Setting Up and Configuring Ubuntu Server 9.04 VMWare with SSH, VSFTPD (TSL/SSL), OpenVPN, Fail2ban (PART 1)

Finally, after much tinkering and reading many guides...

My goal was to make a server with these components installed so I could practice breaking into it. Like any logical "practice" server, I made it a VM. Here's a guide on how to set up one of your own...

Things assumed and required:

1. You have VMWare Server Installed
2. You have Ubuntu Server 9.04 installed in a VM with no services preinstalled (i.e. LAMP)
   
3. You have mounted the VMWare tools installer
4. I am using the username mario for my default username and have set the server IP to 192.168.3.100
5. You have a free domain name setup and registered with DynDNS.org.
   

Let's get started:

The first thing to do is to login, via VMWare console, and change some fundamental settings. What we are going to do is change the root password, update the server with any patches available, and install some needed dependencies:

sudo su
passwd root
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
uname -r
apt-get install g++ gcc gawk make unzip zip linux-headers-'uname -r' build-essential

Now to install VMWare tools...its not necessary, but might be helpful in some instances:

mkdir /mnt/cdrom
mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
cp /mnt/cdrom/VMWare*.tar.gz /home/mario
tar xzf VMWare*.tar.gz
cd vmware*
vmware-install.pl
(Use all the defaults and when finished)
reboot

Once the system has rebooted, log back in and set a static IP on the interface eth0 and remove apparmor:

su
nano /etc/network/interfaces
(Modify your config to look like this)

inet eth0 iface static
      address 192.68.3.100
      netmask 255.255.255.0
      network 192.168.3.0
      broadcast 192.168.3.255
      gateway 192.168.3.1

/etc/init.d/networking restart
echo techaccesstips.servehome.net > /etc/hostname

/etc/init.d/hostname.sh start
nano /etc/hosts (Make the top portion look like the following)

127.0.0.1            localhost.localdomain                  localhost
192.168.3.100     techaccesstips.servehome.net     servername

/etc/init.d/apparmor stop
update-rc.d -f apparmor remove
apt-get purge apparmor apparmor-utils

Now install the SSH server and configure it:

apt-get install ssh openssh-server
nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config
(Change "PermitRootLogin" to "no" and change the port number if you wish)
/etc/init.d/ssh restart

Ok, now SSH into your server to test it out with the following command:

ssh -l mario -p 12345 192.168.3.100
(Leave the -p switch out if you didn't change the port number)

Continue with Part 2...