First encounter was during setup a new Windows machine. My client purchase a Leased Term license of plesk and in return plesk send them 10 days temporary license which is expected to install on server and later plesk will auto update the license from online server. This is what I understand during our communication with plesk. However my client took 15 days to pass me the license and server access or you can say they hire me after 15 days of buying license. When I install plesk and try to upload license it naturally says, it is expired. Then we try to contact Plesk support, we call USA support, India Sales support, email to plesk, but no response and no guidance how we get corrected license. After 7 days of talking with plesk we drop the idea of having plesk on server.

Here comes the second problem with plesk. You just cannot run the “uninstaller” because they never build uninstaller for their PERFECT software. luckily my client get the computer formatted at no additional cost, otherwise I have to search and delete all file manually, which I don’t want for two reason. I hate deletion they always leave traces anyways and it is lot more work then expected.

We later use Microsoft’s Free WebsitePanel. An Awesome software with ease of use for our purpose. We can install any version of SQL Server, MySql, PHP, ASP.NET and configure that easily. Plus we pay nothing to get it.

My second encounter came with a Linux/CentOs Based VPS with Plesk, where I need to upgrade the PHP version from 5.1 to 5.3 on client demand. I search on internet and found that Plesk do not distribute PHP so they do no provide any upgrade method. But there is atomic shell script available to help update. I did that update. PHP was upgraded. We run it, but as you have expected Plesk is broken now. Been on VPS it frequently goes out of memory and create all problems. We ultimately decide to drop that server as it is just test server .

I got saved both time and will never try a Plesk. Horrible software, powered by horrible support. Plesk is good for non experience, but nightmare for custom requirements. Never use it if you love to configure your server for speed or customization.

1. Plesk do not ship PHP as it’s integrated part, so it ask you to upgrade outside plesk and they do not provide support on it.

2. On Linux you can use default APT or YUM to upgrade PHP. In my case it is CentOS/Red hat flavour so this article apply to that mainly. Now when I try to upgrade from PHP 5.1 to PHP5.3 I cannot do that as default CentOS repo shows PHP53 as different package and do not come under default upgrade. And it though gets in conflict with PHP5.1′s current install.

3. I try to Erase existing package and thought to install PHP 5.3 afresh. But it shows a list of 110 dependencies which mainly consist of Plesk’s module. Otherwise it was fairly okay to YUM ERASE PHP. So, I have to opt for this solution which works 100% for where I read about it.

4. Atomic Corp create a script then on Red Hat favour enable 5.1 to 5.3 upgrade (Their WIKI: http://www.atomicorp.com/wiki/index.php/PHP ) Once you run this SH script you can re-run YUM to do the update. Steps are:

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# wget -q -O -http://www.atomicorp.com/installers/atomic.sh
# yum upgrade php
# service httpd restart

Bingo !!! PHP upgraded. No server restart needed.

So here are settings I need to change:

1. Select the Default website in IIS [or website you need to enable debugging].

2. Look for ASP icon, double click open it. In debugging settings check “Send to browser ” and Enable Server side debug to true. Close this dialog

3. Look for Error pages, Double Click open, look for 500 Error page, right click select “edit features”/advance options. Select Detail Error for all modes.

Finish

1.  Hack is known for wordpress and OsCommerce as of now. [I personnely see only wordpress below 3.0.5 been hacked, rather more specific to 3.0.4 version]

2. Hack need .htaccess file and /tmp folder, so only Linux [can they use windows temp? not know] and surely for Apache user it is an issue.

I cannot say wordpress or oscommerce is broken, but definately there is a control upload script that copy file to /tmp folder which is usually public readable. and then getting .htaccess is problem.

So if you are on Linux/apache and your software does the .htaccess read/write then you need to be beware.

Precaution

1. Make your .htaccess read only by user and group at most not for public

2. Create a empty non writable file /tmp/25454b22bf39c75795851f39d5e347c4 so in case someone try to copy it fails as file already exists.

