Godaddy SUCKS!!!!!!

The more and more I work on Go daddy’s Hosting the more I find it to be irritating as their systems seem to be designed to annoy the living hell out of developers!
I HATE GODADDY DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENTS, if you can actually call them that.
Just thought you should all know. If your a developer STAY AWAY FROM GODADDY its designed FOR TOTAL NEWBS who can’t find the any key!

Virtualization Vs Physical Networks

Ok so in the next couple of weeks we will be undergoing projects that will lead us into the world of virtual environments, Virtual environments allow you utilize your hardware resources much more effectively allowing you to consolidate on hardware/server and power costs with out sacrificing funds to do it. In fact VMware offers their ESXi version free for IT professional to try. With the release of Windows Server 2008 Microsoft began to pay more attention to the world of virtualization with the introduction of MS Hypervisor (Their Version of Virtualization).
I have worked with both in the past and although Microsofts Hypervisor did not disappoint in performance it lacked in compatability, unlike its competitor VMware. VMware is definately the choice of the pro’s as it offers more in compatability allowing you to run both windows and linux/UNIX networks or if your soul desires an integration of both Linux and Window’s networks.
Scalability is no issue when running virtual networks as you can scale your resources on demand. Once these virtual networks reach a certain maturity they become Clouds, Clouds are  large virtual networks. Clouds have the ability to adjust environment resources on demand, leaving you the ability to control your resources on a much more detailed and intelligent level. Redundancy in virtualization is not a problem as VMware provides awesome tools that allows on demand restoration minimizing service downtime. So to make things short VMware is ahead in the game of virtualization so we are going to use VMware to build our first small cloud that will house our Mail, Database, Web, Dev and CRM server. I will use all open source software in my tutorials, I believe the world is better off sharing knowledge then it is from restricting access to it. In the end we will have saved thousands of dollars on power and software costs it will be cheaper to run your business because you wont need a server for every application type, only one running virtual environments that will perform just as good or better.

Using PHP to add security with IP filtration/blacklisting.

I remember having issues with an old company I use to work for, always checking my blogs and social profiles trying to get information about what I was currently doing kinda pathetic but true. This of course was due to there paranoia of me retaliating to their unlawful termination, but thats is entirely a new blog post. I thought I would create a security system to protect my personal information and make it a lot more difficult to coordinate the gathering of information.

Traditional methods would say create a login system and set user roles and view access controls but this alone would not be enough. I needed further security that would detect a connections address and then log it. I then would need to create a algorithm that would predict redirects anonymizers and proxies, and then cross refrencing access the logs.

This of course is a very complex way of filtering traffic from your site but one that works.

The following PHP script will detect the IP of a guest and return its value, compares the value’s and then either loads the page if the IP is not on the black list or silently forwards to the site of your choice.
[cc lang=”php”]
// By Miguel Angel Vallejo www.miguelvallejo.com
// This script is Open Source so please use it if you wish. Enjoy! ^_^
// Si nececitas ayuda porfovor dejame un mensaje a mi coreo electronica miguel@miguelvallejo.com

//Lets declare the emtpy variable now.
var public $ip_address = ”;

//Lets create a function called ip_filter() to process our check.
function ip_filter()
{
//This part of the code checks to see if the IP is a Fake
if (getenv(HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR)) {
$ip_address = getenv(HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR);
} else {
// At this point it has detected that the Ip is masked and it requesting the real IP and storing in inside the variable $ip_address.
$ip_address = getenv(REMOTE_ADDR);
// This is the variable that will store the banned IP address
var private $blacklist = ‘127.0.0.1’;
// Now lets compare the values
if ($ip_address == $blacklist)
{
// if the ip is the same as the blacklisted ip forward the user to:http://www.google.com
header(‘Location:http://www.google.com’);
} else {
return;
}
}
}
[/cc]
Now Lets try something a little more realistic, instead of a single value to compare lets create an array that houses our banned ips, then compare the ip with all values within the array.
[cc lang=”php”]
//IP Detection Script — >
// By Miguel Angel Vallejo www.miguelvallejo.com
// This script is Open Source so please use it if you wish. Enjoy! ^_^
// Si nececitas ayuda porfovor dejame un mensaje a mi coreo electronica miguel@miguelvallejo.com

