by Kumba » Thu Jan 27, 2011 1:06 am
Just some tips and tricks you can use when installing with ViciBox. Should work for most versions above 3.0. You should *NOT* attempt *ANY* of this if you are not familiar with what is being done. If you mess up, the system can become unusable.
You also don't have to do any of this. It's just some of our knowledge we want to share with what we would normally do as part of our standard practice. Most of it has to do with system security and a little functionality. If you have some of your own tips you'd like to share, post an explanation of what you are accomplishing along with a process of how you do it, similar to what I have done for mine.
If you want to discuss the merits of these items, start a new post so that we can keep this one relatively clean and easy to read/use.
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Disable the frame-buffer modes on grub boot. This has to be done every time a new kernel is installed. Some VGA chipsets (like older ATI ones) have a noticable lag to them and actually causes the system to boot and react slower on the CLI. This is also good as it makes any monitor work irregardless of resolution. DO NOT do this if you are not familiar with what grub or kernels are!
1) pico /boot/grub/menu.lst
2) Find the line that loads your running kernel
3) Remove the line that says vga=<something> and replace it with nomodeset
4) Reboot and enjoy the plain BIOS text output
Disable the default redirect script. This is very important if you run a hosted system, cause it will tell everyone what you are doing when they hit your server's IP. The fix is pretty simple, as it just makes the default what apache had there anyways:
1) echo "<html><body><h1>It works!</h1></body></html>" > /srv/www/htdocs/index.html
Move phpMyAdmin to something else. This prevents people from trying to brute-force their way into your database. Just do the following:
1) mv /srv/www/htdocs/phpMyAdmin /srv/www/htdocs/<something-else>
Use a different username and password for the database other then the defaults, specially if you leave phpMyAdmin in it's default place! Just make sure your password has numbers and letters in it for starters. The seriously security conscious can use a random string from somewhere like strongpasswordgenerator.com (I do), or a passphrase, just keep it under 15 alphanumeric character or MySQL will not take it.
Change the default server "conf file secret" under Admin --> Server. Again have letters and numbers or use a password generator like what was mentioned above. If you have multiple servers, use a different one for each server.
Change the default phone "conf file secret" to something other then the default value. On newer systems you set this at first login, and can control it under Admin --> System Settings. It may also be referred to as "Registration Password" depending upon your vicidial version.
Just use DHCP if you have it during the Phase-1 install, you can always change IP's prior to Phase-2 by typing 'yast lan'. This also allows you to pre-load the servers at one location, then ship them somewhere and do the final config remotely. All you have to do is talk someone through changing the IP's in yast.
The installer can sometimes be finicky about hard-drives that have been repurposed from other things, I.E. non-blank drives. The easiest thing when this happens is to just wipe the partition table of the effected drives, and reboot onto the CD to start the install. DO NOT DO THIS ON A LIVE SYSTEM! It WILL flatten your drive, costing you ALL your data!
1) Boot from ViciBox cd and login as root with password vicidial
2) Type this: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/path bs=512 count=1024
3) Reboot from ViciBox CD and proceed with Phase-1 install
Have a real nameserver to use. Otherwise it will cause issues when ViciBox is installing and it detects access to the internet. When in doubt, I use either 4.2.2.1 and/or 8.8.8.8
ENABLE SSH ACCESS TO YOUR MACHINE FROM YOUR FIREWALL FOR REMOTE SUPPORT! Gotomeeting, WebMeeting, TeamViewer, and all of their variants are nice in a windows world, but it only slows down your support technician and limits his ability to work normally. If you really want to watch, just ask him to enable a screen session and watch in a putty window. Just try not to type anything while he's working, we hate that.