FeministWiki:Server setup
These are the steps required to set up a new FeministWiki Debian or Ubuntu server. The guide assumes that you're comfortable connecting to a host with SSH and using the shell for various administration tasks, such as using systemctl
, editing configuration files, installing packages, setting up SSH keys, and so on.
Initial setup of the new server
This section describes various initialization tasks for the new server that are independent of the old server.
Configure reverse DNS
In the settings of the VPS host (e.g. Strato AG), you can configure reverse-DNS for the IP address of the server. Set the FQDN for the IP address to feministwiki.org
. It's good to do this early since it can take some time to propagate.
Make feministwiki.dev point to the new server
During setup and testing of the new server, we want to make it accessible under the feministwiki.dev domain. So change A
entries of the feministwiki.dev
DNS settings to point to the IP address of the new server.
Update & upgrade
First of all, let's make sure the system is up to date.
apt-get update apt-get upgrade apt-get dist-upgrade
Install miscellaneous tools
Some of these are needed further down, some are just good to have.
apt-get install automysqlbackup \ bsdutils \ certbot \ curl \ dnsutils \ emacs-nox \ git \ imagemagick \ ldap-utils \ mg \ moreutils \ net-tools \ netcat-openbsd \ nmap \ rsync \ tree
Copy SSH key from old server
Copy over ~/.ssh/id_rsa
and ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
from the old server onto the new one. Make sure to set the permissions for the private key correctly: chmod 600 ~/.ssh/id_rsa
Set up SSH access from the old server
Some of the commands further below need SSH access from the old server to the new server, using the feministwiki.dev
domain name. Since we've just copied over the public key of the old server, we can enable access from the old server with this simple command:
# Run on new server cat .ssh/id_rsa.pub >> .ssh/authorized_keys
Further, to make our life easier, we can edit the SSH configuration on the old server so we don't have to manually specify the custom SSH port number every time. Add a block like the following into ~/.ssh/config
on the old server, replacing <SSH_PORT>
with the actual port number:
Host feministwiki.dev Port <SSH_PORT>
Tighten security of SSH access
Port 22 will get lots of malicious login attempts. It's a good idea to change the SSH port, and also to disable password authentication in favor of key-based authentication. Both can be done by editing /etc/ssh/sshd_config
.
Before restarting the SSH service, make sure you've actually added your public key (the contents of ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
on your computer) to /root/.ssh/authorized_keys
on the server, or you'll lock yourself out.
Set up firewall
For now, block everything but SSH.
apt-get install ufw ufw allow proto tcp to 0.0.0.0/0 port ${SSH_PORT} # Replace with actual port number ufw enable
Fetch scripts & config repo
Having copied the .ssh/id_rsa
from the old server will give you access to the GitHub FeministWiki repo:
cd mkdir repo git clone git@github.com:FeministWiki/FeministWiki.git repo/fw cp -ai repo/fw/root/* repo/fw/root/.??* . sh repo/fw/decrypt-pwd.sh
The decryption script will prompt you for a password the first time it's used. Enter the password stored in /root/pwd/meta
on the old server.
Enable extra repositories
We might want to add some additional package repositories so we can use the latest version of some of the used software.
