Hello after a very long pause . Continuing the “Setuping a server for web hosting” series with the new smashing video of how to install PHP on your machine! AWESOME right?

In the very begining of the post, lets learn what PHP is exactly.

So, Wikipedia says ( and I add that I agree with her :

PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor is a widely used, general-purpose scripting language that was originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document. As a general-purpose programming language, PHP code is processed by an interpreter application in command-line mode performing desired operating system operations and producing program output on its standard output channel. It may also function as a graphical application. PHP is available as a processor for most modern web servers and as standalone interpreter on most operating systems and computing platforms.

PHP was originally created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1995 and has been in continuous development ever since. The main implementation of PHP is now produced by The PHP Group and serves as the de facto standard for PHP as there is no formal specification.PHP is free software released under the PHP License.

So, now when we know what PHP is, lets check the basic PHP syntax:

<?php
    echo "Hello World";
   /* echo("Hello World"); works as well, although echo isn't a
    function (it's a language construct). In some cases, such
    as when multiple parameters are passed to echo, parameters
    cannot be enclosed in parentheses */
?>

You can find out more about the PHP project on www.php.net.

In this case, I will use Windows Web Platform Installer to install PHP on my machine. By going on this link you can use the installer to install PHP on your machine (same link is also used in the video).

Check out the video ( dont forget to put it in full screen mode :

So, now when you’re all full of excitement and thinking “LOL, installing PHP is extra easy, everyone could do it” ….NAH!!! and the host says: You lost

First, lets check it the PHP is working at all on our server. Yes, we could use the above stated syntax, but that just isnt fun . To get some detailed info on our PHP lets use this command:

<?php phpinfo(); ?>

Lets navigate to c:\inetpub\wwwroot\ and create a file called “phptest.php” . We will do that by clicking with the right mouse click , New – Text Document.  We will call it phptest.php.

Inside the document we will paste the above piece of code, save it and hold your fingers .

Point your browser to your server address, and to the phptest.php file.

If everything went smoothly you should see a page like this:

If you see the page that means that the PHP on our server is working properly.

Now, lets have some fun with security issues in PHP.

First of all, we have to check the php.ini file which is located in C:\Program Files (x86)\PHP\php.ini  . Lets open it with Notepad.

Most of the option are explained in the file itself, so we will skip them. Focus will be only on the most important ones.

One of the interesting lines is this :

; – magic_quotes_gpc = Off         [Performance]

As we can see, that option is commented out and DISABLED, and its best to leave it like that since its been deprecated in PHP 5.3.X .

Second option is:

register_globals = Off -

LEAVE THAT TURNED OFF. If you have clients who have ancient applications, tell them to rewrite them .  More about the discussion on using register globals can be found on this link

Third one that should be disabled is :

allow_url_fopen = On

Standard setting in the instllation is “On”, which is bad and wrong for many reasons . This setting should be turned of because of cross site scripting and security holes in lots of CMS/Forum scripts. When fopen is turned on, a potential attacker has an oportunity to use some security hole in your application to include his own file and gain access over your entire account. I really think you dont want that

But, never fear , alternative is here .Tell your customers or yourself to use curl for fetching remote content.

Standard fopen function should be replaced with a curl function :

Fopen function

    <?
    $result = fopen($url,r);
    ?>

Curl function

<?
$ch = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
$result = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
?>

Next very important setting is :

disable_functions =

By standard, its empty…

Here are some of the most common functions to be disabled : system, exec, shell_exec, passthru, set_time_limit, error_log, ini_alter, dl, pfsockopen, openlog, syslog, readlink, symlink, link, leak, fsockopen, popen, escapeshellcmd, apache_child_terminate apache_get_modules, apache_get_version, apache_getenv, apache_note,apache_setenv,virtual

Google a bit to find what these functions do, but for an example, I would disable the “exec” command ( among others) , but you find out why
( hint : net user /add useraccountname mypassword )

When you’re done setting the php.ini file, all you need to do is restart IIS server and thats it.

Next step is to install some PHP based application and admire your work.

Ofcourse, this is a very fast tutorial on installing PHP . Configuration of it is the trickiest part and you should use the official php site and google to help you with it!

Cheers, Alesandro

Back by popular demand part 3 of the “setup my web server” tutorials

In this post we will cover the instalation of MySQL on a Windows 2008 R2 based server. The process is the same if you would have a Windows 2003 machine also.

At the beginning, lets see what MySQL is.

MySQL is a relational database management system (RDBMS)^. MySQL stands for “My Structured Query Language“. The program runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases.

