When Windows Server 2008 is adopted by more people I will combine Admin Reports Forum into the new forum to make a one stop shop for all your Windows Server needs.

Be one of the first to register at the new Windows Server 2008 Forum.

Also coming soon will be a Windows Server 2008 forum

In the upcoming days I will be adding articles about my experience setting up and configuring Windows Server 2008. Many tasks that I used to make my life easier are already included and only have to be installed and turned on. For one backing up the servers will be much easier.

For now I’ll post a screenshot of Windows Server 2008. This was taken after the initial install. This is a large screenshot, 1920×1200, so be aware of that before you open it.

Look for more articles, tutorials, screenshots, tips and tricks in the near future. I will document each step of the way as I upgrade all my servers to Windows Server 2008.

Read on to determine if RPC over HTTP is installed and if it is how to secure your server against any attack that exploits this vulnerability.

The DCOM exploits present in Windows Server 2003, referenced in Microsoft Security Bulletin MS03-039 and CERT Advisory CA-2003-19, are also present in the RPC over HTTP interface.

This interface is not installed by default, but can be added using the Add / Remove Programs control panel applet.

To determine if RPC over HTTP is installed:

1. In Control Panel, click Add / Remove Programs.
2. Click Add / Remove Windows Components.
3. Click Networking Services, then click Details.
4. If the RPC over HTTP Proxy box is checked, then RPC over HTTP is installed on the server.

DCOM is a protocol than can be used oon top of RPC over HTTP. By default, any server with RPC over HTTP installed will accept DCOM requests using this protocol. Accepted DCOM requests are then sent to TCP port 593.

Security best practices demand the disabling or removal of all non-essential components and services. DCOM support within RPC over HTTP can be removed by modifying the registry.

To remove DCOM support within RPC over HTTP:

1. Use a registry editing tool to navigate to the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Rpc\RpcProxy
2. Locate the ValidPorts value.
3. By default, the value will contain the following entry: :100-5000This allows RPC over HTTP to use TCP ports 100 through 5000. As DCOM uses TCP port 593, we can disable it as follows:
4. Edit the ValidPorts value to contain the following: :100-592;:594-5000
5. Remove or amend any other entries that contain reference to TCP port 593 or port ranges spanning TCP port 593 in the manner demonstrated above.

When you remove entries for port 593, you prevent DCOM from being used through the RPC over HTTP protocol, but RPC programs (like the Outlook 2003 client) are permitted to connect to the RPC server (Exchange 2003 Server) through RPC over HTTP. More information on RPC over HTTP can be found on the Microsoft website.

Use it when you move to another Windows server. You can even use it to load a new website so you don’t have to configure PHP or any other extensions or loadable modules. Keep in mind if you do want to load a new website to duplicate the configuration you’ll have to change the host headers and IP address assigned to the new site in Windows Server IIS manager.

Let’s get started.

First thing to do is start IIS manager. Start > Administrative Tools > Internet Information Services(IIS) Manager.

Once you have it open right click Websites and select New > New website from file. A browse to box will popup and you can browse to the location you saved the site configuration to.

Once you browse to the file click Read. In the bottom box some text will scroll and it will say successful if it imported correctly. If it didn’t it will tell you the errors. You can manually edit the xml file to correct the errors if you wish.

If you used this to create a new website with the same configuration as an existing site then right click the new website and change host headers and IP address.

Thats’ it. If you have any questions post a comment to this article. If you need one on one help visit Admin Reports Forum.

First thing you need to do is open Windows DNS Manager if it already isn’t open.

Start > Administrative Tools > DNS

In the left window of the DNS manager expand the forward zones folder and right click the zone you want add records to.

Select Properties. Now the first thing we want to do configure the Start of Authority(SOA). When you setup the zone it set defaults that are not rfc compliant. Lets get that done first.

The first section is the serial number. You should set each section as follows:

• Serial number should be in yyyymmdd01 format. Set the year, then month, then day and finally an 2 digit number that will increment every update. Start with 01
• Primary server should be ns.yourmain.tld or whatever you called the name server. Default was the domain name. You can use the default if the root domain is actually registered as a name server for you domain
• Responsible party would be the DNS admin email, Normally hostmaster.yourdomain.tld.
• Refresh interval set to 20 minutes.
• Retry interval set to 15 minutes.
• Expires after set to 14 days.
• Minimum time to live(TTL) set to 1 hour.
• TTL for this record should be default so you shouldn’t have to change it. It should be 0 :1 :0 :0.

