The 4-th Drupal Linux Sysadmin Training Course we run is over Body The latest Drupal Linux Sysadmin Training Course we run is over. Out of 15 entrants, 2 trainees completed the course, one a graduate of the Krasnodar College of Electronics and Engineering and the other a 4-th year student at the Kuban State University. The course covered the following aspects of administrating and supporting infrastructure underlying Drupal-powered web projects: Using the ISPManager. Setting up Nginx, Apache / Php-fpm. Using Varnish. Setting up mail servers, spam protection. Drupal profiling with Xdebug and ..read more

How we applied SA-CORE-2018-002 for several dozen Drupal-powered sites Body Here is a brief account of how we applied the most critical Drupal security update in the past couple of years to web projects we support and monitor. As you probably know, our company supports and monitors the performance of several dozen Drupal-powered sites. On 2018.03.21 it was announced that on 28.03, around 22:00 +0300, a critical Drupal security update will be released. Of course, it was absolutely necessary to apply it to all sites for which we are responsible, and do that within the shortest time possib ..read more

Mysql Master-Slave Replication Body Hey all! Today, we shall show you some examples of master-slave replication setups. A bit of theory first Why do you need replication in the first place? There are at least two reasons to set it up. First off, it is your insurance that helps avoid downtime when/if your master MySQL server goes down: with replication, slave server picks up and fills for the master. Secondly, replication allows decreasing load suffered by the master server: you use it for writing only and pass read queries to slave. The replication process Nothing really complicated here. Ma ..read more

Making your Drupal web server secure, step by step Body In the previous article, we covered How to stay out of SPAM folder? and today we will learn how to secure our Drupal web server. Setting up Firewall So, we have Debian OS powering our Drupal web server, and we need to make it secure, adjust everything so as to minimize all risks. First of, we want to configure the firewall. Basic stuff. Our "weapon of choice" here is IPTables. Initially, the firewall is open, all traffic passes through it unimpeded. We check the list of IPTables rules with the following command: # iptables -L -v -n Ch ..read more

How to stay out of SPAM folder? Setting up PTR, SPF, DKIM under Exim Body In the previous article, we covered teaching your Drupal installation to send mail to users. But that is only half the battle, now we need to make sure the mail we send hits Inbox and not Spam folder. This article describes some options you have that offer relevant solutions. Unfortunately, no one can guarantee 100% inbox hits, but keeping the amount of mail filtered to Spam to a minimum is quite possible. You have the following tools to make your mail more trustworthy and thus keep it out of Spam: PTR record; SPF rec ..read more

Sending emails from Drupal-powered sites. Setting up Exim under Debian Body Once you have the web server set up and running, you need to make sure your Drupal site can send emails, like registration confirmation, password change etc. For inbound email, you may want to use email services like that offered by Google Apps. They offer good spam protection and secure storage. To send email from a Drupal-powered site, you can use an SMTP module and do it all through a third party mail service. Alternatively, you can set up your own SMTP server. This article describes setting up an Exim server that ..read more

Setting up MySQL for Drupal Body This installment of the Drupal-friendly server series covers the process of setting up MySQL to work flawlessly with Drupal. Previous article of the series described the nuances of tuning nginx web server, now is the time to deal with the database. The OS of choice for us is Debian. Installing MySQL Installing MySQL 5.5 or 5.6 First off, we need to update the package list: apt-get update Now, to install MySQL 5.5 we run the following command: apt-get install mysql-server-5.5 If we need MySQL 5.6, we run this: apt-get install mysql-server-5.6 Installing ..read more

Setting up server for Drupal with Nginx and Php-fpm under Debian Body In the previous article Setting up Nginx on a Debian server as front-end for Apache of the series of articles for Drupal sysadmins we explained Nginx configs that allow it working through static queries while Apache serves dynamic content. This article offers a look at an alternative setup, where Php-fpm takes the place of Apache. The operating principle for our web server will be as follows: Nginx receives queries from clients; Nginx serves static content itself; Nginx passes dynamic content queries to php-fpm, whic ..read more

Drupal Server Environment: automated server setup for Drupal websites Body Hi, fellow Drupalers. Today, I’d like to share with you a project of ours that allows automating web server setup for Drupal-powered websites. At Drupal Admin team, we often set up and fine tune servers for Drupal websites, so it was only natural for us to develop a routine that automates the related processes. We picked Ansible configurations management system for initial setups and further servers maintenance. Why Ansible? This systems allows: automated servers setup that translates into saving time on manual softw ..read more

Setting up Nginx on a Debian server as front-end for Apache Body Welcome to the next installment of the series of articles for Drupal sysadmins. Today, you are going to learn the process and nuances of setting up Nginx so it works as Apache’s front-end on a Debian server. In the previous article, we covered setup of a web server on a Debian machine and Drupal installation. The solution offered there has a couple of drawbacks: if a client’s connection speed is low, server’s RAM will be occupied by the Apache process until it does not deliver all the content requested; each time a client requ ..read more