Hello everyone,

Since there are alot of people asking for it, here is my HowTo about mod_ruid2
This is based on my CentOS server with Apache 2.x.

Installing this module its no longer needed to chmod config files to 666 or upload/attachments directories to 777. Since with this module enabled everything @ HTTP will run under the user itself and not ‘apache’ anymore.

** If you are using mod_ruid instead of mod_ruid2, first of all remove the mod_ruid line from ‘/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf‘

First, we are going to install libcap-devel
yum -y install libcap-devel
After this is done we are going to download and install mod_ruid2
wget http://dave.t0xic.nl/tars/mod_ruid2-0.9.tar.bz2
tar xjf mod_ruid2-0.9.tar.bz2
cd mod_ruid2-0.9
apxs -a -i -l cap -c mod_ruid2.c

Now, if you didn’t get any errors mod_ruid2 should be installed and added to the ‘/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf‘.
Lets confirm mod_ruid2 is added
grep 'mod_ruid2' /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
If you get any response like below its installed

LoadModule ruid2_module /usr/lib/apache/mod_ruid2.so

Now we need to modify the DA httpd.conf templates a little bit to enable mod_ruid2 for the users

Now copy the template files to custom
cd /usr/local/directadmin/data/templates/
cp virtual_host2* custom/
chown -R diradmin:diradmin custom/

Now you have copied the original templates to the ‘custom’ directory, so they won’t be overwritten.

Now follow the steps below for each virtual_host2 file you’ve copied
nano -w virtual_host2.conf

## replace line: SuexecUserGroup |USER| |GROUP|
## replace with: #SuexecUserGroup |USER| |GROUP|
## Add the lines below under the just replaced line
RMode config
RUidGid |USER| |GROUP|
RGroups apache

Save the files and lets rewrite the HTTPd config files
echo "action=rewrite&value=httpd" >> /usr/local/directadmin/data/task.queue

If you want you can start the rewrite of the HTTPd config files manually, just paste the line below and wait when its done
/usr/local/directadmin/dataskq d800
After the rewrite is complete you can restart HTTPd with the command below
/etc/init.d/httpd restart
Now mod_ruid2 should be installed and you don’t need to chmod anymore like ‘chmod 666 config.php’ or ‘chmod 777 uploads’.

To be sure the webmail clients etc still works we need to change the owner permissions
chown -R webapps:webapps /var/www/html

** Questions with Answers **
——————————————————-
Q: How can I test this is working?
A: Easy, install some CMS that you are used before. Like WordPress, Joomla that required (before!!) chmod 666 or 777 to get install/working.

Q: I’ve dirs/files owned by apache for some users, must I change this?
A: Yes, you need to give the dirs/files owner of the user itself, not apache anymore. Check below
Thanks for snk for the commands below, to fix the owner permissions of the dirs/files

cd /usr/local/directadmin/scripts && ./set_permissions.sh user_homes
find /home/*/domains/*/public_html -type d -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 711
find /home/*/domains/*/public_html -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 644
cd /usr/local/directadmin/data/users && for i in `ls`; do { chown -R $i:$i /home/$i/domains/*/public_html;}; done;

* Added ‘&&’ so if they do a typo, it won’t change anything.

You are missing a question, or you have a question, please let me know and I’ll try to answer them for you!

As you know, Webalizer stats are usually updated once a day, when using a Directadmin server. What to do, if you need more current stats? Here are some solutions (work good for me on CentOS 5).

If you need to update all server accounts, just type in the following command as root:

echo "action=tally&value=all" >> /usr/local/directadmin/data/task.queue

In order to update stats for a single domain, here is another command:

/usr/bin/webalizer -p -n |DOMAIN| -o /home/|USER|/domains/|DOMAIN|/stats /var/log/httpd/domains/|DOMAIN|.log

Just replace |USER| with domain username and |DOMAIN| with domain itself and have fun!

