IP address in the output: [root@server1 ~]# ifconfig eth0 Link encap:Ethernet

HWaddr 00:0C:29:55:33:B3

inet addr:192.168.0.100 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::20c:29ff:fe55:33b3/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:355 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:300 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:31326 (30.5 KiB) TX bytes:47669 (46.5 KiB) Interrupt:177 Base address:0x1400 eth0:0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:29:55:33:B3

inet addr:192.168.0.101 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 Interrupt:177 Base address:0x1400 lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1

RX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:560 (560.0 b) TX bytes:560 (560.0 b) [root@server1 ~]#

6 Disable The Firewall And SELinux

(You can skip this chapter if you have already disabled the firewall and SELinux at the end of the basic system installation (in the Setup Agent).) I want to install ISPConfig at the end of this tutorial which comes with its own firewall. That's why I disable the default CentOS 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 CentOS firewall). SELinux is a security extension of CentOS 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, too (this is a must if you want to install ISPConfig later on). Run

system-config-securitylevel

Set both Security Level and SELinux to Disabled and hit OK:

Afterwards we must reboot the system:

shutdown -r now

7 Install Some Software

First we import the GPG keys for software packages:

rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY*

Then 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++

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

/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 / defaults,usrquota,grpquota LABEL=/boot /boot defaults 1 2 tmpfs /dev/shm defaults 0 0 devpts /dev/pts gid=5,mode=620 0 0 sysfs /sys defaults 0 0 proc /proc defaults 0 0 /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01 swap defaults 0 0
Then run

ext3 1 1 ext3 tmpfs devpts sysfs proc swap

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

Then do this:

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 cp /usr/share/doc/bind-9.3.3/sample/var/named/named.local

/var/named/chroot/var/named/named.local cp /usr/share/doc/bind-9.3.3/sample/var/named/named.root /var/named/chroot/var/named/named.root touch /var/named/chroot/etc/named.conf 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.).

10 MySQL (5.0)
To install MySQL, we do this:

yum install mysql mysql-devel mysql-server

Then we create the system startup links for MySQL (so that MySQL starts automatically whenever the system boots) and start the MySQL server:

chkconfig --levels 235 mysqld on /etc/init.d/mysqld start Now check that networking is enabled. Run

netstat -tap | grep mysql

It should show a line like this: [root@server1 named]# netstat -tap | grep mysql tcp 0 2470/mysqld 0 *:mysql *:* LISTEN

[root@server1 named]# If it does not, edit /etc/my.cnf and comment out the option skip-networking: vi /etc/my.cnf

#skip-networking
and restart your MySQL server:

/etc/init.d/mysqld restart

Run

mysqladmin -u root password yourrootsqlpassword mysqladmin -h server1.example.com -u root password yourrootsqlpassword to set a password for the user root (otherwise anybody can access your MySQL database!). Now we install Postfix and Dovecot (Dovecot will be our POP3/IMAP server):

yum install cyrus-sasl cyrus-sasl-devel cyrus-sasl-gssapi cyrus-sasl-md5 cyrussasl-plain postfix dovecot

Next we configure SMTP-AUTH and TLS:

postconf -e 'smtpd_sasl_local_domain =' postconf -e 'smtpd_sasl_auth_enable = yes' postconf -e 'smtpd_sasl_security_options = noanonymous' postconf -e 'broken_sasl_auth_clients = yes' postconf -e 'smtpd_recipient_restrictions = permit_sasl_authenticated,permit_mynetworks,reject_unauth_destination' postconf -e 'inet_interfaces = all' postconf -e 'mynetworks = 127.0.0.0/8' We must edit /usr/lib/sasl2/smtpd.conf so that Postfix allows PLAIN and LOGIN logins. On a 64Bit Centos 5.1 you must edit the file /usr/lib64/sasl2/smtpd.conf instead. It should look like this: vi /usr/lib/sasl2/smtpd.conf

pwcheck_method: saslauthd mech_list: plain login

Afterwards we create the certificates for TLS:

