COMP 3000 2011 Report: Zentyal

Part 1

Background

Default desktop

Zentyal was formerly known as the eBox Platform which is built on top of Ubuntu server 10.04. It is an open source unified network server software package (or unified platform) developed by eBox Technologies to provide easy and affordable computer networks for small to medium businesses in order to improve reliability and security of their network infrastructure. Since it is also an open source alternative to a Windows server it helps reduce operational costs for businesses.

It provides various networking services such as acting as a gateway to enforce security access and improve efficiency to users connecting to the internet via the gateway configurations. It also provides various networking tools that pertain to the operation, administration and maintenance of network systems or unified communications server or even an office server that can manage printer sharing or file sharing.

Zentyal can be freely obtained from their site (Zentyal's Official Site) by downloading from their server. It's approximately 625,000 KB big and the file is in disk image format. You can make a purchase for additional add on or server subscriptions.

Installation/Startup

Zentyal can be installed on the main machine or on a virtual machine. Both go through the same installation process but a few more steps if you're installing on a virtual machine. If you are using VMware Player for installing Zentyal on a virtual machine, it is preferred not to use the 'easy install' method.

For this report, I installed it on a virtual machine using VirtualBox.

Setting up VirtualBox

VirtualBox with Zentyal installed

New Virtual Machine Wizard Setup

Welcome page Nothing needed to be done here  VM name and OS type Name: Zentyal Operating System: Linux Version: Other linux  Memory 256MB  Virtual Hard Disk Start up disk should be checked then create new hard disk  Welcome to virtual disk creation wizard Select VDI  Virtual disk storage details Dynamically allocated  Virtual disk file location and size The default setting is fine

Devices > CD/DVD Devices > Choose a virtual CD/DVD disk file...

After you have successfully created a virtual machine, power it on and since this is the first time you power on your virtual machine, it will ask you what you want to boot up since there's nothing installed onto your virtual machine. You then boot up the Zentyal disk image (this is the same as popping in the CD into your CD drive but you are actually "mounting" the .iso file onto your virtual CD drive) that you downloaded from the Zentyal site.

If for some reason, you aren't prompt for that option, you can mount the file using VirtualBox instead by going to VirtualBox's menu bar and selecting Devices>CD/DVD Devices>Choose a virtual CD/DVD disk file... and browse for your Zentyal's disk image file. If your menu bar isn't shown, press "Host + C". Afterwards, reboot your virtual machine and it will automatically boot from your virtual CD drive. It will then prompt you for a language then the boot menu will be displayed. Now, You have two options for installation:

Installing Zentyal

Boot menu

Install Zentyal (delete all disk) This is the default mode, it deletes all disk contents and creates the necessary configurations to run Zentyal  Install Zentyal (expert mode) This option allows the user to manually configure specifications for Zentyal

I installed Zenyal using the default mode then went through the installation process. The installation process was quick, it didn't take me a long time as it did with Ubuntu. When I finished installing Zentyal and rebooting it, it automatically started up Firefox; this is used as a web interface that allows easy access to various networking administrative tools. There weren't many softwares installed, namely, only a few text editing programs (gedit and leafpad), an archive program, file managing program and Firefox.

Starting up Zentyal for the first time

Zentyal's User interface

The first thing that shows up is the Firefox browser that asks for the Username and Password (the credentials you put in during the installation process), it will act as the user interface that will be used to set up and manage the network services.

Basic Operation

Zentyal can be used to act as a gateway to enforce access rules for internet connection or configure settings to improve efficient access to the internet (in other words, speed up the connection speed by various methods such as proxy caching or traffic shaping). So, after starting up Zentyal for the first time, you will find that there are barely anything installed.

Firefox (actually called Zentyal Administration) will automatically start up every time you start up the Linux and prompt you for credentials (username and password). The username and password are the same ones you had put in during the installation process. This web interface allows you to have access to network administrative tools and configurations as well as modules that you can install with ease.

