This article is a quick manual for new, less experienced web server administrator or those who want to maintain their own VPS dedicated web server. This only pertains to UNIX based server with Apache and related modules installed on it. Its a checkpoint and guidelines for me as well as others who want to having everything configured with security leaks minimized. I am providing a list of tasks below which are necessary for having a basic server running how to install and configure each module is outside the scope of this article however i will try to provide external link for help wherever possible .

1. After signing up with Web hosting company you get a minimum one IP address, Slice virtual computer with some disk space, and connection to internet. You also get control panel in web hosting company’s portal to access powerful controls.
2. Install a bare-bone UNIX distribution most popular is Ubuntu from control panel.
3. Once you have it installed there you must use Ajax console or putty to start accessing your machine from SSH and execute commands from here things will be very easy and hassle free avoiding visits for web control panels.
4. For new software to download by the server itself you only need to use APT GET or WGET commands.
5. First software we are going to install is webmin which will provide us web interface to control everything from here instead of using commands we should be able to use mouse clicks. This also consists of lots of necessary software.

Security Measures

1. If you have SSH server running for accessing remote machine by clients like Putty etc you should enable only root login and disable all other users, also set the root password very strong having more than 10 characters and no dictionary letter, names in it.
2. All directories which are indirectly writable by external users (Example file upload via a webpage,  file manager console) must be owned by www-data (the auto-generated user that runs Apache server) and have 755 permission on it and all sub directories below it recursively.

Disaster Recovery

1. You need to have a cron job that creates periodic database backup of all important database running on the database server. For example if you have mysql db server the following command can be set as cron job to dump a db file periodically “mysqldump -u username-p dbname > /home/user_dir/db_backup/db_backup_$(date +%y%m%d).sql“

Spam Control

1. After your website gets slight popularity it becomes victim of email spam and literally hundreds of spam mails are bombarded daily, most of them come from China. The trouble with such mails are spending unnecessary attention /time and searching through them real customer/client specific mails becomes tough so fighting email spam is a necessity. To setup spam filter  you need to install spamassassin mail filter script and procmail mail filter program in sequence. procmail will scan all incoming mails and use spamassassin to find out spam or not.

At the time of writing this article my country India is witnessing a great wave against corruption in government sector. Entire public mass is participating after independence like this. While the endorsed measure like Jan LokPal bill is adequate or not is under debate But I am here going to raise an important point that our ways of tackling any  problem can be either of two ways, by suppressing it with Laws and rules or going deeper into the root cause that springs up corruption.

Corruption is all pervasive and everyone is corrupt. Corruption is not a word or a definition that most peoples think today (Keeping large sum from public money or asking for bribery). It is basic instinct in modern humans to trick structure made of thought for maximizing profit in any area of life is corruption. It is found in every aspect of our life and our relations.

Fact is everyone is corrupt and specially more in India due to prevalence of belief system in this country.  Peoples who are not doing corruption or at least don’t seems to be doing are either not able to do for the reason of not inadequate power, afraid of consequences or making fat salary in IT sector etc

Let me put here some instance of corruption where public in involved once again don’t think that only storing money from public sum or asking for bribery is the only forms of corruption.