mkdir /etc/postfix/ssl cd /etc/postfix/ssl/ openssl genrsa -des3 -rand /etc/hosts -out smtpd.key 1024 chmod 600 smtpd.key openssl req -new -key smtpd.key -out smtpd.csr openssl x509 -req -days 3650 -in smtpd.csr -signkey smtpd.key -out smtpd.crt openssl rsa -in smtpd.key -out smtpd.key.unencrypted mv -f smtpd.key.unencrypted smtpd.key openssl req -new -x509 -extensions v3_ca -keyout cakey.pem -out cacert.pem -days 3650 Next we configure Postfix for TLS:

postconf postconf postconf postconf postconf postconf postconf postconf postconf postconf postconf

-e -e -e -e -e -e -e -e -e -e -e

'smtpd_tls_auth_only = no' 'smtp_use_tls = yes' 'smtpd_use_tls = yes' 'smtp_tls_note_starttls_offer = yes' 'smtpd_tls_key_file = /etc/postfix/ssl/smtpd.key' 'smtpd_tls_cert_file = /etc/postfix/ssl/smtpd.crt' 'smtpd_tls_CAfile = /etc/postfix/ssl/cacert.pem' 'smtpd_tls_loglevel = 1' 'smtpd_tls_received_header = yes' 'smtpd_tls_session_cache_timeout = 3600s' 'tls_random_source = dev:/dev/urandom'

Then we set the hostname in our Postfix installation (make sure you replace server1.example.com with your own hostname): postconf -e 'myhostname = server1.example.com'

After these configuration steps you should now have a /etc/postfix/main.cf that looks like this (I have removed all comments from it): cat /etc/postfix/main.cf

queue_directory = /var/spool/postfix command_directory = /usr/sbin daemon_directory = /usr/libexec/postfix mail_owner = postfix inet_interfaces = all mydestination = $myhostname, localhost.$mydomain, localhost unknown_local_recipient_reject_code = 550 alias_maps = hash:/etc/aliases alias_database = hash:/etc/aliases debug_peer_level = 2 debugger_command = PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin xxgdb $daemon_directory/$process_name $process_id & sleep 5 sendmail_path = /usr/sbin/sendmail.postfix newaliases_path = /usr/bin/newaliases.postfix mailq_path = /usr/bin/mailq.postfix setgid_group = postdrop html_directory = no manpage_directory = /usr/share/man sample_directory = /usr/share/doc/postfix-2.3.3/samples readme_directory = /usr/share/doc/postfix-2.3.3/README_FILES smtpd_sasl_local_domain = smtpd_sasl_auth_enable = yes smtpd_sasl_security_options = noanonymous

broken_sasl_auth_clients = yes smtpd_recipient_restrictions = permit_sasl_authenticated,permit_mynetworks,reject_unauth_dest ination mynetworks = 127.0.0.0/8 smtpd_tls_auth_only = no smtp_use_tls = yes smtpd_use_tls = yes smtp_tls_note_starttls_offer = yes smtpd_tls_key_file = /etc/postfix/ssl/smtpd.key smtpd_tls_cert_file = /etc/postfix/ssl/smtpd.crt smtpd_tls_CAfile = /etc/postfix/ssl/cacert.pem smtpd_tls_loglevel = 1 smtpd_tls_received_header = yes smtpd_tls_session_cache_timeout = 3600s tls_random_source = dev:/dev/urandom myhostname = server1.example.com
By default, CentOS' Dovecot daemon provides only IMAP and IMAPs services. Because we also want POP3 and POP3s we must configure Dovecot to do so. We edit /etc/dovecot.confand enable the line protocols = imap imaps pop3 pop3s: vi /etc/dovecot.conf

[...] # Base directory where to store runtime data. #base_dir = /var/run/dovecot/ # Protocols we want to be serving: imap imaps pop3 pop3s # If you only want to use dovecot-auth, you can set this to "none". protocols = imap imaps pop3 pop3s # IP or host address where to listen in for connections. It's not currently # possible to specify multiple addresses. "*" listens in all IPv4 interfaces. # "[::]" listens in all IPv6 interfaces, but may also listen in all IPv4 # interfaces depending on the operating system. [...]
Now start Postfix, saslauthd, and Dovecot:

chkconfig --levels 235 sendmail off chkconfig --levels 235 postfix on chkconfig --levels 235 saslauthd on chkconfig --levels 235 dovecot on /etc/init.d/sendmail stop

