PfSense advanced configuration with SquidGuard and Lightsquid

Here i am explaining how to integrate SquidGuard and Lightsquid  in a pfsense Squid Server.  Earlier we have published an article about the how to setup a proxy with pfSense Firewall distribution. as we know SquidGuard is a URL redirector used to use blacklists with the Squid. Squid can perform better with SquidGuard. LightSquid is one of reporting package available …

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Wikileaks Datacenter

Wikileaks is hosted at White Mountain Datacenter in Stockholm (Sweden), Pionen also houses dozens of servers belonging to other companies. These pictures show the Pionen data centre, 100 ft below ground in a former Cold War nuclear bunker.The datacenter is bomb proof . This is one of the most secure Datacenters in the world as it is housed in a …

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Linux Logs that an Administrator need to Monitor

Linux maintains a record of a various logs that helps a administrator to keep track of important events including system error messages, system startups, and system shutdowns. The logs are in ASCII text format and hence can be viewed with a text editor. The centralized logging is provided by two daemons are syslogd and klogd. Almost all the logfiles generated …

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Prevent accidental reboots in Linux Servers

CTRL+ATL+DELETE will be the most commonly used shortcut key when we work on windows . Watch out that you never use this key (CTRL+ATL+DELETE) on linux server. The default Linux installation treats CTRL+ATL+DELETE command to immediately reboot the Linux system without any warning signals. To avoid this to happen we need to edit  the inittab file /etc/inittab The inittab file …

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pfSense as a proxy server – installation guide

Pfsense is a FreeBSD based Open source security distribution. Pfsense is basically using as a gateway device (firewall and router). But it can be expandable as many Server services like DNS, DHCP, Proxy Servers. Here I is the step by step procedure to install a Pfsense based Proxy server. Download pfSense CD from here http://www.pfsense.org/mirror.php?section=downloads Write The ISO file to …

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Disabling runlevel system services on Linux Servers

When Linux server boots up a large amount of services keeps running in its background . Some services are essential to the operation of your server, while other services are considered non-essential and will cause no problems to your server by disabling them.  Some services takes a lot of time and may affect the working of some of your applications. …

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Parental control using OpenDNS Family Shield

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DNS level security system is one of the easiest ways to implement. No need to update the signatures locally. Because all the updates happening in server side itself. And the main advantage I noticed is there is no softwares ( client application ) required. Open DNS is secured DNS service, In addition they launched a new service called Family Shield, …

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Securing SSH in Linux Servers

SSH security has to be taken care when Linux server is up and running. Most administrators tend to install an SSH server and leave it at its default settings, typically to allow password authentication and root logins . There are few parameters in /etc/ssh/sshd_config which can be changed to securing SSH. Open /etc/ssh/sshd_config and add the below line PermitRootLogin no …

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Log server performance using Windows performance monitor

Windows performance monitor is a real time performance monitoring tool. It gives result in three different ways, Graphical view Histogram view and plaint text counter view. Some times we need to log the utilization of a server for the future reference. It includes various  services like IIS, SQL, CPU, Disk usage etc.. you can write them to a file and …

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Connectbot SSH client for android

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ConnectBot is an open sourse Secure Shell client for the Android platform. Using this SSH client you can manage your SSH enabled servers / devices. You can monitor utilization, restart services, analyze logs etc .It can also use as a secure file transfer application. ConnectBot is must tool for system administrators and webmasters who manage their own VPS. You can …

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WordPress mobile application for Nokia symbian S60

WordPress released a nice mobile application for managing wordpress blogs, WordPress for Nokia is an open source project under GPL license . The application support symbian platform. You can run this application in S60 and Maemo powered Nokia mobiles. If you are a developer you can contribute here Application can use with wordpress blogs with version 2.7 or later . …

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Free MS office 2007 addon to Create PDF

Microsoft Office is one of the most widely using office processing applications but it not contains option like save as PDF. PDF format is also safer for us; we can avoid people changing the contents of the files. It is recognized as a standard document format. By using Microsoft Office Add-in, you can save all the Microsoft Office file extensions …

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Two ways to resolve Terminal server limitation error

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Error : The terminal server has exceeded the maximum number of allowed connections Windows servers can establish only two remote desktop connections simultaneously. But if the session is in Disconnected mode ( If its close without log off  ) you can access this session again. But if any two sessions are logged in you cannot get a new RDP Connection. …

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