Category: Uncategorized

Dynamic routing in Linux and BSD

Dynamic routing are becomming more and more common these days, but not on the server side. Actually, Windows 2008 Server no longer supports Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), even though 2003 server did. The most common way of implementing dynamic routing in larger networks, are in the Wide Area Network (WAN) between firewalls. In this guide I will show how to use OSPF in Linux by using the Quagga Software Routing Suite.

As usual I use Debian linux, so let’s start by installing Quagga.

apt-get install quagga

That was not very hard. Let’s take a look at the different configuration files located in /etc/quagga/.

/etc/quagga/daemons

This file enables and disables the different services available in the routing suite. There are several supported protocols such as RIP, BGP and OSPF.

zebra=yes
bgpd=no
ospfd=yes
ospf6d=no
ripd=no
ripngd=no
isisd=no

/etc/quagga/zebra.conf

Zebra is the service that transfers configuration from Quagga to the operating system. Zebra takes care of updating interface addresses, routing tables, hostname, etc.

!
hostname server01
log file /var/log/quagga/zebra.log
password cliSecretPassword
!
interface bond0
    ip address 10.0.0.5/24
    multicast
!
interface eth0
!
interface eth1
!
interface lo

As you can clearly see from this configuration file, the server has hostname server01 and has bonded the eth0 and eth1 to a new bond0 interface.

/etc/quagga/ospfd.conf

This file configures the OSPF service. This is not a very advanced setup.

!
service advanced-vty
log file /var/log/quagga/ospfd.log
!
interface bond0
        ip ospf authentication message-digest
        ip ospf message-digest-key 1 md5 SECRETPASS
!

# Loopback
#interface lo
#    ip ospf priority 0
#!

router ospf
        redistribute static
        network 10.0.0.0/24 area 0.0.0.0
        area 0.0.0.0 authentication message-digest

Here the OSPF service is instructed to join area 0.0.0.0 with key 1 set as SECRETPASS. Also, the service redistributes all static routes. In this example, the server is a stub area.

I will be posting more configuration later.

Virtual hosting with Apache – the good way

There are so many amazingly bad guides to Apache and virtual hosting, so i decided to create a good one. This guide uses Apache2 running om Debian 6. I will not cover installation and stuff. Also, I cut right to the chase.

First, the NameVirtualHost property should just be declared once, and ports.conf is a good place to have it.

/etc/apache2/ports.conf

NameVirtualHost *:80
Listen 80

Second, do not place all virtual hosts in a single file, that’s not very dynamic. Look at this:

# ls /etc/apache2/sites-*
/etc/apache2/sites-available:
total 8
dr-xr-x--- 2 root           www-data     3896 Jun 26 15:33 .
dr-x------ 5 www-data        www-data     3896 Jun  8 13:15 ..
-rwxr-x--- 1 root           www-data     569  Apr 11 21:51 default
-rwxr-x--- 1 root           www-data     569  Apr 19 11:40 sub1.example.org
-rwxr-x--- 1 root           www-data     569  Apr 19 11:41 sub2.example.org
-rwxr-x--- 1 root           www-data     569  Jun 26 15:25 goodworkaround.com

/etc/apache2/sites-enabled:
total 0
dr-xr-x--- 2 www-data  www-data 3896 Jun 26 15:33 .
dr-x------ 5 www-data  www-data 3896 Jun  8 13:15 ..
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root   root  26 Apr 11 21:52 000-default -> ../sites-available/default
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root   root  41 Apr 19 11:49 sub1.example.org -> ../sites-available/sub1.example.org
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root   root  41 Apr 19 11:50 sub2.example.org -> ../sites-available/sub2.example.org
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root   root  37 Jun 26 15:29 goodworkaround.com -> ../sites-available/goodworkaround.com

So what am I doing that no one else is doing? I am symlinking, and I am splitting each domain or subdomain into separate files. Just use place all the domains in the sites-available folder, and symlink it from sites-enabled. This makes it easy to disable sites temporary, by just removing the symlink and reloading apache. Lets take a look one of those files.

/etc/apache2/sites-available/goodworkaround.com

<VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerAdmin webmaster@goodworkaround.com
        ServerName goodworkaround.com
        # ServerAlias www.goodworkaround.com

        DocumentRoot /home/mariussm/websites/goodworkaround.com

        <Directory />
                Options FollowSymLinks
                AllowOverride None
        </Directory>

        <Directory /home/mariussm/websites/goodworkaround.com>
                Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews
                AllowOverride All
                Order allow,deny
                allow from all
        </Directory>

        ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/goodworkaround.com.error.log

        # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
        # alert, emerg.
        LogLevel warn

        CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/goodworkaround.com.access.log combined

</VirtualHost>

As you can see, it listens on all interfaces (*:80) on port 80, cares only for the hostname goodworkaround.com and has a root folder. So hey, that’s the easy way.