We saw ‘What Is WAMP And WAMPServer’ in the last post, here we are going to learn about ‘LAMP’ which is nothing but a substitute to WAMP when one has hosted his website on ‘Linux Hosting Server’. LAMP consists of Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP/Perl/Python, where Linux is an operating system, Apache is a Web Server, MySQL fulfills database requirements and PHP/Perl/Python work as scripting languages. The idea of LAMP was originally invented in 1999 by ‘Michael Kunze’ in a German magazine, though the four elements were not approached to work together but in the later period these open source applications were made available for free of cost and as a bunch called as ‘LAMP stack’. Because of having the ability to make a strong web application platform, LAMP gained the popularity in very early stage in such a way that in today’s market LAMP services are available as by default with almost all the website hosting services providers.
There are multiple security options available while using LAMP, you can configure Apache and PHP to remain hidden so that your information would not be leaked by any possible hacking attacks. You can find more about LAMP security at :- Is Your ‘LAMP’ Secure Enough?. LAMP tools are easily available with the features of easy configuration and being very robust. Being as an open-source application, LAMP is supported by the larger community, which constantly adds features and development to meet the requirements of it’s users. For deployment, configuration and maintenance of LAMP, one needs to spend very little effort and time, furthermore you don’t need any type of administrative details for it.
As Security is one of the most important concerns in the internet world for webmasters, they should always keep their security system arrangements up to the mark, because hackers are always searching for new possible techniques to control your website and misuse it for their motive. Security measures can be classified in many categories, but a securing a website should cover security of web application as well as security of the web hosting server on which the web applications and website are hosted. Here I would like the share the information over security options on a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) as it is the most widely found combination among Linux Hosting Servers.
Instances in which a Web Hosting Server responds to the web browsers which are used by the visitors of the particular website residing on that particular website, that server provides a particular ‘header information’. Apache web servers are known for publishing many details of its environment as well as sometimes PHP also can be found responding in such header parts. Hackers may take advantage of this exposure in such headers of you website. Furthermore if he succeeds in knowing the factors like the type of web hosting services, type of server used, the web hosting platform, the version of scripting engine and other applications then it becomes an easy task for hackers to trace specific bugs or security loopholes. This makes the task easy for hackers to achieve their motives.
But still one can configure both Apache and PHP in such a way that it will remain hidden and will keep the possible attackers in the dark.
Rsync is a great utility to manage downloads of transformation of Linux hosting servers and it is very easy to set up on a web hosting server. After technically studying it one comes to know that it copies only diffs of files which have been actually changed and compressed, through SSH. And this copying process is conducted without any scripted FTP session or any other format of file transfer script.
Following are a few concepts explained which are involved in ‘Rsync’ operations.
Diffs – Not the whole file, but only the changed portion of those files are transferred. This selective transformation makes the speed of update process faster. Unlike ‘Diffs’ FTP transfers the entire file though the change is very tiny.
Compression – The transferred small portions (Diffs) of the files are compressed while the transformation process is going on and this reduces the time required for transferring the Diffs. This also reduces the load on networks used for transformation.
SSH Encryption – With ‘Rsync’ security is provided on (a) higher level than the FTP because the stream from ‘Rsync’ is passed through the ssh protocol which encrypts your session and not the RSH.
Rsync can not be used with a windows web hosting server so one should approach other suitable utilities like ‘Robocopy’ or ‘Richcopy’.
In previous posts we saw Cursor Movement commands, Text Modification commands, and commands used in Input Mode. In this post I would like to share the last line mode commands used in a VIM editor.
So following are the last line commands of VIM editor.
w - this command is used to save the file with the same name when you opened it to edit it.
w filename - This command works as same as we use ’save as’ with windows applications, which allows you to save the new copy of a file with your desired name. The substitute command to ‘w filename’ is ’sav filename’, the same task of saving a copy of file with other name can be achieved by using ’sav filename’ command.
n.m w filename - this command is used for saving the content of line number ‘n’ to ‘m’ to the given file name. If you want to refer to the last line number (whatever it may be) then you should use ‘$’ instead of ‘m’.
e filename - This command is used to edit another file than the current one. It’s handy for toggling among the multiple files when used with the following ‘e#’ command.
e# - After using ‘e filename’ when you want to come back to previous file then you should use ‘e#’ command.
e! - This command is used to discard the changes made to a file.
r filename – This command reads the contents from a file and inserts it below the current line.
So these were last line VIM commands used to operate a Linux hosting server.
Commands for Text Edition
In this post I have described the VIM commands used for text modification and commands used through Input Mode.
x - to delete the character which exists under the cursor.
rn - while using this command ‘n’ to be replaced with the character which you want to place in the place of any character under the cursor.
cw - this command puts you into input mode by replacing the current word at which cursor exists.
dw- to delete the current word on which cursor exists.
dd - to delete the current line in which cursor exists.
yy - to copy a line into the buffer.
P - to paste the copied line where the cursor exists.
Input Mode Commands
i - to insert text before the cursor.
I - this works similar as ‘i’ but starts inserting text from the beginning of the current line.
a - to append text after the cursor.
A - this works similarly as ‘a’ but starts appending text at the end of the current line.
R - this command replaces characters which is currently under the cursor, it works similarly when we type the characters in windows with the insert key on. In short it is used for overwriting the current characters. To stop this command you should press the ‘Esc’ key.
o - to open the new line under the current line.
O - to open the new line above the current line.
Thus we saw the different VIM commands which are very handy while working on a Linux Hosting server or a Linux based system.
In previous post we saw how important VIM commands are for handling a Linux hosting server, these commands basically come under Command mode of VIM
h - to move the cursor to left side
j - to move the cursor to down side
k - to move the cursor to up side
l - to move the cursor to right side
n| - to move the cursor to a particular character of the line, this is done by giving the that place’s number and if its valid the user notices a beep sound from the system. Entering just ‘|’ will move the cursor at the starting position of a particular line.
0 - to move the cursor at the beginning of the line
^ - to move the cursor at the first non blank character of a particular line.
$ - to move the cursor at the end point of a particular line.
fx - in this command you need to use any desired character in place of ‘x’ to move the cursor at the next appearance of that particular character used in the pace of ‘x’ within a single line.
Fx - it works similarly as ‘fx’ but in the reverse order, means you can fine previous appearance of the character placed instead of ‘x’.
[wW] - moves the cursor’s position word by word.
[bB] - moves the cursor’s position word by word in reverse order.
H- to move the cursor at topmost line of your screen.
M - to move the cursor at the middle line of your screen
L - to move the cursor at lowest line of your screen.
Ctrl-d - to scroll down the half page.
Ctrl-u - to scroll up the half page.
Ctrl-f - to scroll down the full page.
Ctrl-b - to scroll up the full page.
nG - in this command ‘n’ to be replaced by your desired number, which moves you to that particular numbered line of a file. i.e. if you typed 81G then you will be taken to the 81st line of that particular file.
Mx - in this command ‘x’ can be replaced by any single letter to which you want to comeback after going elsewhere. In short it is used for setting a line with a marker to be visited after the next move.
” - its command with two single quotes, and used for switching the positions simultaneously between two required places. In short it acts as a toggle.