Backports is always OK to add since the packages don't get priority over the stable ones:
# Debian # May not be necessary; see if there's a commented out line in /etc/apt/sources.list that you can activate. echo deb http://deb.debian.org/debian $(lsb_release -sc)-backports main contrib non-free > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/backports.list # Ubuntu echo deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu $(lsb_release -sc)-backports main universe > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/backports.list
Usually you want up-to-date versions of Apache2, Nginx, and PHP. Ondřej provides them:
# Debian for repo in apache2 nginx-mainline php do curl https://packages.sury.org/$repo/apt.gpg > /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/sury-$repo.gpg echo "deb https://packages.sury.org/$repo/ $(lsb_release -sc) main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sury-$repo.list done # Ubuntu add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/apache2 add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/nginx add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
It may be necessary to increase the priority of some repositories if you encounter errors about dependencies that can't be fulfilled, due to apt-get thinking it has to prioritize older versions of some packages. This was last observed while trying to install nginx-extras
, due to some library dependencies having the "epoch" part of the version number set in the regular Debian repository, but not set in the Sury repository. The solution is to create a file in /etc/apt/preferences.d
such as:
Package: * Pin: origin packages.sury.org Pin-Priority: 700
Elasticsearch, if you want CirrusSearch for MediaWiki:
curl https://artifacts.elastic.co/GPG-KEY-elasticsearch | gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/elasticsearch.gpg # As of January 2024, CirrusSearch only supports Elasticsearch 7.x echo 'deb https://artifacts.elastic.co/packages/7.x/apt stable main' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/elastic.list
Create vmail user
groupadd -g 5000 vmail useradd -u 5000 -g vmail -s /usr/sbin/nologin -d /home/vmail -m vmail
Make sure Postfix can connect to OpenDKIM
mkdir -p /var/spool/postfix/opendkim chown opendkim:opendkim /var/spool/postfix/opendkim adduser postfix opendkim
Install server components
Now we can install all the software used for the various FeministWiki services:
apt-get install apache2 \ dovecot-core \ dovecot-imapd \ dovecot-ldap \ dovecot-pop3d \ ejabberd \ elasticsearch \ fail2ban \ inspircd \ mariadb-server \ nginx-extras \ opendkim \ postfix \ postfix-ldap \ slapd
If any installation asks you for a password, remember that most passwords are found in /root/pwd
.
Example for installing ejabberd from backports instead:
apt-get install ejabberd/$(lsb_release -sc)-backports # e.g. ejabberd/bookworm-backports
Install PHP and modules
This should really be part of the last section, but due to the sheer number of PHP modules we want to install, it's in its own section:
php_version=8.1 # or whatever version we're on apt-get install php${php_version} \ php${php_version}-apcu \ php${php_version}-bcmath \ php${php_version}-cli \ php${php_version}-curl \ php${php_version}-fpm \ php${php_version}-gd \ php${php_version}-gmp \ php${php_version}-imagick \ php${php_version}-intl \ php${php_version}-ldap \ php${php_version}-mbstring \ php${php_version}-mysql \ php${php_version}-opcache \ php${php_version}-readline \ php${php_version}-xml \ php${php_version}-zip
We also want php-luasandbox
, which may not have a PHP version attached to the package name, in which case you'll have to make sure it supports the PHP version currently in use. If not, you can use the standalone Lua binary instead by setting {{{1}}}
in MediaWiki's LocalSettings.php
configuration file.
# See if this works first: apt-get install php${php_version}-luasandbox # Otherwise... apt-get install php-luasandbox # Check the package contents to see which PHP versions are supported dpkg -L php-luasandbox
Copy over certificates
Copy over the certs from the old server:
# Run on old server rsync -avz /etc/fw-certs feministwiki.dev:/etc/fw-certs
The /etc/fw-certs
directory and its contents should be owned by the group ssl-cert
. Make sure this is the case on the new server after running the command above, since the group ID might be different on the new server. If the group doesn't exist at all, just create it.
Further, files in that directory which contain the private key (privkey.pem
and bundle.pem
) should only be readable by group members. That is, their permission mode should be 640, displayed as -rw-r-----
in the output of ls -l
. Make sure this really the case.
Then, to allow certain services to read those files containing the private key, add them to the ssl-cert
group:
# Run on new server adduser ejabberd ssl-cert adduser irc ssl-cert
Also copy over the certificates stored directly in /etc/letsencrypt
:
# Run on old server rsync -avz /etc/letsencrypt/{archive,live} feministwiki.dev:/etc/letsencrypt
Put config files in place
The principle is simple: take all the config files from /root/repo/etc
and put them where they belong in /etc
. However, since a new server might mean much newer software, it's possible that some config files aren't compatible anymore, or that some new sensible defaults might be overwritten by the old config. Sadly, figuring out these incompatibilities is a manual process: compare the new default config with the old default config, and/or with our own config saved in the repo, to figure out what our new config files should look like.