Those are minimum values and can be changed if you feel the need. With those values if you use a site like DNS Reports you won’t get any errors.

Lets add some other records now.

First thing you want to do is head over to mysql and download the latest 4.1.x version. Just like you did when you downloaded PHP you want to download the zip. Do not download the installer package. Download mysql here.
Open a remote desktop connection to your server or use an ftp client to upload the mysql zip. You can use the same procedure I outlined in Windows: Installing PHP to transfer the zip. In any case you need to be connected to the server with RDP.

Unzip the package and you should be left with a directory named mysql-noinstall-4.1.16-win32 or something similar. Inside that folder you’ll have mysql-4.1.6-win32 dir. Rename that to mysql-4.1.16. When we installed PHP, I am assuming you read the PHP install tutorial and followed it to install PHP, you noticed I named the PHP folder in a similar way. There is a reason for this. It is much easier to upgrade to new versions. No need to overwrite any files. Windows can be quirky at time when files are overwritten. You could wind up with problems. Doing it this way you’ll never have to worry about the install not working. Doing it this way also allows you to run 2 different versions of mysql is you choose.

Once you renamed the folder you can move it to your C drive or whatever drive is your root drive. You should have C:\mysql-4.1.6 and inside all the mysql folders such as bin, data, and docs.
Enter the mysql dir and rename my-medium.ini to my.ini.

Open my.ini with Notepad. You should see this:

[client]
#password = your_password
port = 3306
socket = /tmp/mysql.sock

# Here follows entries for some specific programs

# The MySQL server
[mysqld]
port = 3306
socket = /tmp/mysql.sock
skip-locking
key_buffer = 16M
max_allowed_packet = 1M
table_cache = 64
sort_buffer_size = 512K
net_buffer_length = 8K
read_buffer_size = 256K
read_rnd_buffer_size = 512K
myisam_sort_buffer_size = 8M

#skip-networking

# Replication Master Server (default)
# binary logging is required for replication
log-bin

# required unique id between 1 and 2^32 – 1
# defaults to 1 if master-host is not set
# but will not function as a master if omitted
server-id = 1

[mysqldump]
quick
max_allowed_packet = 16M

[mysql]
no-auto-rehash
# Remove the next comment character if you are not familiar with SQL
#safe-updates

[isamchk]
key_buffer = 20M
sort_buffer_size = 20M
read_buffer = 2M
write_buffer = 2M

[myisamchk]
key_buffer = 20M
sort_buffer_size = 20M
read_buffer = 2M
write_buffer = 2M

[mysqlhotcopy]
interactive-timeout

Now we need to add a couple lines to the file.
At the top of the file just under
[mysqld]
Add these 2 lines.

basedir=C:/mysql-4.1.6
datadir=C:/mysql-4.1.6/data

Now we have to change mysql.sock path to the correct path. There are 2 places to change this. Both are at the top of the file. One in the [client] section and one just below the paths you added.
Change

socket = /tmp/mysql.sock
to
socket = C:/mysql-4.1.6/mysql.sock

That’s all the editing you need to do. Once your site is getting a large amount of traffic you can tweak my.ini to optimize performance. Save the changes and close Notpad.
Open a command prompt, Start > Run > cmd.exe.
First start mysql to make sure everything works. To do that run this command.

C:\mysql-4.1.16\bin\mysqld –console

After it runs you should see some lines of text with the last being.

mysqld: ready for connections

If there is no errors then your ready to install mysql as a service. To do that first shutdown mysql with this command

C:\mysql-4.1.16\bin\mysqladmin -u root shutdown.

To install the service invoke this command.

C:\mysql\bin\mysqld-max-nt.exe –install

Mysql is now set to start whenever you reboot the server. Now lets start the service. To do that invoke this command

net start mysql

You should see some text that says mysql is now ready for connections. If it doesn’t start open Services manager and scroll down to the mysql service and see if the path to the binary is correct. The only time I ever had problems was when I invoked the install command without using the full path to the binary. If you did as stated above there should be no errors.
Now there is one last thing to do. Add the mysql bin directory to your path so that you can work at the command line without having to be in the mysql bin dir or using the full path to the dir.