The project has made its source code available under the terms of the GNU General Public License, as well as under a variety of proprietary agreements. MySQL is owned and sponsored by a single for-profit firm, the Swedish company MySQL AB, now a subsidiary of Sun Microsystems. As of 2009^[update] Oracle Corporation began the process of acquiring Sun Microsystems; Oracle holds the copyright to most of the MySQL codebase.

MySQL is often used in free software projects which require a full-featured database management system, such as WordPress, phpBB and other software built on the LAMP software stack. It is also used in very high-scale World Wide Web products including Wikipedia, Google and Facebook^.

Many web applications use MySQL as the database component of a LAMP software stack. Its popularity for use with web applications is closely tied to the popularity of PHP, which is often combined with MySQL.

So, what is the process of installing MySQL on a Windows machine? Well, it’s pretty straight forward so there is no need to write step-by-step tuturial..look at the video rather than reading

Dont forget to choose HD and the “full screen” option.

Song in the video is from Thievery Corporation. Song name is : Lebanese Blonde

Hi again, found an video that could be very interesting….its about how to migrate Windows XP to Windows7 ….

Click on the picture and enjoy!

Note: open the link in Internet Explorer…there’s no sound in Firefox

Hello there…

In order to  install SQL 2008 Express, we have to download it first . Fire up your favorite browser and point it to http://www.microsoft.com/express/download/ . After that, find the box with the SQL 2008 Express, and click download.

On the next step you have the option to register with Microsoft or download the software without registration.  I will choose the “no registration part”.

In the new window, choose the version you would like to install. Personally, I will choose “Runtime with advanced services“. By clicking on install, Microsoft will ask to install the Microsoft Web Platform installer. If you dont have it installed, click on the picture to install it.

Choose “Run”, and after the download, again, choose “Run“. Wait for the installtion to finish and look at the top of the browser, a little bar will pop up and ask us if we want to run Active X control.  Make sure the publisher is “Microsoft Corporation”. Click on “Run“, and then on Allow.

Now, look at the video of the installation I have made for you. The video will show you the process of installing SQL Server 2008 Express.

After that, all you need to do is run the “SQL Server Configuration Manager” under “Configuration Tools” and configure it the way you want it.

BTW, the track used is La Noche by Coca & Villa .IT’s AWESOME!!!

Have fun…bye!

Today, me and my collegaue managed to configure ISCSI on some backup server we had at the office. Iscsi target is based on OpenSolaris and ZFS . ZFS is a combined file system and logical volume manager designed by Sun Microsystems. The features of ZFS include support for high storage capacities, integration of the concepts of filesystem and volume management, snapshots and copy-on-write clones, continuous integrity checking and automatic repair, RAID-Z and native NFSv4 ACLs. ZFS is implemented as open-source software, licensed under the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL). The ZFS name is a trade mark of Sun.

Requirements for running any OS in HyperV that will be stored on Iscsi server are:

1. Iscsi target, obviously

2.Iscsi initiator software ( bundled in Windows 2008 Server)

3. High speed network, atleast 1Gbit.

4. Drive that you connect to the HyperV machine MUST stay in offline mode.

5. Tons of time to configure it

Will you will be able to read more details about configuring OpenSolaris and ZFS on my collegaues blog : toic.org  – linux geek blog

So, like we already know, the disk on that we want to install the OS has to be offline  ( hint: disk2 ).

Next step is the creation of the virtual machine that will use the disk.  I have recorded that process, so you can see how simple it is .

All that you have to do is to install the OS…I didnt do that to the end in the video.

Tommorow we have planned to create a failover cluster with two Windows 2008 servers and see what will happen when one server suddenly get disconnected..ups

Bye, Alesandro

Hi, last couple of days I have setuped over 10 Windows 2008 servers for hosting services for testing or production, so I am pretty bored with repeating the same stuff all over again , but, here’s a recorded video tutorial of one installation process. Because the video is pretty straightforward, I’ve decided that there is no need to explain every step of the installation.

Click on the HD button and put the video into full screen mode, so you can see all the details.

In the next post, I will show you how to install Microsoft SQL server 2008 Express .

Cheers!

No, I wont explain everything in this post. This post is just a annoucement, so you can know what will you read in a couple of next posts. We will cover the installation of IIS  7( Internet Information Services), MS SQL server, MYSQL server, PHP 5, Perl, Awstats and finally, integrating everything in DotNetPanel, the web hosting control panel for Windows Servers.  I will not explain or show how to install the OS on the server, because its a rudimentary and boring stuff , but being awesome, here’s a link to the video someone made

How To Install a Microsoft Windows 2008 Server – For more amazing video clips, click here