There's a number of things important to remember:
- Don't forget to revert the redactions of sensitive information. Search files for
[REDACTED]
. - After copying
/etc/aliases
, runnewaliases
to create the alias database file. - After copying Postfix configuration, run
postmap /etc/postfix/sender-access
andpostalias /etc/postfix/virtual-aliases
. - Make sure the executable bit is set on all
cron
scripts,/etc/rc.local
, and scripts in/etc/letsencrypt/renewal-hooks
.
Apache modules and configuration
Enable PHP FPM and other Apache modules:
a2enmod expires headers proxy_fcgi a2enconf php${php_version}-fpm
OpenLDAP configuration database
First of all, check if there are important changes in the base configuration of slapd. For this, we can copy the old configuration into some directory on the new server and run a recursive diff:
# Run on old server rsync -az /etc/ldap/slapd.d/ feministwiki.dev:/tmp/slapd.d
# Run on new server diff -ru --color=always /tmp/slapd.d /etc/ldap/slapd.d | less -R
There are going to be a number of changes that are expected. Namely:
- CRCs, UIDs, timestamps, and other such auto-generated fields
- FeministWiki-specific things that only exists in the old configuration
If these are the only differences you can see, then it should be safety to completely override the config on the new server with the old one, using the instructions in the following section.
Otherwise, skip to the section after that and recreate the FeministWiki-specific configuration from scratch.
Complete copying of old configuration
Note: This is an alternative method to that described in the next section. See above for which one to choose.
Stop the LDAP server and delete the configuration database on the new server (careful!):
# Commands to run on the NEW (fresh) server: systemctl stop slapd rm -r /etc/ldap/slapd.d/*
Then copy over the configuration database, by running the following commands from the old server:
# Run on old server slapcat -n 0 | ssh feministwiki.dev 'sudo -u openldap slapadd -n 0 -F /etc/ldap/slapd.d'
Recreation of FeministWiki configuration
Note: This is an alternative method to that described in the previous section. See above for which one to choose.
First run dpkg-reconfigure slapd
to fill in some basic information such as the domain name and admin password. You can reuse the old admin password found in /root/pwd/ldap
.
Then, running the following sequence of commands, taken from FeministWiki:LDAP Schema, should do the rest:
# Create fwMember object class ldapadd -Y external -H ldapi:// <<EOF dn: cn=feministwiki,cn=schema,cn=config objectClass: olcSchemaConfig cn: feministwiki olcAttributeTypes: {0}( 1.3.6.1.4.1.42.2.27.99.1.1 NAME 'fwRecoveryMail' DESC 'FeministWiki password recovery mail' EQUALITY caseIgnoreMatch SYNTAX 1.3.6.1.4.1.1466.115.121.1.15 ) olcObjectClasses: {1}( 1.3.6.1.4.1.42.2.27.99.2.1 NAME 'fwMember' DESC 'FeministWiki member' SUP inetOrgPerson STRUCTURAL MAY ( fwRecoveryMail ) ) EOF # Set attribute permissions ldapmodify -Y external -H ldapi:// <<EOF dn: olcDatabase={1}mdb,cn=config changetype: modify add: olcAccess olcAccess: {2}to attrs=sn,mail by self write olcAccess: {3}to attrs=fwRecoveryMail by self write by dn.exact="cn=readonly,dc=feministwiki,dc=org" search olcAccess: {4}to attrs=manager by self read EOF # Enable the ppolicy dynamic module ldapmodify -Y external -H ldapi:// <<EOF dn: cn=module{0},cn=config changetype: modify add: olcModuleLoad olcModuleLoad: ppolicy EOF # Add the ppolicy overlay with olcPPolicyHashCleartext set to TRUE ldapadd -Y external -H ldapi:// <<EOF dn: olcOverlay=ppolicy,olcDatabase={1}mdb,cn=config objectClass: olcPPolicyConfig olcOverlay: ppolicy olcPPolicyHashCleartext: TRUE EOF # Set the default password policy # The policy object referenced here doesn't exist yet, # but will exist once we copy over the main database. ldapmodify -Y external -H ldapi:// <<EOF dn: olcOverlay={0}ppolicy,olcDatabase={1}mdb,cn=config changetype: modify add: olcPPolicyDefault olcPPolicyDefault: cn=default,ou=pwdPolicies,dc=feministwiki,dc=org EOF # Load the lastbind module ldapmodify -Y external -H ldapi:// <<EOF dn: cn=module{0},cn=config changetype: modify add: olcModuleLoad olcModuleLoad: lastbind EOF # Enable the lastbind overlay ldapadd -Y external -H ldapi:// <<EOF dn: olcOverlay=lastbind,olcDatabase={1}mdb,cn=config objectClass: olcLastBindConfig olcOverlay: lastbind olcLastBindPrecision: 60 EOF
Breaking changes in OpenLDAP
There might be incompatible changes between OpenLDAP (aka slapd
) versions which require manual editing of the slapcat
output before it's read in on the new server with slapadd
. Following are two examples of this.
