AFNOG 2002 Workshop

Track 1 - Scalable Internet Services

This is part of the AFNOG 2002 Workshop, held in conjunction with the AFNOG meeting in Lome, Togo, in May 2002.

TIMETABLE

Each day is divided into four slots of approximately two hours each. Classes start promptly at 08:30 and end at around 18:00 daily. There will be a one-hour break for lunch at around 13:00, and 20-minute breaks in mid-morning and mid-afternoon.

In addition to this detailed timetable you can see a summary timetable as well.

Monday morning

Introduction and logistics -- William Tevie
FreeBSD Tutorial -- Hervey Allen, Joel Jaeggli, Noah Sematimba
- FreeBSD Introduction Materials. This section includes:
  - Introduction
  - Why FreeBSD
  - Accounts information
  - Creating a user account for yourself
  - Some basic FreeBSD commands
  - Post-installation configuration
  - Short example using FreeBSD commands
  - Getting FreeBSD 4.5 files and others
  - pkg_add: Adding packages or ports by hand
  - Network Information
  - ifconfig
  - rc.conf
  - Stopping and starting the network
  - Stopping and starting services
  - Installation Notes
  - Slices and partitions
  - Distribution sets
  - Quick installation guide (using CD-ROM)
  - The FreeBSD Directory Structure
  - A few differences from Linux
DNS -- William Tevie and Ayitey Bulley
- DNS Section Materials. This section includes:
  - What the Internet's DNS is
    - A systematic namespace - the domain name space
    - Why use hierarchical names?
    - What are domain names used for?
    - Example of domain name
    - Domain name hierarchy
    - Different users of the term domain
    - Other information mapped to domain names
    - Different people responsible for different parts
    - What is a zone?
    - Information is associated with each domain name
    - General format of RRs
    - Several types of RRs
    - IP address for a host
    - Information needed by the DNS insfrastructure itself
    - SOA record
    - NS record
    - SOA and NS record example
    - More about RRs above and below zone cuts
    - Zone cut example - RRs in the child zone
    - Zone cut example RRs in the parent zone
    - Hostname for an IP address
    - Information about mail routing
    - Alias to canonical name mapping
    - Reverse lookup
    - Reverse domain hiearchy
    - Requirements for a nameserver
    - How is data partitioned amongst the servers?
    - What about reliability?
    - DNS protocols
    - Master and slave servers
    - Location of servers
  - Configuring a resolver on a Unix-like system
    - named.boot example
    - named.conf example
    - Checking DNS using nslookup
    - Checking DNS using dig
  - Best Practices

Monday afternoon

DNS -- William Tevie and Ayitey Bulley
- Presentation continued with the following exercises:
  - Setting up a resolver on a FreeBSD system
  - Setting up a Primary Name Server on a FreeBSD System
  - Setting up a Secondary Name Server on a FreeBSD System

Monday evening - Optional sessions

Continuation of DNS with Exercises -- William Tevie, Ayitey Bulley, and Alain Aina

Tuesday morning

Security Issues - Brian Candler and Hervey Allen
- Security Section Materials
  - Authentication
  - Authorisation
  - Integrity
  - Confidentiality
  - Availability (DoS)
  - Host access controls
  - Network access controls
- Attacks on the host vs. attacks no the network
- smurf attacks
SSH Discussion - Security at the Application Layer
- known_hosts files and authorization
- Password challenge authentication
- RSA/DSA Private/Public Key generation
- Public/Private Key use with SSH
- ssh-agent and ssh-add
- Using tunnels with SSH

Tuesday afternoon

Web/Proxy/SSL -- Joel Jaeggli and Noah Sematimba
- Web/Proxy/SSL Materials
- Install OpenSSL
- Patch Apache source code with SSL patch
- Install Apache
- Generate new local SSL certificate
- Configure Apache with basic configuration
- Start Apache httpsd daemon and connect to local box
- Verify local ssl certificate works

