Posts Tagged ‘null’

MySQL SSL Configure Howto – How to Make MySQL communication secured

Wednesday, January 15th, 2014

mysql-over-ssl-how-to-configure-logo how to configure ssl on mysql server

Recently I've been asked How to make communication to MySQL database encrypted. The question was raised by a fellow developer who works on developing a Desktop standalone application in Delphi Programming Language with DevArt an (SQL Connection Component capable to connect Delphi applications to multiple databases like MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Interbase, Firebird etc.

Communicating in Secured form to MySQL database is not common task to do, as MySQL usually communicates to applications hosted on same server or applications to communicate to MySQL are in secured DMZ or administrated via phpMyAdmin web interface.

MySQL supports encrypted connections to itself using Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption. Setting up MySQL db to be communicated encrypted is a must for standalone Desktop applications which has to extract / insert data via remote SQL.
Configuring SQL to support communicated queries encrpytion is supported by default and easily configured on most standard Linux version distributions (Debian, RHEL, Fedora) with no need to recompile it.
1. Generate SSL Certificates

$ mkdir /etc/mysql-ssl && cd mysql-ssl

# Create CA certificate
$ openssl genrsa 2048 > ca-key.pem
$ openssl req -new -x509 -nodes -days 3600 \
         -key ca-key.pem -out ca-cert.pem

Create server certificate, remove passphrase, and sign it
server-cert.pem is public key, server-key.pem is private key
$ openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -days 3600 \
         -nodes -keyout server-key.pem -out server-req.pem

$ openssl rsa -in server-key.pem -out server-key.pem
$ openssl x509 -req -in server-req.pem -days 3600 \
         -CA ca-cert.pem -CAkey ca-key.pem -set_serial 01 -out server-cert.pem

Create client certificate, remove passphrase, and sign it
client-cert.pem is public key and client-key.pem is private key
$ openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -days 3600 \
         -nodes -keyout client-key.pem -out client-req.pem

$ openssl rsa -in client-key.pem -out client-key.pem
$ openssl x509 -req -in client-req.pem -days 3600 \
         -CA ca-cert.pem -CAkey ca-key.pem -set_serial 01 -out client-cert.pem

After generating the certificates, verify them:

$ openssl verify -CAfile ca-cert.pem server-cert.pem client-cert.pem
 

2. Add SSL support variables to my.cnf

Once SSL key pair files are generated in order to active SSL encryption support in MySQL server, add to (/etc/my.cnf,  /etc/mysql/my.cnf, /usr/local/etc/my.cnf … ) or wherever config is depending on distro

# SSL
ssl-ca=/etc/mysql-ssl/ca-cert.pem
ssl-cert=/etc/mysql-ssl/server-cert.pem
ssl-key=/etc/mysql-ssl/server-key.pem

3. Restart MySQL server

/etc/init.d/mysqld restart
...

4. Create SQL user to require SSL login

Create new user with access to database;

GRANT ALL ON Sql_User_DB.* TO Sql_User@localhost;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

To create administrator privileges user:

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO ‘ssluser’@'%’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘pass’ REQUIRE SSL;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

5. Test SSL Connection with MySQL CLI client or with few lines of PHP

To use mysql cli for testing whether SSL connection works:

$ mysql -u ssluser -p'pass' –ssl-ca /etc/mysql-ssl/client-cert.pem –ssl-cert /etc/mysql-ssl/client-key.pem

Once connected to MySQL to verify SSL connection works fine:

mysql> SHOW STATUS LIKE 'Ssl_Cipher';
 +---------------+--------------------+
| Variable_name | Value              |
 +---------------+--------------------+
| Ssl_cipher    | DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA |
+---------------+--------------------+

If you get this output this means MySQL SSL Connection is working as should.

Alternative way is to use test-mysqli-ssl.php script to test availability to mysql over SSL.