These particular issues won't apply anymore when you're reading this guide, since they are one-time issues related to migrating to a newer OpenLDAP version, but they serve as good examples. (Also, no such clear explanation of the first problem seems to be found anywhere on the web, so maybe someone who searches the related error message below will come upon this guide and be happy!)
OpenLDAP Migration: Example Problem 1
This problem occurs when migrating from OpenLDAP 2.4.42 or earlier, to 2.4.43 or later.
The ppolicy overlay gained a new attribute in OpenLDAP version 2.4.43, so if you simply run the command above which copies over the configuration database onto the new server, it will produce the following error message:
User Schema load failed for attribute "pwdMaxRecordedFailure". Error code 17: attribute type undefined
The solution is as follows:
- On the new server, open
/etc/ldap/schema/ppolicy.ldif
and search forpwdMaxRecordedFailure
. You will see anolcAttributeTypes: ...
entry that defines it. Also, it's listed in theMAY
attributes block of theolcObjectClasses: ...
entry that defines thepwdPolicy
object class. - On the old server, save the output of
slapcat -n 0
to a file, open it in a text editor, and search for the block where theppolicy
schema is defined. It should start with the linedn: cn={4}ppolicy,cn=schema,cn=config
(the{4}
part might contain a different integer, that's OK). There, note that theolcAttributeTypes: ...
entry forpwdMaxRecordedFailure
is missing, and also it's not listed in theMAY
list of thepwdPolicy
object class definition. Copy over the attribute type definition from theppolicy.ldif
file on the new server, and amend theMAY
list to include it.
OpenLDAP Migration: Example Problem 2
This problem occurs when migrating to OpenLDAP 2.5, and although the change is bigger, the fix is easier. The issue is actually documented in the OpenLDAP 2.5 Administrator's Guide, Appendix B.2:
https://www.openldap.org/doc/admin25/appendix-upgrading.html
The second paragraph tells us what to do:
In OpenLDAP 2.4 the slapo-ppolicy(5) overlay relied on a separate schema file to be included for it to function. This schema is now implemented internally in the slapo-ppolicy module. When upgrading slapd.conf(5) deployments the include statement for the schema must be removed. For slapd-config(5) deployments, the config database must be exported via slapcat and the old ppolicy schema removed from the export. The resulting config database can then be imported.
In simpler terms:
- Save the output of
slapcat -n 0
from the old server in a file:slapcat -n 0 > slapcat.n0.out
- Open the file in a text editor and delete the block starting with the line
dn: cn={4}ppolicy,cn=schema,cn=config
, up to the next empty line (before the next block starting with adn: ...
line), and save the file. - Feed the file to
slapadd -n 1
on the new server:cat slapcat.n0.out | ssh feministwiki.dev 'sudo -u openldap slapadd -n 0 -F /etc/ldap/slapd.d'
Copying over live data
We want to make a first run of this copy process purely for testing purposes. Note that although some of the steps described in this section take a long time to finish, they can be done in parallel.
