EMERGENCY - need to secure my server against an ongoing SPAMMER
Bob Brennan
rbrennan96 at gmail.com
Sun Mar 13 19:18:38 UTC 2005
> On Sun, 13 Mar 2005, Bob Brennan wrote:
>
> > My remaining problems are:
> > 1) how to open up *safe* relays for legitimate users, the preferred
> > method being pop-b4-smtp because it is widely supported.
> > 2) how to get mysql up and running again. The log-reported missing was
> > in fact there and valid, even when replaced by a backup. I am
> > currently trying uninstalls and reinstalls but not having a lot of
> > luck. Most of my sites are dynamic and heavily rely on MySql.
>
> I recall that the problem you reported was that, when you typed "service
> mysqld start", you got a message about "Timeout error...". When this
> happens, what does "service mysqld status" report?
>
> Depending on what you've done to your configuration, this may not mean
> that mysqld actually failed. What failed is a little piece of the
> startup script that pings the server until it comes up:
>
> /usr/bin/mysqladmin -uUNKNOWN_MYSQL_USER ping
>
> The failure message occurs if the ping fails after 10 tries (1/sec).
>
> The initial mysql database installed with the mysql-server RPM has two
> users defined. One is "root" and the other is "". If you removed "" or
> set a password for it, then the ping will fail and you'll get the message,
> even if if the server started successfully.
>
> I'm no MySQL expert, but if you are concerned about a user with no
> password, I'll just note that that user also has no privileges.
That's what I thought it was too Matthew - since the hosts.frm file
contains the users and passwords. So I copied all hosts.* files from a
known good working installation and it made no difference.
Putting back the old files I noticed the log error was specifically
"could not *read* hosts.frm" even though it was obviously there and
obviously valid. I tested my theory on the good working machine by
renaming hosts.frm - mysqld would not start but the error was "could
not *find* hosts.frm". Aha! So I started thinking it has to do with
access rights, disabled SELinux, and hey presto mysqld works again. It
is obviously an Up2Date change to SELinux that didn't take effect
until I rebooted, and now I need to narrow down the policy in question
in order to re-enable SELinux without crippling my databases.
Thanks for the suggestions - it put me in the right direction.
bob
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