Deploying cloud based openvpn server easily

Openvpn is an opensource software application that implements virtual private network techniques to create secure point-to-point or site-to-site connections in routed or bridged configurations and remote access facilities. One of the usage of openvpn, is so that we can browse the web without exposing our public ip address. With cloud server nowadays, it is truly cheap and easy to own an openvpn server. In this tutorial, I will use vultr cloud provider to setup my openvpn server.

Create your vultr account here

Once created, login to your account. You will be presented with below dashboard

Click on the + button to create your new cloud server

Choose your desired server location, in my case I choose Singapore

For server type, click on Application tab, and choose openVPN

For server size, choose $5/month for time being. You can always upgrade it to bigger size, if there is a need in the future.

Leave options 4, 5 and 6 as default

Put in your desired server hostname

Click on Deploy Now to deploy the server

Wait while the server is being installed

Once the status turned to "Running", your openvpn server is ready.

Click on the server name, to see the details of your openvpn. Follow the url shown in the details of your server, to get to the openvpn login page

From there, you can download the client for your device, and start using your own, brand new openvpn server, with just $5 a month.

Enjoy :)

Adding new virtual hard disk to existing RHV virtual machine

Login to your RHV/RHEV/ovirt console

Enter your administrator username and password



Once inside, search for your VM name

Scroll down, and choose Disk tab

Add details of your new virtual hard disk and click OK once done.



Make sure that your newly created disk is listed in the Disk tab

Login to your vm, and run lsblk to check your newly created disk
# lsblk 
NAME              MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
...
vdc               252:32   0   200G  0 disk 

Create partition on the new disk

# cfdisk /dev/vdc

Choose New --> Primary --> Set size --> Write --> answer 'yes' --> Quit

Run lsblk again to check if your partition is successfully created 

# lsblk 
NAME              MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
...
vdc               252:32   0   200G  0 disk 
└─vdc1            252:33   0   200G  0 part 



Make filesystem for your partition, in this case I want an ext4 partition
# mkfs.ext4 /dev/vdc1 
mke2fs 1.42.9 (28-Dec-2013)
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
...
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done   

Once done, you can mount your partition wherever you want
# mount /dev/vdc1 /mnt
# df -Th /mnt/
Filesystem     Type  Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/vdc1      ext4  197G   61M  187G   1% /mnt

Score!!

Easily checking your domain name availability online

You can easily check this using an online NS checker by ping.eu

Fill in the domain that you would like to check in the white box as shown by the red arrow, like so:

You should be getting response like above, if the domain name is accessible.

If you are getting like below, the dns for that domain is down.

Download rpm with dependencies without installing

The tool we are going to use is yum-utils. First, you need to install yum-utils

# yum install yum-utils

Then, use yumdownloader command, to download the package, adding --destdir for destination the files are going to be downloaded, and --resolve to make yumdownloader download the dependencies as well. For example, I want to download rpm for elinks, and its dependencies, to /tmp:

# yumdownloader --destdir=/tmp --resolve elinks

That's all folks, happy rpm downloading :)

How to install wordpress on ubuntu 18.04

There are 3 main components to be installed, before wordpress can be deployed, which are apache2, php and mariadb-server.

Install apache2

$ sudo apt install apache2 libapache2-mod-php 

Install php and its components
$ sudo apt install php php-curl php-gd php-mbstring php-xml php-xmlrpc php-mysql

Install mariadb-server
$ sudo apt install mariadb-server

Create new database
$ mysql -u root
MariaDB [none]> create database mywordpressdb;
MariaDB [none]> grant all on mywordpressdb.* to mywordpressuser@localhost identified by 'password';
MariaDB [none]> flush privileges;

Test the new database using the new user created, you should be able to access the database using the credential created above
$ mysql -u mywordpressuser -p mywordpressdb 
MariaDB [wordpress_db]>

Download wordpress
$ wget -c https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz

Extract to /var/www/html
$ tar -xvf latest.tar.gz
$ sudo mv wordpress /var/www/html/mywordpress
$ sudo chown -R www-data /var/www/html/mywordpress

Access your wordpress site using browser, at http://localhost/mywordpress, and follow the onscreen instruction