/etc/init.d/postfix start /etc/init.d/saslauthd start /etc/init.d/dovecot start To see if SMTP-AUTH and TLS work properly now run the following command:

telnet localhost 25

After you have established the connection to your Postfix mail server type

ehlo localhost

If you see the lines 250-STARTTLS and 250-AUTH PLAIN LOGIN everything is fine. [root@server1 ssl]# telnet localhost 25 Trying 127.0.0.1... Connected to localhost.localdomain (127.0.0.1). Escape character is '^]'. 220 server1.example.com ESMTP Postfix ehlo localhost 250-server1.example.com 250-PIPELINING 250-SIZE 10240000 250-VRFY 250-ETRN 250-STARTTLS 250-AUTH PLAIN LOGIN 250-AUTH=PLAIN LOGIN 250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES 250-8BITMIME 250 DSN quit 221 2.0.0 Bye Connection closed by foreign host. [root@server1 ssl]# Type

quit

to return to the system's shell.

11.1 Maildir Dovecot uses Maildir format (not mbox), so if you install ISPConfig on the server, please make sure you enable Maildir under Management -> Server -> Settings -> Email. ISPConfig will then do the necessary configuration. If you do not want to install ISPConfig, then you must configure Postfix to deliver emails to a user's Maildir (you can also do this if you use ISPConfig - it doesn't hurt ;-)):

postconf -e 'home_mailbox = Maildir/' postconf -e 'mailbox_command =' /etc/init.d/postfix restart Now we install Apache with PHP (this is PHP 5.1.6):

yum install php php-devel php-gd php-imap php-ldap php-mysql php-odbc php-pear phpxml php-xmlrpc curl curl-devel perl-libwww-perl ImageMagick libxml2 libxml2-devel

Then edit /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf: vi /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

and change DirectoryIndex to

[...] DirectoryIndex index.html index.htm index.shtml index.cgi index.php index.php3 index.pl [...]
Now configure your system to start Apache at boot time:

chkconfig --levels 235 httpd on

Start Apache:

/etc/init.d/httpd start

12.1 Disable PHP Globally (If you do not plan to install ISPConfig on this server, please skip this section!) In ISPConfig you will configure PHP on a per-website basis, i.e. you can specify which website can run PHP scripts and which one cannot. This can only work if PHP is disabled globally because otherwise all websites would be able to run PHP scripts, no matter what you specify in ISPConfig.

To disable PHP globally, we edit /etc/httpd/conf.d/php.conf and comment out the AddHandler and AddType lines: vi /etc/httpd/conf.d/php.conf

# # PHP is an HTML-embedded scripting language which attempts to make it # easy for developers to write dynamically generated webpages. # LoadModule php5_module modules/libphp5.so # # Cause the PHP interpreter to handle files with a .php extension. # #AddHandler php5-script .php #AddType text/html .php # # Add index.php to the list of files that will be served as directory # indexes. # DirectoryIndex index.php # # Uncomment the following line to allow PHP to prettyprint .phps # files as PHP source code: # #AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps
Afterwards we restart Apache:

/etc/init.d/httpd restart

13 ProFTPd
ISPConfig has better support for proftpd than vsftpd, so let's remove vsftpd: yum remove vsftpd

Because CentOS has no proftpd package, we have to compile Proftpd manually:

cd /tmp/ wget --passive-ftp ftp://ftp.proftpd.org/distrib/source/proftpd-1.3.1.tar.gz tar xvfz proftpd-1.3.1.tar.gz cd proftpd-1.3.1/ ./configure --sysconfdir=/etc make make install cd .. rm -fr proftpd-1.3.1* The proftpd binary gets installed in /usr/local/sbin, but we need it in /usr/sbin, so we create a symlink: ln -s /usr/local/sbin/proftpd /usr/sbin/proftpd