1. Peoples do tough bargain with vegetable sellers, house maids who sells their items/services at ultra cheap, peoples ask for further concession from them. Those peddler spends their lives in ugly poverty. Peoples are ready to buy 50 Rs pizza at 300 also give good tip in big hotels there they never think of reasonableness of priced commodity. So the question why they do bargain ? to save money ? to exploit poor or for some brainwashing since childhood they go through.
2. Peoples maintain that reasons for raising inflation in this country is due to corruption while completely ignoring the other key factors like increasing population of this country and purchasing power. The total available resource in this country have become outnumbered when you look at population kept growing at faster rate. In India everyone do marriage that too at early age this is due to belief, fear and social stigma from which seems no way out.
3. Every parent is crying of increasing fee in private schools that demands large donation money for their children to let in, These schools promises in fluency of English language and development of posh culture in children. Now because everyone is desperate to admit child by force or will it is adding to momentum of loot by schools. Very less parent are interested in spending some time giving some factful insight to their children  and make them strong instead they think of some magic these schools will do.
4. Majority of Indians are famous for throwing garbage at public place but same peoples keep their house clean.
5. Peoples blame high politicians for corruption but same privilege and power when given to them at village level called Panchayat it became a easy way of making money for those peoples.
6. Peoples here in India asks Chanda money (contribution) during religious festival to collect some income.
7. Every citizen in India is desperate to buy apartments not always when need but for the purposes of money  investment which ultimately leads to reduction in available lands for farming and illegal undertaking of fertile lands for setting up concrete jungles.
8. Majority of Indian pays bribe money to Ticket checker for having a seat booked in train illegally during travel or allow him to enter in that coach, many Indians feels proud traveling without ticket and not being caught.
9. Peoples in India have to stand in long ques due to large number of applicants (For example rail ticket) but everyone is lurking somehow to reach in the front side or alt least tried that by some jugaad those who are not doing are afraid of peoples shouting at them.
10. In India peoples do happily pay bribe for getting their driving license done this they do so that they dont have to attend ground test or for four wheeler driving licenses those who dont own four wheelers.
11. Peoples in village are paying 2+ lacs money for getting their child enter into Police or Army the same peoples when into power obviously and normally tries to recover that money.
12. Reservations in education job has becomes critical debate. Since the old times country was divided into sections based on races, those time poor and bottom race peoples were either not given chance to reach the surface or suppressed. now today by reservation policy that section of society is benefiting, and now peoples belongs to top tace come along giving logics of equal rights, opportunities and failure of reservations policy to reach needy etc. The same peoples kept quite 50 years back in their booming times when poor were exploited. Now because danger of their children not getting into top schools is lurking they are singing this song.
13. Indians correlates cricket beyond the limits of understanding with national pride and feel that by watching cricket they are contributing to nation. If team India loses some match peoples shuts off their TV set and not ready to accept defeat where in any game victory or loss is a fact. This has led to commercialization in cricket and players are instead now devoted to making money, big business are desperate to monetize it and pay hefty ad money to players this ultimately leads to increase in commodities/service rates. If Indians are really patriotic it will reflect in some goodies towards nation and not just watching cricket.
14. Every Indians feel or taught that diversity of language, culture, religions  is some boon to nation where in reality these thing divides peoples and only creates regional extreme feeling. Everyone love their language and religions this automatically develops strange looks towards other follower and hatred.

What is reflecting on the seat of power is you and me. That is why I am pointing out its not that you are less corrupt or his is more  but your small glass of water is full and their bigger jug is full and there is no difference. Try to cut down corruption that is within you and that corruption on the top will automatically go

It has been proved beyond the shadow of doubts that today’s computer based jobs, in  which most of jobs fall into this category for example programmer/developer, consultant or any white hat data entry jobs has created some undesirable effect on the body parts like pain and changing the structure of human. Compared to peoples who work on factories seems different species when you look at these AC and chair lover couch potato. I dont want this discussion to be at theoretical level using any medical concept but writing my own seen experiences here and how possibly i can avoid them.

Meck pain and lead to use of Neck supports, peoples have been looking at computer screen constantly without changing head direction whereas in the normal conditions neck moves in varying degree

Wrist pain that controls mouse – right hand (usually) that operates mouse slowly starts catching a constant pain on the wrist area. one can avoid using mouse in most of the cases using keyboard short-cuts that will also improve speed. A laptops that has numeric keypad area with a overall wider size is not recommended because it further moves right hand on right side thus adding to pain.

Back pain – Peoples who sit on chair for longer period have this common symptoms which can become dangerous as a better practitioner one should keep changing their posture and take walks in between

I see peoples in the gardens madly running or doing Yoga this they start at very late stage when their body structure has gone beyond control thus leaving less scope for above method doing effective job. Peoples in the frustration and hurry starts doing these exercise in excess and that creates more damage than any improvements.