How to setup a Linux Web Server and use it to monitor your homeSPEAKER: JESSICA DEEN – SYSTEMS INTEGRATION ENGINEER – SPK AND ASSOCIATES, LLC.

@JLDEEN | JESSICADEEN.COM | JESSICA@JESSICADEEN.COM

About Me

3 Year Microsoft MVP

Current Systems Integration Engineer for SPK and Associates, LLC.

Former Community Engagement Specialist for Windows Client and Windows IT Pro

CompTIA A+, Network +, Security + Certified

Apple Certified Macintosh Technician, Apple Certified Support Professional, Mac Integration Basics Certified

Why Linux?

Cost – Free

Security – Some might argue it’s a stronger OS than Windows considering most viruses are written for the Windows platform

Versatility – It can work on extremely old hardware and requires very little computing power (Raspberry Pi)

Software – The vast majority of Linux software is open source and free. Not only is there a zero cost associated, but you can also usually modify the source code and add more features if you have programming experience

Speed – In many cases, Linux distributions are found to be faster and snappier than Windows and Mac

Building a Web Server - Important Considerations

Cost

Apache HTTP is free

Ubuntu is free

Physical or Virtual?

Is your web server going to be setup with physical infrastructure or using a virtual solution such as VMware ESXi or Hyper-V?

What kind of web site will you be deploying?

PHP based

Python based (Django)

HTML

Microsoft .NET (IIS)

10 Most Popular Linux Distributions

Debian Composed of only free, open sourced software

Ubuntu Debian-based

Linux Mint Built on top of Ubuntu

Fedora Fedora doesn’t make its own desktop environment or

other software. Instead, the Fedora project uses “upstream” software

Comes with GNOME 3, by default

Cent OS / RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) Commercial Linux Distribution

Intended for servers and workstations

openSUSE / SUSE Linux Enterprise Community created; sponsored by Novell

Mageia / Mandriva Fork of Mandriva Linux created in 2011

Arch Linux Lightweight, minimal

Uses a “rolling release” model

Slackware Linux Oldest distrio that’s still maintained

Puppy Linux Latest version built on Slackware

ISO file is only 161 MB

Desktop Environments

Desktop Environments

Think of them like GUIs

XFCE

Gnome

KDE

Unity

Installed by default in 14.04

Cinnamon

Terminal

Linux (UNIX) Basics Commands

Man “Manual”

Ls “List”

Equivalent to “dir” in CMD

Pwd “Print Working Directory”

Sudo Think of this as UAC – elevate current user to root permissions for specific

commands

Text Editors: Nano

vim

Linux (UNIX) Basics Commands (Cont’d)

Mv

Move

Cp

Copy

Crontab

Cron Table

Think of it like scheduled tasks on Windows Server

History | grep “search string”

Pipe = Sends data from one program to another

Recommend Code Academy’s “Learn the Command Line” course to become more familiar with CLI

Software Repositories

What are software repositories?

Storage locations from which software packages may be retrieved and installed on a computer.

Each Linux distribution hosts their own software repositories

 Installing software on Linux involves package managers and software repositories

Package manager – Think of it like an app store, except they were the original app store.

Example: Sudo apt-get updateExample: Sudo apt-get upgradeExample: Sudo apt-get install gitExample: Sudo apt-get install vim

Updates

Sudo apt-get update

Downloads the package lists from the repositories and "updates" them to get information on the newest versions of packages and their dependencies. It will do this for all repositories and PPAs

Sudo apt-get upgrade

Will fetch new versions of packages existing on the machine if APT knows about these new versions by way of apt-get update

Media

You can get the media for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (long term support) for free direct from: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop

You can either burn to a disk, create a bootable USB stick, or mount it on a virtual machine

How to Install

LAMP Stack

LAMP = Linux / Apache / MySQL / PHP

Apache HTTP

Around since 1995

Serves an estimated ~55% of all websites (as of June of 2013)

