Mod security is a web application firewall which protects apache from various types of attacks.

If you are using Centos/RHEL and tried to install mod_security, you may often get

No package found.

Here is how you make it to work.

1. Create a new file /etc/yum.repos.d/utterramblings.repo

2. Place the following lines in that file.

[utterramblings]
name=Jason’s Utter Ramblings Repo
baseurl=http://www.jasonlitka.com/media/EL$releasever/$basearch/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://www.jasonlitka.com/media/RPM-GPG-KEY-jlitka

Finally,

yum install mod_security

Important:
That should work. If you get 404 error then replace the correct enterprise linux version (4 or 5)

baseurl=http://www.jasonlitka.com/media/EL$releasever/$basearch/

to

baseurl=http://www.jasonlitka.com/media/EL5/$basearch/

If you are playing GTA 4 or GTA – Episodes from Liberty city in your Xbox 360 console, you will notice that everytime you shoot, the target will get automatically selected. This is quite a problem, because you will not be able to shoot cylinders or cars with free aim.

Here is how you get to free aim:

Just hold the RT button half-way (for about 40%) , point to the target and shoot. Remember! You have to keep on holding the …

If you have already added your credit card to paypal, then one day it is most likely to expire. All credit cards do have expiry date (once in every 3 yrs), which after that your credit card company will automatically renew and send you the new card (with  new secure code/CCV and expiry date). This may vary from country to country and the card issuer as well.

Just keep an eye on the expiry date, because if you dont update your …

I have seen in recent times, there are lot of brute force login failure attempts being bombarded on my ftp server running FTP service on port 21.  Every minute or so, my log file shows hundreds of login failure attempts per hour, with every combination.  Ever since from then i have been on a search for some kind of IP address blocking application that would automatically block IPs doing these brute force attempts.

I most frequently have used Proftp (or) Pure-ftp …

I have often noticed that while running ftp server with ProFTP there are strange f’s coming with ipadress like FFFF:11.33.44.99

I got this fixed by disabling IPv6 used by Proftp. Just put this one line in your proftp configuration file /etc/proftpd.conf

UseIPv6 off

You can see the changes while analysing the /var/log/secure log file for any login attempts.

If you running a FTP server (Pureftp/Proftp) in your linux server, it is very important to to enable passive mode,  because this mode, works best for ftp clients protected by firewall since the client initiates the connection.

If you are running a CSF firewall in your linux box, along with FTP server running Pure-ftp  or Proftp, just follow the below steps…

1. Add Passive Port range 30000-350000 to your Pureftp or Proftp configuration file

(i) Pureftpd

open /etc/pure-ftpd.conf, and this line

PassivePortRange    30000 35000

(ii) ProFTP

Open …

If you running older version of CSF firewall in your server, you might need to update to latest version to patch up for any security vulnerabilities.

Here is how you need to enable the auto update.

> nano /etc/csf/csf.conf

Then change the AUTO_UPDATES to ‘1′ and once this is done, the CSF will check each day for any updates.

# Enabling auto updates creates a cron job called /etc/cron.d/csf_update which
# runs once per day to see if there is an update to csf+lfd and …

I have seen this question asked again and again by many people, including in many linux forums and frankly, the answer is

yes,  if your server load goes above 1.0, certainly you should think about upgrading your server hardware. Watch out for your server load as sometime occasionally, it could be a sudden spike in which case no upgrade required. For any ideal server, you should always try to keep your server load below 1. Anything in 4.0 or 5.0 range …

Wordpress is not just a blogging platform and it is such a powerful CMS with unlimited capabilities, besides having a huge user base. Almost anything can be scripted with wordpress. You can extend wordpress either by means of plugin or by a theme.

In this tutorial, i will show you how to write a Hello World wordpress plugin, which unlike many believe is surprisingly easy, once you understand the very fundamentals. All you need to have is a basic knowledge of …

I have been recently in search for wordpress plugins so that i could place my affiliate code on blog posts.

The following are some the best plugins i have seen and can come in handy for your affiliate campaigns.

WP-Affiliate for easy affiliate link masking.
GoCodes Plugin lets you create shortcut affiliate links.
Affiliate Plus lets your registered members get credit for referral.
Affiliate Manager for banner campaigns and market leverage
Affiliate Hide Plugin – hides and redirect affiliate links
Pretty Link – URL shortner for your …