Tuesday evening - Optional sessions

FreeBSD Tutorial Cont. and FreeBSD Installation -- Hervey Allen and Joel Jaeggli

Wednesday morning

Squid
- Web/Proxy/SSL -- Joel Jaeggli and Noah Sematimba
  - Discussion of Squid Caching Server
  - Installation of Squid
  - Step-by-step overview of squid.conf
- Squid Caching Continued -- Joel Jaeggli and Noah Sematimba
  - Client Configuration for Proxy Server Use
  - Auto Discovery of Proxy in IE Issue
  - WPAD Expired RFC
Web/Proxy/SSL -- Joel Jaeggli and Hervey Allen
- Configuring Apache with SSL
- Example SSL Apache configuration file
- A good SSL Primer

Wednesday afternoon

Mail/Exim -- Philip Hazel and Brian Candler
- Exim Materials
- POP3/Mail Materials - See below as well
Topics covered in this section
- Introduction to Internet Mail
  - Mail agents - MUA and MTA
  - Message format
  - Authentication
  - SMTP - Message in transit
  - Use of DNS for email
  - Delivering a message
  - Relay control
  - Policy control on email
- Installation of Exim and basic tests

Wednesday evening - Optional sessions

Continued Practice with Exim

Thursday morning

Mail/Exim -- Philip Hazel and Brian Candler
- Exim Routers and Transports configuration
  - Configuration file
  - Changing runtime configuraiton
  - Configuration file sections
  - Default configuration file layout
  - Common global options
  - Exim 4 routing
  - Simple routing configuration
  - Default routers
  - Default transports
  - Routing to smarthosts
  - Virtual domains
  - Access control lists
  - Good and bad relaying
  - Message filtering
  - Large installations
  - Separating mail functions
- Modify routing practical exercises

Thursday afternoon

Mail/Exim -- Philip Hazel and Brian Candler
- Access Control Lists
- Setting up a relaying host practical exercises
POP, IMAP and Web email servers
- POP3/Mail Materials
  - Mailserver scalability
    - Linear password files
    - Linear mbox files
    - Too many files in one directory
    - CPU limits
    - Disk performance
    - Keep your SMTP (smarthost) and POP3 services separate
  - Maildir and qmail-pop3d practical exercises
    - Reconfigure exim for Maildir delivery
  - Courier practical exercises
    - Install courier-imap
    - Configure the daemons
    - Start the daemons
    - pop3 and imap over SSL

Thursday evening - Optional sessions

Wireless networks
Informal Exim and Mail work

Friday morning

POP, IMAP and Web email servers -- Brian Candler
- Sqwebmail practical exercises completion
- FreeBSD mailserver performance tuning
  - Increase kernel limits
  - Enable softupdates
  - Use SCSI disks
  - Spread mail directories across multiple disks
  - Put in as much RAM as possible
  - Use PCI cards, not ISA!
- Notes and Clustering and NFS
  - Using Network File System (NFS)
  - Using Proxies
  - Load balancing
  - Database
  - FreeBSD NFS

Friday afternoon

Mailing Lists/Majordomo -- Ayitey Bulley and Hervey Allen
- Majordomo/Mailing lists materials
  - Creating and managing majordomo
  - Why you might want manual intervention
  - Day-to-day utilities
  - Troubleshooting and standard problems
  - Manage your list owners - not their lists
  - List owners list and listowners script
  - Small tools
  - A practical excercises
- Mhonarc configuration
  - Creating your archive directory
  - Installing custom rcfiles and a shell script
  - Creating your initial Mhonarc files
  - Adding messages from an existing mail folder
  - Automating Mhonarc
  - Configuring Pine to use the pipe command
  - Piping a single message
- Majorcool Configuration and installation
  - Installing Majorcool
  - Setting up CGI correctly with Majorcool
  - Setting up keys
  - Majorcool options
  - Testing Majorcool
  - Setting up Apache with Majorcool
  - Test the web interface

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