Linux Patch Management: Keeping Linux Systems Up To Date

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Red Hat Enterprise Linux includes the Apache Web server, which is currently used by more than twice as many Internet Web sites as all other Web servers combined.

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Web services are an easy way to provide simple, secure access to many types of documents. The Apache Web server provides both normal and secure Web services using the HTTP and HTTPS protocols.

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Apache supports security by specifying active ports through the Listen and NameVirtualHost directives.

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Apache supports host-based security by IP address or domain name.

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Apache supports user-based security by password, with the help of the htpasswd command.

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With Apache 2.2, you can configure multiple Web sites on your server, even if you have only one IP address. This is possible through the use of virtual hosts.

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The RHEL configuration supports the configuration of virtual hosts for regular Web sites at the end of the /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf file.

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The RHEL configuration supports the configuration of secure virtual hosts for regular Web sites at the end of the /etc/httpd/conf.d/ssl.conf file.

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Squid is a high-performance HTTP and FTP caching proxy server.

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The main Squid configuration file is long, but all you need to do in /etc/ squid/squid.conf is configure the following parameters: visible_hostname, http_access, and acl.

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Squid can refer requests to sibling and parent proxy servers. If the request still isn't available, a parent proxy server refers the request to the Internet.

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Once Squid is configured, you can set each computer on the LAN to browse Web pages to the proxy server on port 3128, or redirect requests with the help of an appropriate iptables routing command.