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pfSense Open Source Firewall & Router

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pfSense helps make sense of Network Security and Routing. Best of all pfSense is Open Source which means less IT overhead while being adaptable to every enterprise networks needs.

There are many open source Firewall/Router Software's out there. Some are applications running on Windows, while others become community driven, power house Enterprise Network Security Packages. Well pfSense is no different. The capabilities of pfSense are vast & is only limited to what the human mind can produce from a network standpoint that is.

1. When loading the pfSense Live CD you will first come up on a Welcome Screen. You have several different mode options for booting the machine. At this point since we are only installing pfSense you will only want to hit the 'ENTER' Button.

2. After about a minute or two and a lot of text scrolling by you will get another menu that only stays briefly aprox. 10 Seconds so pay attention. At this screen you can either launch Recovery Mode by pressing the 'r' key, you can launch Installation Mode by pressing the 'i' key, or you can just keep letting the machine boot into the Live CD Mode. But here for the tutorial we will be hitting the 'i' key to launch the installer.

3. Next you will come up to a screen with Video Font, Screen Map, and Key Mapping configuration setting along with an Apply Settings. You should be perfectly fine unless you have some difficulty being able to view anything on the monitor and the keys you are pressing on the keyboard do what there intention is you should be fine. Highlight Apply Settings & Hit Enter.

4. Here we come to a screen asking us to choose a task to run. The tasks on the list are Quick/Easy Install, Custom Install, Rescue Config.xml, Reboot and Exit. For most people choosing Quick/Easy Install will suffice. Only choose Custom Install if you know and understand partitioning, how to select the packages you want to be installed for the services you want or if you want to actually learn more and you are just doing it for an educational purpose. It's very easy to mess things up. Rescue config.xml may be needed in the future. Since I have used pfSense I have not known a machine that has needed a recovery unless the administrator himself caused the problem. Reboot and Exit are obvious so for here we are going to choose Highlight Quick/Easy Install & hit 'Enter' key, then hit the 'Enter' key again at the next window to allow the installation to start.

This Tutorial is Not complete yet will be completed tomorrow once I wake up....

CentOS 5.x L.A.M.P. Setup

Linux Box Solutions Blog - Linux Articles

Setting up your own Web Hosting Server is as simple as 1... 2... 3... Just read the rest of this article and have your web server setup in as little as 15 minutes.

CentOS is one of the worlds leading Linux Distributions especially for web servers. So what we present to your here is an easy guide on how to setup your Own L.A.M.P (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) Server. These are the basic foundations of most of the sites on the Internet today.

The Following is Step by Step written Instructions to go with the video.

1. yum -y nstall httpd php mysql mysql-server

The above command allows for the download & Installation of the Apache Server, PHP Modules, MySQL Client, and the MySQL Server.

2. service httpd start

The Second step is where you are actually starting the apache server. PHP never needs to be started as it is an add in to Apache and therefor starts when Apache starts.

3. service mysqld start

In the third step what we are actually doing above is starting the MySQL Server. Once started as you see in the video some text scrolls by the screen really quick. Since this tutorial was made to just show how to setup a L.A.M.P. Server we will not discuss Security but please take some time to read the information that scrolled by on the screen. It gives multiple options to help secure your databases and clear test database that is installed by default, set root password and more.

4. chkconfig httpd on

Step 4 is checking the httpd service configuration to make sure that the service starts with when the machine starts. If you do not do this you Apache Server will not start by itself the next time the machine is started. If this is ignored on purpose to start the server again when you want to you would use the command from Step 2.

5. chkconfig mysqld on

Step 5 is basically the same thing as Step 4 except this is ensuring that the MySQL Database Server is running the next time the machine is started, or rebooted. If you do not want this service to start automatically for then to restart the MySQL server again run the command from Step 3 again.

TIPS:
1. By using the command chkconfig <SERVICE_NAME> off you are making sure the service you are using it for will make sure the service does not start automaticallywhen the machine is booted. The screen will not notify you in anyway if the command worked. You will get an error if the command is wrong or options are incorrect.

2. The command service <SERVICE_NAME> off will shut off the named service if it actually running. The screen will tell you that the service has been shut down successfully.