Low End Box

Bootstraping Low End VPS with Pre-built Scripts

scripts September 16, 2009 @ 1:52 am

It was fun setting up your very own server. I remembered the time when I received the root password to my very first virtual server back in March 2006 ($22/month for a merely 192MB of memory), it took me hours setting it up to exactly the way I wanted. At the end of the day when it started to pump out my websites on TCP port 80 — joy!

Well. It’s still fun the second time around when I moved hosting, but it wasn’t the same. 3^rd time? Hmm. By now I probably have set up 30+ virtual servers due to expansion or migration, and it feels a lot like work than fun. In the effort to possess the 3 great virtues of a programmer according to Larry Wall, laziness, impatience, and hubris, I decided to write some simple scripts to quickly get my low end virtual servers up running and configured in no time!

Here is one that I want to share today.

• Download lowend-debian.sh

Usage:

1. Buy a new low end VPS from any provider
2. Build a standard Debian 5 minimum install
3. Got the root password
4. ssh into your new low end box, and

   $ ssh root@my-new-box
   Linux lowendbox 2.6.18-blah #1 SMP Wed Aug 26 15:47:17 MSD 2009 i686
   ...
   Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent
   permitted by applicable law.
   # wget -q http://www.lowendbox.com/scripts/lowend-debian.sh
   # bash ./lowend-debian.sh
   ...
   

What it does is:

• Remove rsyslogd (memory hog on OpenVZ system) and portmap (mostly useless).
• Run apt-get update && apt-get upgrade to get the server up to date.
• Install and configure dash as /bin/sh.
• Install and configure inetutils-syslog as default system logger.
• Install and configure dropbear as OpenSSH replacement.

Once done, it should bring the memory usage to around 4-5MB on a 32bit Debian (where 2.8MB is from bash and dropbear that handles the SSH connection). It should also work on Ubuntu-based distributions (tested on a 64MB Ubuntu 9.04 VPS). Feel free to check the code to make sure I am not doing anything malicious like hijacking the server and install a ssh key or something :)

14 Comments

1. Neves wrote:

   Nice, but there is no security setup by default. What do you do?

   September 16, 2009 @ 3:26 am
2. victor wrote:

   Download link is broken.
   …/scirpts/lowend-debian.sh
   should be
   …/scripts/lowend-debian.sh
   :)

   September 16, 2009 @ 3:42 am
3. LowEndAdmin wrote:

   Arg. Link fixed.

   As of security — that really depends on your need (setting up sudoer, creating users, setting up firewalls). I have my scripts for those but I prefer not to show them :)

   September 16, 2009 @ 4:27 am
4. Moi wrote:

   You install inetutils-syslog as default syslogger, how do you think about limiting rsyslogd by using ulimit -s 128? Is it safe to do that?

   September 16, 2009 @ 7:07 am
5. dne wrote:

   Instead of “rm -rf /bin/sh”, I’d recommend “dpkg-divert –rename /bin/sh”.

   September 16, 2009 @ 7:19 am
6. LowEndAdmin wrote:

   @Moi — the main issue I found with rsyslogd is its VSZ which is a lot greater than RSS. Although it might not use that much memory, it is still bad on an OpenVZ system where privvmpages counts the pages that are allocated.

   @dne — thanks for the suggestion.

   September 16, 2009 @ 8:22 am
7. IWTFI wrote:

   it will better to start some tutorial series, like:

   1) vps start configuration
   2) lighttpd and php install
   3) mysql and bind install
   4) postfix install and full configuration for virtual domains
   6) (whatever else you think)
   5) security tricks/tips

   let me know what you think.

   September 16, 2009 @ 2:39 pm
8. IWTFI wrote:

   btw something you forgot on the script..

   September 19, 2009 @ 1:41 pm
9. Tyler wrote:

   Thanks for this :)

   Btw you spelled virtues wrong :p (virues)

   November 9, 2009 @ 11:48 pm
10. LowEndAdmin wrote:

    Thanks. Fixed. Last time I checked spelling was not in the list of virtues of programmers :)

    November 10, 2009 @ 1:05 am
11. IWTFI wrote:

    hey lowenbox. release more scripts!

    December 19, 2009 @ 9:39 pm
12. cling[y] wrote:

    Thanks for the script!

    December 20, 2009 @ 7:40 pm
13. scotty wrote:

    Thanks for the great script!

    I tried dropbear but it doesn’t play nice with git and none of the fixes I’ve seen work for me so I’ve abandoned it for just now.
    Seemingly the ulimit -s limit isn’t honoured by default ssh configurations, a bit of googling found me:

    UsePrivilegeSeparation = no

    Which will have ssh respecting your limits. Dropped ~3MB VSZ with that, google for the connotations.

    January 23, 2010 @ 11:44 pm
14. Will's Blog » Post Topic » [Review] BuyVM / Frantech VPS wrote:

    [...] ist wirklich Minimal – 15Mb Ramauslastung nach der Installation, mit einigen Tweaks (Siehe Hier) konnte ich die Auslastung auf 9Mb drücken – unter voller Konfiguration als IRC Bouncer mit [...]

    July 15, 2010 @ 12:37 pm

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