Big Trev

I just imported this blog into Facebook.  Now I’m interested to see if this note actually shows up in there….

As I’ve been getting to the point where I’ve got a few Ubuntu servers running (in VMs), I’ve found a pretty cool little GUI front end called webmin.

You can basically use it for most admin tasks, and there’s plugins available for a pile of stuff which means that instead of having to plough through text files, you can configure parts of the OS using a web browser.

I’ve found the easiest way to install is adding the repo to apt, instructions are available here: http://www.webmin.com/deb.html

 It’s really a nice piece of kit, and a good sort of set of “training wheels” for us Linux n00bs!

After a bit of stuffing around, I’ve finally sat down and managed to get a Squid reverse proxy to sort out my inbound mail.  I still needed to be able to get my inbound OMA onto port 80, because of course Microsoft (in their wisdom) don’t allow any other ports!

I followed the instructions from here:  http://www.classhelper.org/articles/reverse-proxy-server-squid-debian/installing-squid-proxy-server.shtml

And basically did the following:

1) install Ubuntu server (in a VM) and updated

2) Configured static IP

3) Installed squid:

apt-get install squid

 

4) Made a copy of the original squid config for safekeeping (/etc/squid/squid.conf)

5) and made my squid.conf look like this:

http_port 80 defaultsite=mysite.com vhost

forwarded_for on

refresh_pattern ^ftp: 1440 20% 10080

refresh_pattern ^gopher: 1440 0% 1440

refresh_pattern . 0 20% 4320

cache_peer 10.10.10.1 parent 80 0 no-query no-digest originserver login=PASS name=web1

acl sites_web1 dstdomain mail.mysite.com

cache_peer_access web1 allow sites_web1

cache_peer 10.10.10.2 parent 80 0 no-query no-digest originserver name=web2

acl sites_web2 dstdomain www.mysite.com mysite.com

cache_peer_access web2 allow sites_web2

acl all src 0.0.0.0/0.0.0.0

acl manager proto cache_object

acl localhost src 127.0.0.1/255.255.255.255

acl to_localhost dst 127.0.0.0/8

acl SSL_ports port 443

acl Safe_ports port 80 # http

acl Safe_ports port 443 # https

acl Safe_ports port 1025-65535 # unregistered ports

acl CONNECT method CONNECT

http_access allow sites_web1

http_access allow sites_web2

http_access allow manager all

http_access allow manager

http_access deny !Safe_ports

http_access deny CONNECT !SSL_ports

#http_access deny all

access_log /var/log/squid/access.log

cache_mgr support@mysite.com

At first, I was getting authentication errors with OWA.  I added the "login=PASS" bit, and it worked! 

I now have 2 VM servers, on different IPs, now serving 2 different websites on the same dynamic IP address (using DNS hosting and dynamic DNS from zoneedit.com). 

Now my Activesync on my Windows Mobile phone works too!