To add mysql to your path right click My Computer. Select Advanced tab. Click Environment Variables. In the second box highlight PATH and select edit. Add

;C\mysql-4.1.16\bin

to the end of the path. Make sure you add it exactly as above including the ;.

Now open another command window and type mysql. You should see mysql > ready for connections.
Close the box. Congrats you now have mysql installed. You’ll want to head over to http://mysql.com and read the documentation to set root passwords and add new users.

First lets download PHP from php.net. Select one of the zip versions preferably in the 5.x branch. Do not install PHP with the installer. Once you have PHP downloaded open a connection to your server using remote desktop. Make sure when you connect you select options. When you see all the options at the top click local resources. Check the box that says bring local disks to server. Now type in your admin login and password and connect. A box will popup asking if you want to bring your disks to the server. Click OK.Now you’re connected to your server. Open My Computer and you’ll see the server disks as well as your disks. Browse to the servers C:\Inetpub directory. If you have Inetpub on a different drive than C then browse to it. Now minimize the RDP connection. On your own computer browse to where you downloaded the php zip. You did download the zip didn’t you? Again don’t use the installer. Extract the zip. You should now have a folder called php-5.x.x.

Now we’ll move the php folder to your server. Right click the folder and select copy. Maximize you RDP connection. Make sure that C:\Inetpub is open. Right click and select paste. It might take some time for the menu to popup after you right click. It will. Select paste you’ll see a transfer box come up and it will transfer the php-5.x.x folder to C:\Inetpub. Another option and maybe a faster option is to start remote desktop and download PHP on the server.

Now that you have PHP downloaded and in place in C:\Inetpub it’s time to set IIS to use it to parse .php pages.

First thing to do is rename php.ini.recommended to php.ini. We won’t edit it at this time. The defaults of the recommended ini is good to get PHP running.

First thing to do is set up the path to php in Environment Variables.

1. Click start and right click My Computer.
2. Select the Advanced tab.
3. Click Environment Variables

In the bottom box select Path and then Edit button. At the end of the Path variable add ;C:\Inetpub\php-5.x.x.
Substitute the folder path to what folder you actually have PHP in. There is one thing we need to do while you have the variables box open. Click the New button. In the Variable Name field put PHPRC. In the Variable Value field put C:\Inetpub\php-5.x.x. All done close that out and click apply for the changes to take affect.

Note: You might have to reboot the server so the new path and new variable take effect. To test it open a command window and type php. If you get an error then you’ll have to reboot. Don’t yet we still have work to do.

Now lets configure IIS to use PHP.

Open up IIS Manager. Start > Administrative Tools > Internet Information Services (IIS) Manger.

First thing we’ll do is add a new web service extension and enable it. In the left pane click on Web Service Extensions. in the left you’ll now see some options. Click add new web service extension. A box will popup. For the Extension name add PHP-IASPI. Click Add to add the required file. Browse to C:\Inetpub\php-5.x.x or whatever folder you put php in and select php php5isapi.dll. Check the Set extension status to allow box. Click ok to apply. IIS is now setup to use PHP, but, we aren’t quit done yet.

While still in IIS Manager expand My Websites. If you only have Default Website it’s a breeze getting PHP running.

Right click Default Website and select properties. Once the properties window comes up select Home Diretory tab. In Excutive settings in the dropdown select scripts only and click create. If you already have ASP or other scripts running on the server the Application will already be enabled for scripts. If you see an application name then skip the above step.

Click on the Configuration button. Click Add. When the box comes up you’ll see the Executable box with a browse button next to it. Click browse and navigate to the php5isapi.dll the same as you did when you added the web services extension. In the extension box add php. Uncheck Verify if exists. Click OK and apply. If you need to have php parse different extensions use the same procedure to add more extensions.

All done. Now it’s time to test it out. Open Note pad and put < ?php phpinfo(); ?> in it. Save it as test.php in your websites root. Make sure it doesn’t save as test.php.txt. If it did rename it to test.php. Open up your browser and browse to http://yoursite.tld/test.php. If you see the PHP information page then you have done everything correctly.

If you got an error when you tried to run php at the command prompt then reboot your server.

If you don’t see that page then retrace your steps to find your error.
If you have more than one website and if you want PHP to work in each you have to configure each site like you did the Default Website. In the next installment we’ll add some extensions and set up PEAR.