Can run on Windows, Linux, Mac

MySQL

Open source database

Free

PHP

Server side scripting language for web development

Can also be used as a general-purpose programming language

Install packages

To install all necessary tools for your new Web Server and the Nest Thermostat web monitoring application, we can type everything we need to install in one single command:

sudo apt-get install apache2 mysql-server libapache2-mod-auth-mysql php5 php5-mysql php5-curl php5-json php5-mcrypt git

For Ubuntu 14, type:

Sudo php5enmod mcrypt

Enables mcrypt

Sudo service apache2 restart

Nest Thermostat Web Based Monitoring

git clone https://github.com/f0rkz/Bootstrap-Nest-Administration-Tool

mv Bootstrap-Nest-Administration-Tool Nest_Admin

Proceeding with install

Activate mysql with this command:

sudo mysql_install_db

After you have the pre-requisites installed, you will want to clone the repo into your web directory.

git clone https://github.com/f0rkz/Bootstrap-Nest-Administration-Tool

I also renamed my Bootstrap-Nest-Administration-Tool by typing:

Mv Bootstrap-Nest-Administration-Tool Nest_Admin

Access MySQL

MySQL -u root -p

You should be prompted for a password. This is the root password you created for your MySQL installation

Proceeding with install (Cont’d)

Create the database for information to be stored

create database nest_stats;

grant all privileges on nest_stats.* to nest_stats@localhost identified by ‘some-password’;

exit

mysql -unest_stats -p nest_stats < dbsetup.sql

Run the database query file as the user just created with the password just specified

cp ./includes/nest.conf.php_EXAMPLE nest.conf.php 

Note: Make sure the copied file is copied into the includes directory, or you will experience an error later on. After the file is copied, you will edit it with the necessary information and configure your crontab by typing:

Proceeding with install (Cont’d)

Reoccurring task

crontab –e

*/5 * * * * /bin/rm -f /tmp/nest_php_* ; cd /var/www/html/Nest_Admin/includes/scripts/; /usr/bin/php /var/www/html/Nest_Admin/includes/scripts/collect-nest-data.php > /dev/null

Mounting NFS / CIFS Shares

Mount an NFS directory from another machine

mount example.jessicadeen.com:/misc/export /misc/local

Mount a CIFS share

sudo apt-get install cifs-utils

mount -t cifs -o username=USERNAME,password=PASSWD //192.168.1.88/shares /mnt/share

FSTAB

Mount the NFS or CIFS File System using FSTAB so the mount remains after reboot

You must be root to modify the fstab

NFS Example:

Server:/usr/local/pub /pub nfs rszie=8192,wsize=8192,timeo=14,intr

CIFS Example:

//192.168.1.102/misc/export /location/goes/here cifs credentials=/root.smbcredentials.iocharset.utf

//192.168.1.102/Location\040With\040Spaces /local/location/goes_here cifs credentials=/root/.smbcredentials,iocharset=utf8

Store data in /root/.smbcredentials

Username=bob

Password=P@ssw0rd!

Vhost

Virtual hosting

Allows for hosting multiple domain names on a single server

Shared resources for multiple sites

Ubuntu specifically, vhost directory is /etc/apache2/sites-available/

Example:

ServerName democode.cloudapp.net

ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost

DocumentRoot /var/www/html/Nest_Admin/web/

Live Demo

Blog

http://www.jessicadeen.com/tech/setup-nest-bootstrap-control-panel/

Deck and notes will be posted on the blog later today

Free trick and tip:

Shortcut to SSH on Windows

Install Cygwin64 with the openssh and client package (bin)

Locate C:\cygwin64\bin\mintty.exe

Create shortcut

Copy shortcut to c:\windows\system32

Renam shortcut to ‘ssh’

Right click properties, change target path to C:\cygwin64\mintty.exe /bin/ssh

Press OK

Questions?