LDAP database
Make sure slapd is not running and delete the existing database on the new server (careful!):
# Run on new server! systemctl stop slapd rm /var/lib/ldap/data.mdb
Then copy over the database by running the following command from the old server:
# Run on old server slapcat -n 1 | zstd | ssh feministwiki.dev 'zstd -d | sudo -u openldap slapadd -n 1'
Start slapd again in the new server afterwards:
# Run on new server systemctl start slapd
Contents of /var/www
This is very simple but takes a lot of time to finish. Run it from the old server:
rsync -azP --delete /var/www/ feministwiki.dev:/var/www
Note that the trailing slash in /var/www/
is important; if not provided, it will copy the directory to /var/www/www
on the new server.
There's actually a systemd service found in /var/www/fw/wiki
that you'll want to enable on the new server:
systemctl enable /var/www/fw/wiki/fw-wiki-job-runner.service
No need to actually start it yet.
SQL databases
Run the following command from the old server:
mariadb-dump -u root -p"$(cat /root/pwd/mariadb)" \ --add-drop-database \ --databases feministblogs \ feministfiles \ feministforum \ feministmail \ feministwiki \ feministwiki_de \ feministwiki_es \ feministwiki_fr \ feministwiki_it \ feministwiki_pt \ fff \ | zstd | ssh feministwiki.dev 'zstd -d | /root/bin/sql'
You can use the show databases;
command in the SQL console to make sure that the list of databases is complete. Unfortunately they have to be listed manually, because using the --all-databases
option includes system databases that we don't want to copy.
Emails
This is a simple one. Run this command from the old server:
rsync -az --delete /home/vmail/ feministwiki.dev:/home/vmail
Note that the trailing slash in /home/vmail/
is important.
Elasticsearch
Temporarily stop Elasticsearch on the old server and copy over the data:
systemctl stop elasticsearch rsync -az --delete /var/lib/elasticsearch/ feministwiki.dev:/var/lib/elasticsearch systemctl start elasticsearch
Mailman data
GNU Mailman uses a filesystem-based "database" so we can transfer over its data as follows; run this from the old server:
cd /var/lib/mailman rsync -az --delete archives data lists feministwiki.dev:/var/lib/mailman
And then this on the new server:
check_perms -f
The check_perms
command, which is part of GNU Mailman, will take care of fixing file ownership and permissions.
Recreate SQL users
If the versions of MariaDB on the old and new server are compatible enough, you might be able to dump the mysql.user
table and import it on the new server, but it's safer to recreate the users from scratch. To do so, run this on the new server:
/root/bin/sql << EOF create user 'feministblogs'@localhost identified by '$(cat ~/pwd/mariadb-feministblogs)'; create user 'feministfiles'@localhost identified by '$(cat ~/pwd/mariadb-feministfiles)'; create user 'feministforum'@localhost identified by '$(cat ~/pwd/mariadb-feministforum)'; create user 'feministmail'@localhost identified by '$(cat ~/pwd/mariadb-feministmail)'; create user 'feministwiki'@localhost identified by '$(cat ~/pwd/mariadb-feministwiki)'; create user 'fff'@localhost identified by '$(cat ~/pwd/mariadb-fff)'; EOF
Now grant them access to their corresponding databases. Remember that this has to be done after the databases have been copied over:
/root/bin/sql << EOF grant all on feministblogs.* to feministblogs@localhost; grant all on feministfiles.* to feministfiles@localhost; grant all on feministforum.* to feministforum@localhost; grant all on feministmail.* to feministmail@localhost; grant all on feministwiki.* to feministwiki@localhost; grant all on feministwiki_de.* to feministwiki@localhost; grant all on feministwiki_es.* to feministwiki@localhost; grant all on feministwiki_fr.* to feministwiki@localhost; grant all on feministwiki_it.* to feministwiki@localhost; grant all on feministwiki_pt.* to feministwiki@localhost; grant all on fff.* to fff@localhost; EOF
Test
It's important to test the new server to make sure everything works well!
Reboot
We could restart a lot of services manually to ensure they've read their new config, but it's easiest to just reboot. (The new server, obviously.)
