The apache stop menu item in Backtrack Linux accomplishes one goal which is to stop the Apache web server. The previous article for apache start would have been enough to explain the basics to anyone using Apache on Backtrack Linux but since my goal is to write an article for every menu item and every tool within Backtrack here is the one for apache stop.

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Backtrack Linux offers a lot to people of all skill sets and I really appreciate the thought that the developers have put behind making this a operating system platform that is friendly to all. In my experience there are penetration testers or information security enthusiasts of all levels and having Backtrack as a platform to learn from is great. The apache start menu item in Backtrack simply starts the Apache web server and is explained in more detail below.

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Network stress testing is taken for granted sometimes however it is extremely useful in many aspects of a network. Typically when someone is thinking of stress testing something technology related they are thinking of stress testing a web application of some sort however it is beneficial to also stress test every piece of network hardware from the firewall to the web server that the application is running on to make sure there are no weaknesses once packets touch your network. With that said there are some great applications within Backtrack that provide stress testing capabilities such as siege which is classified as a HTTP/HTTPS Stress Tester which depending on the location you test from could also test network hardware between the Internet and the web server running the application being tested.

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Earlier when mirroring a Zen Cart online store for a customer to work on some custom modifications for him I ran into an error when attempting to visit the site in a web browser. The issue relates to Rewrite rules in the .htaccess file which I was able to easily track down by viewing the Apache error logs for the site. Below is more information regarding the error located in the logs and how I was able to resolve the problem.

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I recently upgraded a CentOS Linux servers PHP from 5.2.X to 5.3.X and ran into a couple minor issues along the way. One of the issues was the fact that one of my applications was complaining about PHP’s date function by letting me know that it could not rely on the system’s timezone setting. Fixing this problem is extremely easy and can most likely be resolved by a quick edit to the servers php.ini file as described in detail below.

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