So WordPress 2.5 is out, but what if you’ve never installed WordPress on your own local machine before and want to try it out?
This FOSSwire Video tutorial shows you all the steps you need to take to install WordPress 2.5 on a LAMP system, in just over 5 minutes.
It’s a myth that any system that you connect to the internet is ’safe’. No matter how vigilant you are, there are always risks out there and so having some way of detecting that something bad has happened is a vital part of any security strategy.
Tripwire (I’m referring to the open source edition here, not the commercial ones that are also available) is a program which is designed to monitor your filesystem for changes so you can quickly identify suspicious activity and therefore be able to detect if an intrusion has happened.
The concept works like this. First of all, you set up a ‘policy’ file. This policy file details what files you expect to change on a regular basis, basically, any exclusions of files that you know are going to change. Once you’ve put that policy in place, you then schedule Tripwire to check every so often.
The results from the Tripwire scan will tell you which files, outside of those excluded in your policy file, have changed. You can then look at these changes manually and hopefully pick up any suspicious behaviour (such as binaries in /usr/bin changing without a good reason, such as a software update you applied).
Forgetting passwords isn’t generally a good idea. It does happen, though, and if it happens to your MySQL server, this is the process you need to follow in order to recover it.
First of all, you need to stop the running MySQL server. You need to be root on your system, then:
# /etc/init.d/mysql stop
Now, we need to make a text file called an init file. The contents of this file will be executed in a moment when we restart the MySQL server in a special way. So, create a new text file in your home folder and place this in the file:
SET PASSWORD FOR 'root'@'localhost' = PASSWORD('newpassword');
Obviously, substitute in your desired password (leaving the quotes intact). Save the file as passwordinit.
Now, we need to start the MySQL server with this init file. Still as root on the system, run:
# mysqld_safe --init-file=~/passwordinit &
As soon as you press Enter, the password has been changed. Now I recommend restarting the MySQL server in the normal way, as follows:
# /etc/init.d/mysql restart
And that’s it. Be more careful next time.
