RKHunter (rootkit hunter) is a great little tool for linux servers to see if your server is clean from common rootkits, exploits and backdoors. It can be run from the shell, and can be scheduled as a daily cron job with the output emailed to you.

How to install RKHunter, login via SSH as root:

cd /usr/local/src/
wget http://garr.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/rkhunter/rkhunter-1.3.4.tar.gz
tar -zxvf rkhunter-1.3.4.tar.gz
cd rkhunter-1.3.4
./installer.sh –layout default –install

Now to run rkhunter from the shell:

rkhunter -c

Optionally, you might like to setup a daily cron job for rkhunter and have the output emailed to you:

pico -w /etc/cron.daily/rkhunter.sh

and paste the following into the file, make sure to edit the email address to your own:

#!/bin/bash
(/usr/local/bin/rkhunter –update && /usr/local/bin/rkhunter -c –nocolors –skip-keypress –summary 2>&1 | mail -s “RKhunter Scan Details” username@yourdomain.com)

ctrl+o to save the file, then ctrl+x to exit pico. Finally, give our new cron file permissions:

chmod +x /etc/cron.daily/rkhunter.sh

You can update rkhunter at any time using:

rkhunter –update

RKHunter project page on sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/rkhunter/

PHP Quick Profiler – PQP for short – is a small tool (think Firebug for PHP) to provide profiling and debugging related information to developers without needing them to add a lot of programmatic overhead to their code. Now, we only need to toggle one config setting to true and our reviewers have access to an automated tool to help create a faster and more consistent review experience. Since anyone can use it, PQP also gives the initial developer an idea of where their code stands before the review.

The profiler contains a 5 tabbed interface that presents pages for logging messages, measuring execution time, analyzing queries, revealing memory used and showing the files included.

Homepage:  http://particletree.com/features/php-quick-profiler/

Example page: http://particletree.com/examples/pqp/

After installing Fantastico on a new cpanel server, we copped the following error when trying to access Fantastico from cpanel:

Fantastico is not installed at the default location

Here’s how we fixed it.. More »