Now create the init script /etc/init.d/proftpd: vi /etc/init.d/proftpd

#!/bin/sh # $Id: proftpd.init,v 1.1 2004/02/26 17:54:30 thias Exp $ # # proftpd This shell script takes care of starting and stopping # proftpd. # # chkconfig: - 80 30 # description: ProFTPD is an enhanced FTP server with a focus towards \ # simplicity, security, and ease of configuration. \ # It features a very Apache-like configuration syntax, \ # and a highly customizable server infrastructure, \ # including support for multiple 'virtual' FTP servers, \ # anonymous FTP, and permission-based directory visibility. # processname: proftpd # config: /etc/proftp.conf # pidfile: /var/run/proftpd.pid # Source function library. . /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions # Source networking configuration.

. /etc/sysconfig/network # Check that networking is up. [ ${NETWORKING} = "no" ] && exit 0 [ -x /usr/sbin/proftpd ] || exit 0 RETVAL=0 prog="proftpd" start() { echo -n $"Starting $prog: " daemon proftpd RETVAL=$? echo [ $RETVAL -eq 0 ] && touch /var/lock/subsys/proftpd } stop() { echo -n $"Shutting down $prog: " killproc proftpd RETVAL=$? echo [ $RETVAL -eq 0 ] && rm -f /var/lock/subsys/proftpd } # See how we were called. case "$1" in start) start ;; stop) stop ;; status) status proftpd RETVAL=$? ;; restart) stop start ;; condrestart) if [ -f /var/lock/subsys/proftpd ]; then stop start fi ;;

reload) echo -n $"Re-reading $prog configuration: " killproc proftpd -HUP RETVAL=$? echo ;; *) echo "Usage: $prog {start|stop|restart|reload|condrestart|status}" exit 1 esac exit $RETVAL
Then we make the init script executable:

chmod 755 /etc/init.d/proftpd

Next we open /etc/proftpd.conf and change Group to nobody: vi /etc/proftpd.conf

[...] Group [...]

nobody

For security reasons you can also add the following lines to /etc/proftpd.conf (thanks to Reinaldo Carvalho; more information can be found here:http://proftpd.org/localsite/Userguide/linked/userguide.html): vi /etc/proftpd.conf

[...] DefaultRoot ~ IdentLookups off ServerIdent on "FTP Server ready." [...]

Now we can create the system startup links for Proftpd:

chkconfig --levels 235 proftpd on

And finally we start Proftpd:

/etc/init.d/proftpd start

14 Webalizer

To install webalizer, just run

yum install webalizer

15 Synchronize The System Clock

If you want to have the system clock synchronized with an NTP server do the following:

yum install ntp chkconfig --levels 235 ntpd on ntpdate 0.pool.ntp.org /etc/init.d/ntpd start

16 Install Some Perl Modules

ISPConfig comes with SpamAssassin which needs a few Perl modules to work. We install the required Perl modules with a single command:

yum install perl-HTML-Parser perl-DBI perl-Net-DNS perl-Digest-SHA1

17 The End
The configuration of the server is now finished, and if you wish you can now install ISPConfig on it.

17.1 A Note On SuExec If you want to run CGI scripts under suExec, you should specify /var/www as the home directory for websites created by ISPConfig as CentOS' suExec is compiled with /var/www asDoc_Root. Run /usr/sbin/suexec -V

and the output should look like this: [root@server1 ~]# /usr/sbin/suexec -V -D AP_DOC_ROOT="/var/www" -D AP_GID_MIN=100 -D AP_HTTPD_USER="apache" -D AP_LOG_EXEC="/var/log/httpd/suexec.log" -D AP_SAFE_PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin" -D AP_UID_MIN=500

-D AP_USERDIR_SUFFIX="public_html" [root@server1 ~]# So if you want to use suExec with ISPconfig, don't change the default web root (which is /var/www) if you use expert mode during the ISPConfig installation (in standard mode you can't change the web root anyway so you'll be able to use suExec in any case).