3. Change your Passwords

4. Upgrade your software to latest version

5. Do not upload any theme or plugin which is not from known or tested source.

6. Look for vendor recommendation before installing any plugin.

Phew, so far my wordpress is safe, been on windows hosting I am sure the hack will be different if any, lets wait and see.

EDIT:  After few days of writing this article I found few instance where I can safely says that it is not a wordpress or OsCommerce hack, but rather a hack related to either Linux Operating System, or Apache Web server or Plesk Control panel. For sites I see this hack only those three are in common. All those site I saw get hacked in above way are not written by one developer, not belong to one server [except they all use plesk and apache], not using only Mysql [do you really thing mysql query can create ,htaccess?]  So, I give Clean chit to any Open source software as of now from this hack. This is indeed a server hack, Still no reason known to me.

Good luck guys !!!

Anyways, this lead me to upgrade database server after 6-7 months. It was pretty easy though, just download the new version and run the setup. everything was done automatically. Isn’t it that very simple.

Now the time came to run my first .NET 4.0 Framework application, I configure a New website in IIS. Select .NET framework 4.0 from ASP.NET tab in Website property. But what I found is I am getting 404 error. Strangely enough that Default.aspx page does exists and with .NET 2.0 it works just fine. So what goes wrong ? I search and experiment with web.config, but to no avail.

Then I found this article http://www.denalimultimedia.com/info/Articles.aspx?cid=20&topic=IIS-6-ASP-NET-4-0-page-not-found-404, which clearly mention that

• Install framework asp.net 4.0 and restart [Web Platform Installer does it just fine]
• IIS 6.0 console should now display ASP.NET 4.0 under tab “ASP.NET” [It was again done if #1 above is right]
• Under Web Services Extensions (in IIS console) .NET 4.0 framework might be set as: prohibited. This must be ALLOWED otherwise a browser might just return the error 404 page not found which is not very descriptive
• ASP.NET 4.0 applications must be run in a separate process (Application Pool) otherwise you’ll get the error ‘Server Application Unavailable’.

It is anyways always good to run different programming languages in different pool. For Example, if you want to run PHP on same server I use different pool for them. Covering those 4 steps I got my server working with .NET 4.0. Wondering why Web Platform Team forgot to complete 2 step in their installer.

1. Download Latest PCRE version from http://www.pcre.org

2. Download Cmake from http://www.cmake.org

3. Using CMake, I create a Visual Studio 9 64bit Solution from it.

4. Compile PCRE in 64bit.

5. Now download the Latest Source of IIRF from Codeplex (http://iirf.codeplex.com )

6. Open its solution file, change IIRFConfig.c file to by replacing pcre_free function call to free function call [2 replacements only]. [it was otherwise giving linker error to me]

7. Now replace 3rdParty files from your PCRE version [you need to compile PCRE in Release mode only, and make a STATIC Library [by default it is dynamic library, though you need both static and dynamic]

8. Now compile your IIRF version and Bingo!!! it is done, you will get a IIRF in 64bit machine.

Now some interesting facts

1. I use Windows 7 with Visual Studio 2008 to do all this on my 32bit machine only. So I cannot test my build as it won’t run 64bit stuff.

2. I had a 64bit windows 2003 VPS with IIS 6.0 running in 64bit mode, I test it up there and it works.

3. I did all this because I want to move this blog to Windows 2003 64bit. I will do it soon.

Now, your award for reading it out, you can download that 64bit IIRF Release version here

Now I have two options, I create a Virtual Machine one over other, where one machine is Linux and other is Windows. My company got Windows 2008 Web edition License through Microsoft WebSpark program. So I decide to without Virtual machine, as I don’t like virtual machine for development purpose, they are just too much overhead. So what I did is, I install windows 2008 as Operating system, with IIS 7. Install the Web Platform using Microsoft Web Platform, which also installed ASP.NET 2.0 and ASP.NET 4.0 and SQL Server which is good enough for small scale development.

Now, it is time to configure server for PHP team, well quite a simple stuff, I download the MySQL Community edition and install it. Easy and neat. Now Download the Apache HTTPD server and install it. However I just change it’s Listen Port from 80 to 700 [just any random port] and we are done. Web Installer already install and configure PHP on IIS 7, and I use PHP-cgi from its folder to run as Apache CGI application. Hope that is decently good platform until we get our second server for development.