Dashboard without any modules installed

After the initial login, you are automatically directed to an Installation wizard as depicted above. There are many variety of modules that can be downloaded and installed. You can click on the 'More info' under each package(Gateway, UTM, Infrastructure, Office and Communications) to see which packages would be best fit for the current task. When you found the package that you want, simply click on the logo of that package, and various modules are selected automatically with regards to that package then click install.

If you decide to skip the installation process, you can do so by clicking on skip install. If you want to go back to the Installation wizard, select Software Management on the left hand side menu then select Zentyal Components. You will see a list of available modules for installation, then click on view basic mode and it will take you back when you initially start up the Zentyal Administration. Another alternative of installing modules can be done by using sudo apt.

Package Details

Gateway: Providing system administrators the tools to configure a firewall and routing rules for multiple internet connections. It allows system administrators to increase internet speed by caching web pages and enhance security by blocking dangerous web threats. Some features that this package provides includes Transparent Caching, Load Balancing and Availability, Traffic Shaping and QoS, and Web Content Filter.

UTM (Unified Threat Management): Provides system administrators tools to configure a VPN (virtual private network) to allow users to have remote access to a local area network over the internet. Some features includes Firewall, Content Filter, Virtual Private Network and Intrusion Detection.

Infrastructure: Allowing system administrators to manage the network infrastructure. Some features provided in this package includes DHCP Server, Web Server (powered by Apache), DNS Server and Certification Authority that allows you to create your own certificates.

Office: Allowing system administrators to manage the users or groups of users as well as the server for file and printer sharing. Some features includes Directory Services that allows you to manage your users, Groupware (similar to Microsoft Sharepoint), File and Printer Sharing, and Data Backup.

Communications: Provides system administrators tools to easily configure a communication server. This package includes Email, Instant messaging using the XMPP/Jabber protocol, Groupware and VoIP.

I found a couple of tutorials on how to configure Zentyal as a gateway, and configuring a Jabber server for instant messaging or VoIP. I decided to try to set up a Jabber server and trying to connect to that server using Empathy chat client installed on Ubuntu by following this Tutorial. I went and installed the Communications package which has all the necessary modules to set up a Jabber server. After installing, the configuration wizard follows and you have a choice whether to configure the settings now or skip and configure later. The setup I used were:

Configure Interface types: Internal
Network configuration for external interfaces: DHCP
Type of server: Standalone server
Setting up a virtual mail domain: Zentyal
Subscribing to Zentyal Cloud: You have a choice to subscribe or not, it's not really needed

When you make any changes to the configuration, you must save changes to your modules. When you're done, go to your Dashboard, it shows the system status. The next step would be to create users. Go to the left hand menu and select Users and Groups which will show more options. Select users and enter in credentials then save changes, the user information should appear under after you press the add button:

User name: Internalfire
First name: 
Last name: 
Comment: optional
Password: password
Retype password: password

Now go to the left hand menu again and select Jabber. I used the following setup to set up a Jabber server:

Jabber domain: u-jabber.com
SSL support: Allow SSL
Enable MUC is checked

Setting up the server is finished. I proceeded to test the Jabber server by setting up a chat client on Ubuntu using the Empathy chat client. For the user account, I used the following setup:

Account: Internalfire@u-jabber.com
password: password
Encryption required is checked
Ignore SSL certification errors is checked
Server IP: The IP under eth0 from your Zentyal dashboard

Jabber server

Network error

After I have configured my first user account on Empathy, I tried to connect to my Jabber server and got a Network error and wouldn't allow me to connect to my Jabber server. I am not exactly sure why this happened.

Dashboard after installing modules

Dashboard showing system status

Usage Evaluation

Zentyal is a good distribution with regards in managing networking or server activities. It is made to ease the configurations for both network and server settings as well as setting them up quickly. Although, having a necessary amount of knowledge about networking principles would be required to use Zentyal as well as optimizing the use of the features available.

