Personal (manual) template for internal hosts

This might help someone else, too. These are the things I do for an internal VM (on my hypervisor at home). This document will/might evolve over time. Default OS is centos7.

1. yum -y install epel-release && yum -y update && yum -y install wget vim htop tcpdump yum-cron yum-utils ntp figlet lynis bind-utils bash-completion mlocate autojump vnstat psmisc rsync ack strace iotop

2. yum -y install centos-release-ovirt42 && yum -y install ovirt-guest-agent-common && systemctl enable --now ovirt-guest-agent.service
3. vnstat --create -i eth0 && chown -R vnstat. /var/lib/vnstat/ && systemctl enable --now vnstat
4. ssh-copy-id my keys to the server, cat >> /etc/ssh/sshd_config
X11Forwarding no
IgnoreRhosts yes
UseDNS no
PermitEmptyPasswords no
MaxAuthTries 2
PubkeyAuthentication yes
PasswordAuthentication no
PermitRootLogin without-password
Protocol 2
systemcyl restart sshd
5. vim -O /etc/yum/yum-cron.conf /etc/ntp.conf && systemctl enable ntpd && systemctl start ntpd
6. hostname | cut -d. -f1 | figlet > /etc/motd && vim /etc/motd
7. vim /etc/sysctl.d/harden.conf , add file below
8. echo smtpd_banner=0 >> /etc/postfix/main.cf && systemctl restart postfix ; echo “bg=dark >> /etc/vimrc”
9. ip a&& read&& hostname >> /etc/hosts && vim /etc/hosts #, add local host
10. vi /etc/aliases && newaliases
11. reboot
12. check sestatus enabled, firewalld active, lynis audit system
13. IPTables firewalld replace


# The following is suitable for dedicated web server, mail, ftp server etc.
# ---------------------------------------
# BOOLEAN Values:
# a) 0 (zero) - disabled / no / false
# b) Non zero - enabled / yes / true
# --------------------------------------
# Controls IP packet forwarding
net.ipv4.ip_forward = 0

# Controls source route verification
net.ipv4.conf.default.rp_filter = 1

# Do not accept source routing
net.ipv4.conf.default.accept_source_route = 0

# Controls the System Request debugging functionality of the kernel
kernel.sysrq = 0

# Controls whether core dumps will append the PID to the core filename
# Useful for debugging multi-threaded applications
kernel.core_uses_pid = 1

# Controls the use of TCP syncookies
#net.ipv4.tcp_syncookies = 1
net.ipv4.tcp_synack_retries = 2

########## IPv4 networking start ##############
# Send redirects, if router, but this is just server
net.ipv4.conf.all.send_redirects = 0
net.ipv4.conf.default.send_redirects = 0

# Accept packets with SRR option? No
net.ipv4.conf.all.accept_source_route = 0

# Accept Redirects? No, this is not router
net.ipv4.conf.all.accept_redirects = 0
net.ipv4.conf.all.secure_redirects = 0

# Log packets with impossible addresses to kernel log? yes
net.ipv4.conf.all.log_martians = 1
net.ipv4.conf.default.accept_source_route = 0
net.ipv4.conf.default.accept_redirects = 0
net.ipv4.conf.default.secure_redirects = 0

# Ignore all ICMP ECHO and TIMESTAMP requests sent to it via broadcast/multicast
net.ipv4.icmp_echo_ignore_broadcasts = 1

# Prevent against the common ‘syn flood attack’
net.ipv4.tcp_syncookies = 1

# Enable source validation by reversed path, as specified in RFC1812
net.ipv4.conf.all.rp_filter = 1
net.ipv4.conf.default.rp_filter = 1

########## IPv6 networking start ##############
# Number of Router Solicitations to send until assuming no routers are present.
# This is host and not router
net.ipv6.conf.default.router_solicitations = 0

# Accept Router Preference in RA?
net.ipv6.conf.default.accept_ra_rtr_pref = 0

# Learn Prefix Information in Router Advertisement
net.ipv6.conf.default.accept_ra_pinfo = 0

# Setting controls whether the system will accept Hop Limit settings from a router advertisement
net.ipv6.conf.default.accept_ra_defrtr = 0

#router advertisements can cause the system to assign a global unicast address to an interface
net.ipv6.conf.default.autoconf = 0

#how many neighbor solicitations to send out per address?
net.ipv6.conf.default.dad_transmits = 0

# How many global unicast IPv6 addresses can be assigned to each interface?
net.ipv6.conf.default.max_addresses = 1

########## IPv6 networking ends ##############

#Enable ExecShield protection
kernel.exec-shield = 1
kernel.randomize_va_space = 1

# TCP and memory optimization
# increase TCP max buffer size setable using setsockopt()
#net.ipv4.tcp_rmem = 4096 87380 8388608
#net.ipv4.tcp_wmem = 4096 87380 8388608

# increase Linux auto tuning TCP buffer limits
#net.core.rmem_max = 8388608
#net.core.wmem_max = 8388608
#net.core.netdev_max_backlog = 5000
#net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling = 1

# increase system file descriptor limit
fs.file-max = 65535

#Allow for more PIDs
kernel.pid_max = 65536

#Increase system IP port limits
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 2000 65000

kernel.dmesg_restrict=1
kernel.kptr_restrict=2
kernel.randomize_va_space=2
kernel.yama.ptrace_scope=2
net.ipv4.conf.default.log_martians=1
net.ipv6.conf.all.accept_redirects=0
net.ipv6.conf.default.accept_redirects=0