Category: Self Hosting

Enable /etc/rc.local with Systemd

Gareth Eaton

If you are running a Linux distro that uses Systemd, then you may find that your command in /etc/rc.local file would not run at system boot time. This guide explains how to enable /etc/rc.local script to run on system startup.

As root user

  • systemctl status rc-local

if it says – Active: inactive (dead)

then you need to enable

  • systemctl enable rc-local

if you get – The unit files have no installation config

The unit file have no Install section. As such Systemd can not enable it. First we need to create a file:

  • nano /etc/systemd/system/rc-local.service

Add the following

[Unit]
 Description=/etc/rc.local Compatibility
 ConditionPathExists=/etc/rc.local

[Service]
 Type=forking
 ExecStart=/etc/rc.local start
 TimeoutSec=0
 StandardOutput=tty
 RemainAfterExit=yes
 SysVStartPriority=99

[Install]
 WantedBy=multi-user.target

To exit the file, Press Ctrl+X.

  • chmod +x /etc/rc.local

Make a rc-local file

  • printf ‘%s\n’ ‘#!/bin/bash’ ‘exit 0’ |  tee -a /etc/rc.local

add execute permission to /etc/rc.local file.

  • chmod +x /etc/rc.local

enable the service on system boot:

  • systemctl enable rc-local

Output should be – Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/rc-local.service -> /etc/systemd/system/rc-local.service.

Start the service and check its status

  • systemctl start rc-local.service
  • systemctl status rc-local.service

The output should be – Active: active (exited) since Fri 2022-07-15 15:57:31 UTC; 7s ago

Now you can – nano /etc/rc.local – edit as needed

Build your own PRIVATE search engine – Using SearXNG

Gareth Eaton

Setup a server running Ubuntu 20.04 or Debian 11

We was using Debian 11 in a Container hosted in Proxmox

Login as root and update.

  • apt install && sudo apt upgrade -y

Install Docker

  • curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com -o get-docker.sh
  • sudo sh get-docker.sh

Install docker-compose

  • apt install docker-compose -y

Now we can move to the directory where we want to install Searx and using git
NOTE: if you don’t have git installed install it – apt install git

  • cd /usr/local
  • git clone https://github.com/searxng/searxng-docker.git

Verify that it copied correctly in to your current directory

  • ls

Now change in to the new directory

  • cd searxng-docker

adjust the content of the .env file

  • nano .env

Add you host name to SEARXING_HOSTNAME= your_host_name_here

If you want to use a SSL remove the # on the LETSENCRYPT= <email> and add you email address

exit the file using Ctrl+X hit “Y” and then “Enter”

Run this command to generate a key

sed -i “s|ultrasecretkey|$(openssl rand -hex 32) |g” searxng/settings.yml

Now to start SearX run this command

sudo docker-compose up -d

If you want to auto restart your on a reboot you will need to edit the docker-compose.yaml file

  • nano docker-compose.yaml

add restart: always after the followsing

environment:
– SEARXNG_HOSTNAME=${SEARXNG_HOSTNAME:-http://localhost:80}
– SEARXNG_TLS=${LETSENCRYPT_EMAIL:-internal}

…….

tmpfs:
– /var/lib/redis

……..

environment:
– SEARXNG_BASE_URL=https://${SEARXNG_HOSTNAME:-localhost}/

 

now restart SearX

  • sudo docker-compose up -d

 

 

 

 

 

 

EHCP Force Edition

Gareth Eaton

EHCP Force Edition is a forked version of the original EHCP.  The original version can be downloaded and installed from www.ehcp.net.

The Force Edition slightly differs from the original version.  In fact, both the lead developer of the original EHCP release and  the  developer of Force Edition collaborate on updating EHCP and fixing bugs.  In this version, custom FTP accounts to a custom file path can be created.  Also, php chmod and FTP chmod should both work out-of-the-box since the Apache user has been changed.  The code is managed and maintained within SVN (it is not in the original EHCP).  As new versions of Ubuntu are released, the Force Edition is quickly updated to work with the latest versions of packaged software within the main repositories.