It was a bit cumbersome for me to set up a simple instant messaging server and network activity monitoring system because I only had a limited amount of understanding of networking principles which lead to a networking issues. There are variety of tutorials that can be found on the internet but it would be better to have a good general understanding of how networks and server works. Even though Zentyal provided a graphical interface, it is likely that it is not as flexible as configuring settings using a terminal.

Part 2

Software Packaging

Zentyal has two different package management system installed and there are three ways of installing packages. It has dpkg (Debian package management system) and APT (Advanced Packaging Tool) to install, remove and provide information about .deb packages. Another way of installing packages is by using the Zentyal's Administration that uses Firefox as a graphical user interface.

Please note that the package-name used in the following commands is the name of the Debian software package.

To install a .deb package using dpkg and APT, the following commands are used:

dpkg -i package-name
apt-get install package-name

Installing using the graphical interface by opening up Zentyal Administration then going to the left hand menu, select Software Management which shows you more options regarding Software Management. Select Zentyal Components and it will show you all the different types of modules that you can install. If you click on 'View basic mode' it will show you different packages (Office, Gateway, etc) where when you click on either packages, it will highlight several modules with regard to that particular package. When you're satisfied with which modules to install, on the bottom right hand corner, there should be an 'install' button. Click that, and modules will be installed.

To remove a package using dpkg and APT, the following commands are used:

dpkg -r package-name
apt-get --purge remove package-name

It is not advised to use apt-get --purge remove as it may cause some problems later on but it will remove the whole package from the system and using apt-get remove will remove the package from the system but it leaves configuration files behind. I don't think you can uninstall modules using the graphical interface in Zentyal, but you can disable them.

To list the packages using dpkg, we use the command:

dpkg -l [optional]

The graphic interface will not show everything that is installed, it will only show modules that you have installed via the Zentyal Administration. To view the modules, go to the left side menu and select 'Module Status' it will show you a list of modules that's installed as well as which ones are enabled and which ones are disabled.

Major Package Versions

There are a wide range of packages installed in Zentyal. But I have only chosen a few of them for comparison relative to their stable release version.

Package	Version	Source
Bash	current version: 4.1-2ubuntu3  stable release: 4.2	source: http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/  version history: ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bash/
debconf	current version: 1.5.28ubuntu4  stable release: 1.5.41	source: http://kitenet.net/programs/debconf/  version history: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/debconf/+publishinghistory
dpkg	current version: 1.15.5.6ubuntu  stable release: 1.15.72	source: http://www.debian.org/doc/FAQ/ch-pkgtools.en.html  version history: -
BusyBox	current version: 1.13.3-1ubuntu11  stable release: 1.19.22	source: http://www.busybox.net/  version history: http://git.busybox.net/busybox/
FireFox	current version: 3.6.23+build+  stable release: 8.0	source: http://www.firefox.com/  version history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Firefox
Openbox	current version: 3.4.10-1ubuntu  stable release: 3.5.0	source: http://www.openbox.org/  version history: http://git.openbox.org/?p=dana/openbox.git;a=tags
LXDE	current version: 0.5.0-3ubuntu2  stable release: 0.5.0-4ubuntu3	source: http://lxde.org/  version history: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/lxde-common/+publishinghistory
Netcat-openbsd	current version: 1.89-3ubuntu2  stable release: 1.103	source: http://nc110.sourceforge.net/  version history: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/netcat
Apache	current version: 2.2.14-5ubuntu  stable release: 2.2.21	source: http://httpd.apache.org/  version history: http://www.apachehaus.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=119:history-releases-apache&catid=41:catagory-change-logs&Itemid=93
Xorg	surrent version: 1:7.5+5ubuntu1  stable release: 1.11.2	source: http://www.x.org/  version history: http://www.x.org/wiki/Releases

The current release of Zentyal that is installed on my virtual machine is 2.2-1 released on September 14, 2011. There are a couple of packages that are just a version behind from the stable release because the packages could have updated after the current Zentyal was released. There are also some packages that are really old relative to the stable release version, especially Firefox. Since Zentyal was first released in July 15, 2009 under the name eBox Platform and Zentyal 2.0 is the was first released in September 1, 2010 under its new name. I speculate that since Firefox version 3.6 was also released during that year(January 21, 2010), they developed the interface using that version and stuck to that version ever since and also, Firefox is constantly being updated so it's not exactly very convenient that the developers would always have to constantly keep Firefox updated.

