Chapter 2. Securing Your Server Linux

Linux has become a very important player as a mainstream operating system for servers. According to the Netcraft report of most reliable hosting company sites dating from February 2010, 6 out of 10 servers were running some brand of Linux. This indicates the strong position of this Operating System (OS) and the confidence it generates. Some of the reasons for this are:

• Initial price: Linux is open source and therefore free for commercial use

• Stability and Reliability: Linux is a highly stable and reliable platform with all of its elements well tested; any bug is usually quickly resolved by the community

• Security: Linux is, by default, quite secure and is in fact in a much better position than Windows since it is at risk from much fewer viruses and Trojans

• Better utilization of hardware resources

• Availability of commercial support

Another reason for which we are starting with Linux is because Moodle is primarily developed on Linux using MySQL, Apache and...