Themes

EHCP Force Edition Easy Hosting Control Panel Main Theme Screenshot
(Epic V2 Theme)

The EHCP control panel comes with many graphical themes that users of the control panel can switch between and use.  The Force Edition’s default theme is picante, created and easily maintained.

EHCP – Easy Hosting Control Panel

Gareth Eaton

EHCP (Easy Hosting Control Panel) is an open source and very effective Hosting Control Panel that offers you to host any websites, create ftp accounts, email accounts, sub domains and so on. Ehcp is the only first hosting control panel was written using PHP programming language and available for free.

It offers all major hosting control panel features such FTP Accounts, MySQL Databases, Panel Users, Resellers, MailBox with Squirrelmail and Round Cube etc. It is the only first control panel that provides built in support for Nginx and PHP-FPM with completely throw out Apache and gives better performance for low end servers or VPS.

EHCP Features

  1. Complete php, free opensource, easily customizable and more free templaes.
  2. Unlimited resllers, user accounts, ftp accounts, email accounts, mysql and domains.
  3. Management of DNS, domains, subdomains, ftp, mysql, email etc.
  4. Domains password protected, Email forwarding, autoreply etc.
  5. Website analytics with webalizer and ftp with net2ftp.
  6. One click third party script install.
  7. User Disk quota control, SSL suport, custom http redirects, domain aliases, domain redirect.
  8. Different langauge support and template supports with few languages.
  9. Server backup and restore including files and databases.

This article will help you to install and setup Easy Hosting Control Panel on RHEL, CentOS, Fedora, Ubuntu, Linux Mint and Debian systems. Please note ehcp can be installed on a fresh installation of Linux. The ehcp installation is quite simple and easy, a new user won’t face any issues while installing it at the first time.

How to Install EHCP (Easy Hosting Control Panel)?

  • First, login as root user using ssh and download the latest EHCP (current available version is 0.32) source tarball package using wget command.
# wget http://www.ehcp.net/ehcp_latest.tgz

  • Next, extract the ehcp source tarball using following tar command.
# tar -zxvf ehcp_latest.tgz
  • Change to ehcp directory, then execute install.sh script.
# cd ehcp
# ./install.sh
  • Go through the installation setup and read the instructions carefully. The install script will install all needed packages including Apache, MySQL, PHP, Postfix and so on. During installation it will ask you to enter some information to configure services and set ehcp admin passwords. The installation setup takes up-to 50-60mins, depending upon the internet speed.
  • It is highly, recommended you to set a MySQL ‘root‘ password for MySQL administration.
  • Repeat MySQL password for ‘root‘ user.
  • Please select the best mail server configuration that suits your needs. We  selected ‘Internet site‘, mails are sent and receive using SMTP service.
  • Set the system mail domain name.
  • Create directories for web-based mail administration. Click on ‘Yes‘.
  • Create SSL certificate for POP and IMAP. Click on ‘Ok‘.
  • Please select your web server that automatically configured to run phpMyAdmin.
  • Configure phpMyAdmin database.
  • Set MySQL ‘root‘ password for phpMyAdmin.
  • Please give a phpMyAdmin password to register with database server.
  • Password confirmation.
  • Next, configure roundcube database.
  • Please select the database type that used by roundcube. In my scenario, I’ve selected MySQL database for roundcube.
  • Please provide MySQL password for roundcube.
  • That’s it, installation finished.
  • Now navigate to the Web browser window and enter IP address of your server.
  • Click on the link that says ‘Click here for the control panel on your server‘.
  • Enter ehcp login details, default admin username is ‘admin‘ and default admin password is ‘1234‘. If you’ve set new admin password during installation enter that password.
  • Ehcp Control Panel Dashboard.