Zentyal does not have very many packages installed initially since its primary task is to manage network and servers within a small to medium business as well as a replacement for a windows server. It has the minimum number of packages that makes Zentyal able to boot up and support interfaces to increase the ease in setting up a server and managing networking activities. Metaphorically, it's like a car with its shell, seats, break system and wheels with no addons like air conditioning or CD player.

Initialization

Zentyal follows the same initialization process as Ubuntu since it's built on top of it. First thing it starts up is the BIOS (basic input/output system) that looks for the MBR (master boot record) then loads and executes the GRUB (grand unified boot loader). The GRUB boot loader will then execute the kernel and the initrd images then the kernel will execute the init program which will then execute upstart that will initialize run level programs. Since Zentyal is built on top of Ubuntu and it uses Upstart as a replacement for System V, it does not have the /etc/inittab file. Instead you can check the current run level using the command:

# runlevel

After typing in the command runlevel the output should be N 2 where N is no runlevel change since boot up and 2 is the current runlevel. With that information you can list the services that are enabled at runlevel 2 by typing in the command:

# chkconfig --list | grep '2:on'

List of services enabled at runlevel 2

Services at runlevel 2, may vary

You can also look in the /etc directory. Files stored in this directories are the system startup files and log files that contains information regarding which programs are running, which utilities were used and other boot information. The actual scrips that control services are in /etc/rc.d, these scripts are automatically run at boot time. If you look in /etc/rc2.d, there are various files with numbers and letters in the filename. These are scripts that are initialized in the current runlevel. Each of these files starts with either S for Start or K for Kill followed by the number that indicates the order of initialization.

List of scripts from /etc/rc0.d to /etc/rc6.d

List of programs

Since the default runlevel is 2, we'll take a look in the /etc/rc2.d as depicted in the screenshot above. The list of programs that start up in this order:

• S19postgresql-8.4: PostgreSQL is a sophisticated open-source Object-Relational DBMS
• S20redis-server: Redis is an open source data structure server
• S20zentyal: Zentyal
• S23ntp: Network Time Protocol
• S50rsync: Software application and network protocol
• S70dns-clean: Used for cleaning up the DNS information
• S91apache2: Apache
• S99grub-common: GRand Unified Bootloader
• S99ondemand: manages the processor
• S99rc.local: manages what can be initialized at boot time

I went to the directory /var/log to find a boot log to view boot information. So, from that file, it fsck twice from util-linux-ng 2.17.2 then it does memory integrity checks and runs init afterwards. It then does more checking and starts several daemons. Lastly, after everything has been set up, the modules begin to start up which finalizes the boot up process. It is also possible to view the boot up process for modules that are installed by typing in a command instead of going into the /var/log directory:

sudo /etc/init.d/zentyal restart

References

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7. Wiki: Zentyal. Wikipedia. Retrieved on 11/02/2011
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15. Gite, Vivek. Linux Default Services Which Are Enabled at Boot. CyberCiti. Retrieved on 11/11/2011
16. Bash Reference Manual. Gnu. Retrieved on 11/11/2011
17. Zentyal As A Gateway: The Perfect Setup. HowToForge. Retrieved 2011-10-13
18. Using eBox As A Gateway: Firewall, Traffic Shaping, HTTP Proxy And More. HowToForge. Retrieved 2011-10-15
19. Using eBox As Windows Primary Domain Controller. HowToForge. Retrieved 2011-10-15
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