//Lets declare the emtpy variable now.
var public $ip_address = ”;

//Lets create a function called ip_filter() to process our check.
function ip_filter()
{
//This part of the code checks to see if the IP is a Fake
if (getenv(HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR)) {
$ip_address = getenv(HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR);
} else {
// At this point it has detected that the Ip is masked and it requesting the real IP and storing in inside the variable $ip_address.
$ip_address = getenv(REMOTE_ADDR);
// This is an array that will store the banned IP addresses
var private $blacklist = array(‘127.0.0.1′,’127.0.0.2’);
// Now lets compare the values, for each value in $blacklist[]
foreach ($blacklist as $value)
{
if($ip_address == $value)
{
header(‘Location:http://www.bing.com’);

}else{
return;
}
}
}
// Initialize the function.
ip_filter();
// load the page default as the security check has cleared as guest not on the banned list.
include(‘default.php’);
[/cc]
Ideally you would place and call the function at the beginning of each page/template which would prevent guests from trying to avoid the check.

If you wanted to take this script further you could tie it to your database where it connects and retrieves the blacklist making things much easier to update with a GUI in the future.
In the next tutorial we will cover taking the IP, time, amount of times and then writing those values into a table in your MySQL database.

If you have any questions please leave them.

Why hasn’t any updates to UPP been made? I guess it my turn. ^_^

So yes many of you may be questioning what is the obsession? Well I guess I can say I am a little OG, IRC has always been one of my favorites because of the level of customization in networks not only server side but also in client side development. Those who know IRC know one of the oldest forms of social media.

One of my favorite clients for relay chat navigation is UPP (Ultra Protection Project) which was developed by “KyD”

“What is UPP?
UPP (Ultra Protection Project) is an advanced script for mIRC created by KyD. It contains countless useful features, including a file server with firewall support, fail queue support, multiple channel protections, theme support, and much much more. It is highly customizable and will probably be the last script you’ll ever need. ^_^.”

Couldn’t agree more simply one of the best irc scripts ever made, but like any form of software with time it must be updated.

Latest Release

Version: UPP v2.00 Final
Release Date/Build: 2005.01.28
Files:
upp_2.00_final.zip – UPP v2.00 Final Full
Release Notes: before using upp 2.00 be sure to read this first.

“As of January 2008, UPP development has been reopened, expect a new release somewhere this year.”

It seems KyD is back in updating the UPP client, can’t wait too see it.

Decisions Decisions… Windows or Linux… Hypervisor or VMware?

Ok so I’ve Decided that I am going to construct my own private irc network to create a stable and private fire sharing network for my close friends, the question now is do i want to host it on a UNIX environment (Which is more stable) or A Windows Environment (Easier to set up).

The next step in the process was to determine hardware requirements and the hardware to use. IRC networks traditionally have 1 main server and at least 3 servers powering services (on large networks). I didn’t really need to have four servers because of the hardware (2.8 Ghz / 12MB L2 Cache, 8GB DDR3 1600mhz and 2.4TB of Hard Disk Space w Dual Gigabit Network Cards, unfortuanly the Hard Disks are all 7200 RPM 12MB Cache) which isn’t bad would allow me to take advantage of Virtualization. I Decided The next step was installing Windows 2008 Server Enterprise installing Hypervisor services and virtualizing 4 servers all running windows server 2003 enterprise, 1 as the hub and the other 3 powering the services.

The Next step would be setting up the SSL layer on the network to allow only encrypted connections preventing packet sniffing from prying eyes.
Once the network is up we can port replicate it to a VMware & UNIX environment.

The next step is now to customize and optimize your own client. Which is the fun part.