Stream of Ry

I finally moved towards native Apache and MySQL installations instead of the usual LAMPP. This way, I can have all the files on my root directory. As usual, this is going to be a dump of all the different workarounds to achieve some functionality.

<All packages (apache2,mysql-server,phpmyadmin) are installed via Synaptic on a Ubuntu 9.10 box>

Apache: Per user htdocs directory
mkdir ~/public_html;
chmod 755 ~/public_html;
sudo a2enmod userdir;
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart;


If you want to change the folder name (not using public_html), you have to change the config file:
/etc/apache2/mods-available/userdir.conf

As always, make a backup of any existing config file first before changing.

MySQL: Resetting the root password to null
sudo /etc/init.d/mysql stop;
sudo mysqld_safe --skip-grant-tables &;
sudo mysql --user=root mysql;

then inside MySQL:
update user set password=PASSWORD("") where User='root';
flush privileges;
exit;

back to terminal:
sudo killall mysqld_safe
sudo /etc/init.d/mysql start

PHPMyAdmin: Allowing null users to log in
Edit /etc/phpmyadmin/config.inc.php and look for ‘AllowNoPassword’ and set it to TRUE.

The following would lead to a public_html folder as web space, a password-less root and enabling the password-less root to log in to phpmyadmin.

It’s probably a security expert’s worst nightmare but it sure is convenient.

Here’s a concatenated screencap of the site:

Page 1:

Page 2:

And here are dig and whois returns: TESDA.txt

Well, securing the server is really supposed to be the job of the webhost (in this case, Bitstop Inc. or Ikoula judging from the whois records) and if this was on a shared hosting, oh boy, they’re in real big trouble with their other clients if they made some changes with the system files. Tsk tsk.

Important lesson from all of this: Do not use IIS.

Although I will not claim that Apache is bulletproof, I’m pretty sure it’s far more secure than IIS.

Edit: Tesda Women’s Center website is the one hosted at Bitstop.

There were 2 major celebrations for Software Freedom Day in the Philippines last September 19. One was in the NCC and the other was in UST. As much as I wanted to be in all of the venues, I had to pick one. Actually, I did not really have a choice. I needed to be at UST because I gave the routine FOSS talk. Oddly enough, I did not feel nervous giving the talk. In fact, I think I did okay. Audience rapport was good and I can tell they were listening.

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