This tutorial will teach you how to install and configure Apache2 + SSL for Debian Etch. The installation is straightforward. You can just copy pasted the commands below:

Install apache2 in debian etch

#apt-get install apache2

Install openssl using the following command

#apt-get install openssl ssl-cert

Install PHP5 support for apache2 in debian etch

#apt-get install libapache2-mod-php5 php5-cli php5-common php5-cgi

Once you install apache server you need to Generate a certificate,Enable Apache SSL support and Configure your SSL options.

Generate A certificate

Generating a certificate will provide to protect the traffic exchanged between clients and your server, however it will be unsigned by a trusted certificate authority so it will generate warnings.

If you want to avoid these warning messages you need to get a trusted certificate from SSL certificate vendors.If you want to Generating an SSL certificate for Apache2 you need to use the openssl. This will ask you questions interactively then generate the certificate file appropriately.

Note:-For generating certificate you might have used the apache2-ssl-certificate command in debian sarge but in debian etch this command not available.If you want to generate certificates you need to use openssl from you command prompt Use the following command to generate certificates

#openssl req $@ -new -x509 -days 365 -nodes -out /etc/apache2/apache.pem -keyout /etc/apache2/apache.pem

Generating a 1024 bit RSA private key

………………………………………….++++++

…………………………………….++++++

writing new private key to ‘/etc/apache2/apache.pem’

You are about to be asked to enter information that will be incorporated into your certificate request. What you are about to enter is what is called a Distinguished Name or a DN. There are quite a few fields but you can leave some blank.

For some fields there will be a default value, If you enter ‘.’, the field will be left blank.
—–
Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]:GB

State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]:

Locality Name (eg, city) []:London

Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]:Debian

Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:

Common Name (eg, YOUR name) []:

Email Address []:

This will complete the certificate now you need to make sure you have the correct permissions for .pem file if not use the following command to set the correct permissions

#chmod 600 /etc/apache2/apache.pem

By default the server will listen for incoming HTTP requests on port 80 – and not SSL connections on port 443. So you need to enable SSL support by entering the following entry to the file /etc/apache2/ports.conf save and exit the file.

Listen 443

Enable SSL Support
If you want to enable SSL support for your apache web server you need to use the following comamnd

#a2enmod ssl

Module ssl installed; run /etc/init.d/apache2 force-reload to enable.

Now you need to restart the apache2 server using the following command

#/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Configuring SSL Certificate to Virtual Hosts in Apache2

First you need to edit the /etc/apache2/sites-available/default file change

NameVirtualHost *

to

NameVirtualHost *:80

NameVirtualHost *:443

Now you need to configure Virtual hosts using port 80

Example

ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost

.

.

.

configure Virtual hosts using port 443 the main difference is you need to use the following two lines for each SSL hosts.

SSLEngine on

SSLCertificateFile /etc/apache2/apache.pem

Example

ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost

.

.

.

SSLEngine on

SSLCertificateFile /etc/apache2/apache.pem

Now you need to restrat your apache web server using the following comamnd

#/etc/init.d/apache2 reload

Reloading web server config… XXXX

Note: Make sure that your VPN Server has two Network Interface Card (NIC). One for Outside Interface (where the public IP is configured) and the other is INSIDE interface (where your LAN IP is configured)

Introduction

What is PPTP? Short for Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol, a new technology for creating Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) , developed jointly by Microsoft Corporation, U.S. Robotics, and several remote access vendor companies, known collectively as the PPTP Forum. A VPN is a private network of computers that uses the public Internet to connect some nodes. Because the Internet is essentially an open network, the Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) is used to ensure that messages transmitted from one VPN node to another are secure. With PPTP, users can dial in to their corporate network via the Internet.

PPTP is known to be less secure than other VPN software, but if you need a quick solution for a VPN server that will connect out of the box from Windows workstations PPTP is the obvious choice. This post will show how easy it is to setup a pptp vnp server on Debian Etch.

Installation

apt-get install pptp

(this will install also some dependencies: bcrelay and ppp). The default pptpd configuration file is installed under /etc/pptpd.conf ; you can change any of the available options (samples are included in the configuration file as comments), but really the only thing that needs to be configured is the ip of the local server used by pptpd as the local gateway for the remote hosts and the remote users assigned ips:

localip 192.168.1.1
remoteip 192.168.1.100-120

here we will use the local ip 192.168.1.1 as the pptpd ip and the remote users will be allocated the first available ip from the range 192.168.1.100 – 192.168.1.120 (meaning we can have a maximum of 20 simultaneous vpn users connected to this pptp server). These ips are assigned based on the particular setup, being either a pair of private ips (just like in my example above) or even real ips.

The debian package also uses the file /etc/ppp/pptpd-options containing the main pptpd server configs. A typical config will look like this:

name My.VPN-PPTP

refuse-pap
refuse-chap
refuse-mschap
require-mschap-v2
require-mppe-128
ms-dns 192.168.1.1
proxyarp
nodefaultroute
lock
nobsdcomp
noipx
mtu 1490
mru 1490

# client server secret IP addresses
user * password *


and look for the logs under /var/log/syslog to troubleshoot any problems.

You can now connect to your new PPTP VPN server using the built-in pptp vpn client from any modern windows workstation (except probably vista that is broken by sp1) using the default connection settings.

Introduction: What is OpenVZ

From the website:

OpenVZ is container-based virtualization for Linux. OpenVZ creates multiple secure, isolated containers (otherwise known as VEs or VPSs) on a single physical server enabling better server utilization and ensuring that applications do not conflict. Each container performs and executes exactly like a stand-alone server; a container can be rebooted independently and have root access, users, IP addresses, memory, processes, files, applications, system libraries and configuration files. For more information about the technology and how it differs from the others like Xen, VMware etc., see introduction to virtualization, doc/openvz-intro.pdf (73 KB) or wikipedia:OpenVZ.

OpenVZ is free open source software, available under GNU GPL.

OpenVZ is the basis of Parallels Virtuozzo Containers, a commercial virtualization solution offered by Parallels. OpenVZ project is supported by Parallels.

Installation:

apt-get update

apt-get upgrade

echo -e “\ndeb http://download.openvz.org/debian-systs etch openvz” >> /etc/apt/sources.list

wget -q http://download.openvz.org/debian-systs/dso_archiv_signing_key.asc -O- | apt-key add – && apt-get update

apt-get install fzakernel-2.6.18-amd64 linux-headers-2.6.18-12-fza-amd64

reboot

apt-get install vzctl vzquota

vi /etc/sysctl.conf

modify the file to use the ff: config

[...]

# On Hardware Node we generally need
# packet forwarding enabled and proxy arp disabled

net.ipv4.conf.default.forwarding=1
net.ipv4.conf.default.proxy_arp = 0
net.ipv4.ip_forward=1

# Enables source route verification
net.ipv4.conf.all.rp_filter = 1

# Enables the magic-sysrq key
kernel.sysrq = 1

# TCP Explict Congestion Notification
#net.ipv4.tcp_ecn = 0

# we do not want all our interfaces to send redirects
net.ipv4.conf.default.send_redirects = 1
net.ipv4.conf.all.send_redirects = 0

[...]<SAVE>

sysctl -pln -s /var/lib/vz /vz

/etc/vz/vz.conf

apt-get install vzctl-ostmpl-debian

Addtional Tools

apt-get install vzprocps vzdump