Open ports
We need to open all the ports used by the various FeministWiki services:
for port in 25 80 443 465 587 993 995 5222 5223 5269 5270 5443 6697 7777 do ufw allow proto tcp to 0.0.0.0/0 port $port done
Test!
At this point you should test everything using the feministwiki.dev domain name.
Some things may not work correctly because they're hard-coded to work as "feministwiki.org" and not under the "feministwiki.dev" name. Here's a list of known issues related to this:
- WordPress normally redirects clients to the canonical address of a blog if it's visited through an alternative domain name. This means we get redirected back to the old server if we try to visit
blogs.feministwiki.dev
. To work around this, we useRequestHeader set Host
in the Apache2 site configuration, which fools WordPress into believing it's being accessed through the canonical domain name. Still, the HTML/CSS/JS sent back to the browser refers to some resources on the.org
domain, which then fail to load due to CORS violation.
If you want to be extra thorough, you can edit your /etc/hosts
file to make feministwiki.org
, various *.feministwiki.org
subdomains, and maybe even other aliases (such as fem.wiki
) point to the new server, and then test the few stubborn services that won't otherwise play nice.
Deactivate again
After we're done testing, we can "deactivate" the new server again to prepare it for the final switch-over:
for port in 25 80 443 465 587 993 995 5222 5223 5269 5270 5443 6697 7777 do ufw delete allow proto tcp to 0.0.0.0/0 port $port done systemctl stop apache2 systemctl stop dovecot systemctl stop ejabberd systemctl stop elasticsearch systemctl stop fw-wiki-job-runner systemctl stop inspircd systemctl stop nginx systemctl stop opendkim systemctl stop postfix systemctl stop slapd
Note that we leave MariaDB running, since it needs to be live for data transfer.
Finishing up
Now, all services on the old server should be stopped, because we will begin the final transfer of live data.
Stop services on the old server
Stop all the services that interface with users and/or are responsible for modifying live data:
for port in 25 80 443 465 587 993 995 5222 5223 5269 5270 5443 6697 7777 do ufw delete allow proto tcp to 0.0.0.0/0 port $port done systemctl stop apache2 systemctl stop dovecot systemctl stop ejabberd systemctl stop elasticsearch systemctl stop fw-wiki-job-runner systemctl stop inspircd systemctl stop nginx systemctl stop opendkim systemctl stop postfix systemctl stop slapd
As with the old server, we leave MariaDB running since it will be needed for data transfer.
Copy over the live data one more time
Simply repeat the whole section Copying over live data.
The techniques and commands described above in the section Copying over live data are idempotent, meaning you can simply repeat them and they will make sure that the new copy of the live data is fresh and doesn't leave any outdated data on the new server. For instance, the --delete
argument to the rsync
command and the --add-drop-database
argument to the mariadb-dump
command help to make sure of this.
So just repeat the steps from that section exactly one more time.
Reboot the new server
At this point we can reboot the new server again, to make sure all services are properly restarted.
Open ports on the new server
Now we can open the ports again on the new server:
for port in 25 80 443 465 587 993 995 5222 5223 5269 5270 5443 6697 7777 do ufw allow proto tcp to 0.0.0.0/0 port $port done
Update DNS entries
You have to change the configuration of the following domains:
- feministwiki.org
- feministwiki.net
- feministwiki.de
- fem.wiki
- feminism.wiki
- feminist.wiki
- fffrauen.de
feministwiki.org
You only have to change three DNS entries, since most of the subdomains work via CNAME entries:
- The main
A
entry for@
(self-reference i.e. feministwiki.org) - The
A
entry forsmtp
since this is not allowed to be a CNAME - The
A
entry forxmpp
since this is not allowed to be a CNAME
Other domains
For these, you only have to change the main A
entry, since they don't use SMTP or XMPP.
Configure LetsEncrypt
Since we changed the DNS settings, we can now set up certbot:
certbot register -n --agree-tos -m technician@feministwiki.org letsencrypt-refresh
Finishing up
At this point, everything should be functional. If not, it's time for some debugging!