$conn=mysqli_init();
mysqli_ssl_set($conn, '/etc/mysql-ssl/client-key.pem', '/etc/mysql-ssl/client-cert.pem', NULL, NULL, NULL);
if (!mysqli_real_connect($conn, '127.0.0.1', 'ssluser', 'pass')) { die(); }
$res = mysqli_query($conn, 'SHOW STATUS like "Ssl_cipher"');
print_r(mysqli_fetch_row($res));
mysqli_close($conn);

Note: Change username password according to your user / pass before using the script

That's all now you have mysql communicating queries data over SSL

 

How to fix Thinkpad R61i trackpoint (mouse pointer) hang ups in GNU / Linux

Wednesday, February 1st, 2012

Earlier I've blogged on How to Work Around periodically occuring TrackPoint Thinkpad R61 issues on GNU / Linux . Actually I thought the fix I suggested there is working but I was wrong as the problems with the trackpoint reappeared at twice or thrice a day.

My suggested fix was the use of one script that does periodically change the trackpoint speed and sensitivity to certain numbers.

The fix script to the trackpoint hanging issue is here

Originally I wrote the script has to be set to execute through crontab on a periods like:

0,30 * * * * /usr/sbin/restart_trackpoint.sh >/dev/null 2>&1

Actually the correct values for the crontab if you use my restart_trackpoint.sh script are:

0,5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45,50,55,58 * * * * /usr/sbin/restart_trackpoint.sh >/dev/null 2>&3

ig it has to be set the script is issued every 5 minutes to minimize the possibility for the Thinkpad trackpoint hang up issue.

One other thing that helps if trackpoint stucks is setting in /etc/rc.local is psmouse module to load with resetafter= parameter:

echo '/sbin/rmmod psmouse; /sbin/modprobe psmouse resetafter=30' >> /etc/rc.local

 

How to protect Munin Web statistics with password on GNU / Linux

Thursday, October 27th, 2011

I just installed munin to track in web the performance of few Debian servers. I’ve configured munin to open via a Virtualhosts in Apache. As its always wise to protect any statistics data about the server from the unwanted possible security violators, I decided to protect Munin with Apache .htaccess.

The munin htmldir output dir is configured to be in /var/www/munin, hence I protected my munin with password by:

1. Creating .htaccess file in /var/www/munin with following content

AuthUserFile /etc/apache2/.munin_htpasswd
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName EnterPassword
AuthType Basic

require user admin

2. Creating /etc/apache2/.munin_htpasswd with htpasswd (htaccess password generator cmd)

debian:/var/www/munin# htpasswd -c /etc/apache2/.munin_htpasswd admin
New password:
Re-type new password:
Adding password for user admin

Another important thing I had to do is set my VirtualHost file to be configured with AllowOverride All , if AllowOverride All is missing the .htaccess and .htpasswd are not red at all.
Afterwards munin is protected with password, and when my virtualdomain where munin lays e.g. http://munin.mydomain.com is accessed the .htpasswd password dialog pops up 😉

How to fix wordpress blog sudden redirection to present post problem

Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010

My blog’s index has suddenly started redirecting to my last post. That was rather strange, since I haven’t done anything special, all I did before the problem occured was a change in wordpress wp-admin to my latest post.

There in I changed the post Visibility from Public to Private

Right after this my blog’s home started redirecting to the blog post where the changes was made.

This was really strange, so I reverted back the changes in Post’s Publish Visibility to the default setting.
Though the change the redirect to the latest post by accessing my www.pc-freak.net/blog/ was still there.

I tried completely wiping out the post by sending it to Trash and issuing the same post again, but now things became even worser.

Accessing my blog was opening 404 not found error message . Everything seemed fine in wordpress admin and therefore I suspected the redirect is being applied from info read in my wordpress database in MySQL.

A bit of investigation prooved my guess was correct, for some reason a record was made to the MySQL blog database in table wp_redirection_items.

The incorrect redirection wihtin the database looked like so:

| 4 | /blog/ | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0000-00-00 00:00:00 | 2 | enabled | url | 301 | /blog/how-to-change-from-default-main-menu-to-other-text-in-joomla/ | url | NULL |

Removing the incorrect redirect was kind of easy and came to simply issuing:

mysql> delete from wp_redirection_items where id='3';
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

This fixed the redirection issue and opening my blog main page started correctly opening the main page again! 🙂