Month: January 2014

Server Upgrade | Migrating WordPress

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Like I said in my first post for this server upgrade, a secondary purpose of this new server was to migrate my wordpress blog to a more stable server setup.

For my particular setup, I’ll be running my blog inside of a virtual machine running ubuntu 12.04 inside of a new server running ubuntu 12.04 as detailed in this post. This migration method does not care what kind of server you are using, so whatever setup you’re currently running should be fine.

The migration itself is remarkably easy thanks to a wordpress plugin called duplicator. Essentially the process is this.

On the old server, update wordpress and install duplicator. Go through the instructions listed in duplicator and save your files in a place where you can get them.

On the new server, install the latest version of wordpress and makes sure it is working 100%. You can use this guide if you need help doing that.

The only thing that stuck for me was the fact that after you finish the wordpress install, you need to run the following command.

This will give apache user permissions to write to disk.

Other than that, just follow the duplicator instructions.

Hey! This post was written a long time ago, but I'm leaving it up on the off-chance it may help someone. Proceed with caution. It may not be a good idea to blindly integrate this code or work into your project, but instead use it as a starting point.

Creating an Email Server at Home Inside of a Virtual Machine Using Linux & Citadel

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Citadel makes this pretty sophisticated and money saving procedure really easy. Once I figured out what I was doing, the install took me about 45 minutes to complete, here are the steps I took!

I’m running PHPvirtualbox on ubuntu server 12.04 as detailed in this post.

First thing’s first, get a virtual machine with a debian based OS loaded up.

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I’m using 12.04 for the VM as well

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Then go through the OS install, only installing openssh-server as additional software.

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First we need to give the server a Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN)

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You will need to edit the

files.

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Change whatever name you chose in the install process to ‘mail’ in the /etc/hostname

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Modify your /etc/hosts as follows. The green box is the domain you will be using.

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After rebooting, you will be greeted with a your hostname set to mail. You can still log in with your regular username & password.

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Running

Should yield very similar results.

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Now we need to establish a static for our virtual machine.

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In PHPvirtualbox, set the network mode to ‘Bridged Adapter’

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Running the following commands

And getting these results means our configuration is ready to go!

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I am now using the Putty window so I can copy commands in. First log in as root.

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Run

and go through the citadel install process.

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I’m changing the default port to 80 for now, just for simplicity.

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After the install, reboot the VM.

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Now log in to citadel!

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Now we need to do MX forwarding. My DNS host is network solutions, but the process is very similar regardless to which provider you use.

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Again, your domain is represented by the green box.

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The yellow box is your IP

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You can use whatismypi to determine your IP address. If it is dynamic, you can use No-IP to get a static one .

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The records should look something like this.

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Now in citadel, you need to go to ‘Administration’ -> ‘Domain names and Internet mail configuration’ and add your domain.

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Now open the following ports on your router. This is dangerous, but IMO worth it.

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Now we test!

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There we go! Pretty much no cost email addresses!

Thanks for reading, leave any improvements in the comments.

Hey! This post was written a long time ago, but I'm leaving it up on the off-chance it may help someone. Proceed with caution. It may not be a good idea to blindly integrate this code or work into your project, but instead use it as a starting point.

Server Upgrade | Citadel Install Inside of a Virtual Machine

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Okay! So for now, I’ve landed on Citadel for the email server software that I’m going to use. I’ve bounced around between four different clients (iredmail, Citadel, Ubuntu’s Suite, and Zimbra) and have landed on Citadel because I can install it (lol) and because it suites my needs better. The other software suites are basically wrappers of a bunch of smaller discrete softwares that build up the Ubuntu Suite. This is fine for dedicated servers, but since I’m going to be running this inside of a Virtual Machine, it is more convenient for me to use Citadel.

The install is pretty simple once you get the prerequisites installed and prep the VM itself.

Since it’s a server, a static IP address on the network will be very useful. Setting the IP address of a Virtual Machine is surprisingly simple, or at least it is in my case.

You set the IP you want manually as done here, and to configure the VM you set the network to be attached to a bridged adapter as seen here:

To install citadel, run the following commands per the citadel install guide.

And the install should go off without a hitch. You can then navigate to yourserverip/mail to access citadel.

Hey! This post was written a long time ago, but I'm leaving it up on the off-chance it may help someone. Proceed with caution. It may not be a good idea to blindly integrate this code or work into your project, but instead use it as a starting point.

Server Upgrade | Stress Testing

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So I wrote a program that makes really big numbers in python in an attempt to break a VM. Here’s the code:

I left it on for a few days and ended up with this:

Someone try and beat 26 compounds!

Hey! This post was written a long time ago, but I'm leaving it up on the off-chance it may help someone. Proceed with caution. It may not be a good idea to blindly integrate this code or work into your project, but instead use it as a starting point.