There are some nice articles on the internet telling you how to improve your Apache HTTP server’s performance. I did my bit on FreeBSD land. While turning on a different MPM than the prefork default one increases Apache HTTP performance by a lot, it is not the only thing one may do. For example if you are just running a single server for a small website or shop enabling the … [Read more...]
How to install Suricata on FreeBSD
Suricata is a free, open source, Intrusion Detection System software, or IDS for short. But it can also act as an Intrusion Prevention System, or IPS. It works by finding patterns using heuristics typically from network traffic. When configured to just warn about suspicious activity it is called an IDS, however when it blocks the traffic because of the pernicious activity it is … [Read more...]
How to configure the PF firewall on FreeBSD
There are three firewall options on FreeBSD. The in-house built IPFW, the ‘old’ IPF (known as IP Filter) and PF ported from OpenBSD. PF is a very popular piece of software which was originally sparked from an issue on the IPF license that prevented making changes publicly available, which the OpenBSD did all the time. When they realised of this issue, they pulled the code and … [Read more...]
How to configure the IPFW firewall on FreeBSD
Among the three possible firewalls on FreeBSD (choice is always nice) IPFW is the in-house built one. There is a default, easy way, configuration path but if one needs to build a box to act as a dedicated network appliance with packet filtering capacity fine tunning the IPFW firewall configuration is more than desirable. Before start reading, for those unfamiliar with … [Read more...]
How to format an USB drive on FreeBSD
File system support on FreeBSD falls onto UFS (UNIX File System) or originally named the FFS (Fast File System and on ZFS (Zetabyte File System). If you are using your box as a desktop-workstation you will use USB drives to share files with other systems, to carry things on your pocket or safe the day by plugging some drive into a soon to be dead box which is causing some … [Read more...]