How to Install and Configure wtop – Apache Web Server Log Analyser

wtop is really cool application for web server log analysis and to see server stats at a glance. It also has powerful log grepping capability. It is just like ‘top’ for your webserver

It can find out number of searches or signups per seconds. It can also create histogram of response time. There is also another tool called logrep a powerful command-line program for ad-hoc analysis and filtering for log files. You can dig up lots of information using wtop tools.

You need Python version 2.5 to run wtop.

Download wtop

Type the following command:

$ cd /tmp
$ wget http://wtop.googlecode.com/files/wtop-0.5.6.tar.gz
$ tar -zxvf wtop-0.5.6.tar.gz
$ cd wtop-0.5.6
# python setup.py install

Configuring wtop
Once installed you can start using the tool immediately. You need to edit /etc/wtop.cfg file to setup parameters, Apache log files and other directives

# vi /etc/wtop.cfg

Now simply type wtop at a shell prompt:

$ wtop$

See all human traffic, enter:
$ logrep -m top -h access.log
See response times for all MSNBot homepage hits:
$ logrep -m grep -g MSNBot -i home -o status,msec,url access.log
Display the current log for traffic to pages about wordpress or themes sent from google.com
$ logrep -m tail --f 'url~wordpress|themes,ref~google.com' access.log

Apachetop is a curses-based top-like display for Apache information, including requests per second, bytes per second, most popular URLs, etc.

Apachetop watches a logfile generated by Apache (in standard common or combined logformat, although it doesn’t (yet) make use of any of the extra fields in combined) and generates human-parsable output in realtime.

Installing on Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install apachetop

Installing from Source on CentOS

wget http://www.webta.org/apachetop/apachetop-0.12.6.tar.gz

yum install readline-devel
yum install ncurses-devel
tar xvzf apachetop-0.12.6.tar.gz

cd apachetop-0.12.6
./configure
make
make install

The binary can be found in src/apachetop, and you can copy it anywhere you’d like.

Installing from Source on Ubuntu

wget http://www.webta.org/apachetop/apachetop-0.12.6.tar.gz

sudo apt-get install ncurses-dev
sudo apt-get install libreadline5-dev
tar xvzf apachetop-0.12.6.tar.gz

cd apachetop-0.12.6
./configure
make
make install

Using Apachetop

Once you’ve installed the utility (instructions below), you can launch it by simply running apachetop from the command line. Since apachetop sometimes defaults to the wrong directory for the logfiles, you can pass in the -f parameter to specify the location of the logfile. This is also helpful when you have many virtual hosts on the same box.

apachetop -f /var/www/vhosts/howtogeek.com/statistics/logs/access_log

Following are the logs files on a cPanel server for different services:

Apache Logs:

/usr/local/apache/logs/access_log
/usr/local/apache/logs/error_log

Exim Logs:

/var/log/exim_mainlog
/var/log/exim_paniclog
/var/log/exim_rejectlog

Ftp Logs:

/var/log/messages

Mysql Logs:

/var/lib/mysql/server.hostname.err

ChkServd Logs:

/var/log/chkservd.log

Named (Bind) Logs:

/var/log/messages

Last logins to server:

/var/log/wtmp (but to view the details, execute the command “last”)

Domlogs of an Account:

/usr/local/apache/domlogs/domainname.tld

Mod Security Logs:

/usr/local/apache/logs/modsec_audit.log
/usr/local/apache/logs/modsec_debug_log

Apache SUEXEC Logs:

/usr/local/apache/logs/suexec_log

cPanel Access and Error Logs:

/usr/local/cpanel/logs/access_log
/usr/local/cpanel/logs/error_log

Stats Logs:

/usr/local/cpanel/logs/stats_log

cPanel License Logs:

/usr/local/cpanel/logs/license_log

cPanel Backup Logs:

/usr/local/cpanel/logs/cpbackup/*.log

Tomcat Logs:

/usr/local/jakarta/tomcat/logs/catalina.err
/usr/local/jakarta/tomcat/logs/catalina.out