Our server is now become a host for:

IIS 7

Apache HTTPD server

MySQL

SQL Server

Visual SVN

Yeah it does all those, and you will get surprised to know that it runs on regular PC configuration with core2duo 2.0 GHz on intel Desktop board without RAID. It servers 1 SQL server per second per stats and have more than 20 GB of data as Web application scripts with more than 100 website configured to run on this server. And Mind it the server runs 24×7 and used only 9 hrs of production, rest of other time it just serve for Demo to client.

Isn’t it that nice little server.

Disclaimer: I haven’t modify any license Information. All Copyrights and signature are same as Official release of Pwnat 0.3 Beta by Samy on his site. I only remove the compile error for Windows NMAKE Utility, and I have complied the software using NMake that got shipped with visual Studio 2008. But my guess is it will work fine with any nMake version.

Note:

1. To get it complied you need to have Windows SDKs 6.0A, I try to compile it with SDK 5.0 but it failed on Winsock Library.

2. Complied Version works fine on Windows XP SP2 and Later for me. I believe it works on Windows XP onwards.

Hope I cover all notes. So enough talking here is Download Link of the same:

http://www.sumitgupta.net/download/pwnat.zip

I feel bad about this software is that it is first time when I try to contact some author he didn’t respond back, and that is why inspite been very good concept and software I found people are finding its solution somewhere else. I wish Samy, you take care of your software well. This Code is still 100% yours, I just move some line in few condition.

AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
AddHandler x-mapp-php5 .php

in your .htaccess and the upgrade will work fine. Also, this is just one of many reason for upgrade failure, and you should perform this after you check all permission and stuff on your application.

Someone suggest to use 3rd party dialer, but I am not very keep to install anything “else” on server and I believe that there should exists some method to do it within available windows resources. But when I read article on “10 default things windows should adopt from Linux” where I read about crone feature I got an idea, that why not schedule the RASPHONE through scheduler ? So here is what I do:
I create a batch script that simply ping google.com, if ping is unsuccessful it call rasphone with “-d” switch and dial the connection. now I schedule it to run every 5 minutes after ssytem startup for indefinate time. Simple 2 line batch script and work is done.

Edit (code of Batch file):

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@echo off
ping -n 2 -l 1 google.com
if %errorlevel%==1 rasphone -d "MyDialupConnectionName"

Edit: 01-10-2011

I change the file to use RASDIAL command instead of rasphone, as when my Internet line has disturbance or my ISP is not available then my schedule keep adding rasphone.exe in Active task like which consume 2.5MB per instance and since I schedule it to run every 10 minutes, it keep consume 2.5MB every 10 minutes and finally my server was doomed when my ISP went down for 2 days during weekend. So new file is

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@echo off
ping -n 2 -l 1 google.com
if %errorlevel%==1 rasdial "MyDialupConnectionName" Username Password

/usr/bin/mogrify

I have use it in one of my poject, and works great for image resizing better than GD in PHP.

You will find detail guides at

http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/466/enabling-pretty-permalinks-in-wordpress/   (IIS official article)

http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks (WordPress official Article)

My unofficial web.config content

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<configuration>
<system.webServer>
<rewrite>
<rules>
<rule name=”Main Rule” stopProcessing=”true”>
<match url=”.*” />
<conditions logicalGrouping=”MatchAll”>
<add input=”{REQUEST_FILENAME}” matchType=”IsFile” negate=”true” />
<add input=”{REQUEST_FILENAME}” matchType=”IsDirectory” negate=”true” />
</conditions>
<action type=”Rewrite” url=”index.php” />
</rule>
</rules>
</rewrite>
</system.webServer>
</configuration>

http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/mysql-tip-mysql-server-has-gone-away-or-lost-connection-to-server-during-query-fix/

It has very good information on why it happens, so you can check and correct the error.

http://www.subnet-calculator.com

Calculate the subnet mask with ease.