Installing Lifeboat

When connecting to a server, Lifeboat will perform a check for the components it needs to manage the server. Lifeboat will request permission to install components on the server if necessary. This can sometimes happen when you update Lifeboat versions if new tools are added.

Lifeboat will check permissions for the user it connects with. The user must be in the server sudoers file to install and manage software. Linux instances from major cloud service providers always have this pre-configured.

The first time you connect to a server, Lifeboat will need to install several components and this may take several minutes. This installation process will remove Apache if it is installed already. Apache conflicts with the Lifeboat nginx configuration.

Security

Lifeboat installs a firewall - firewalld on CentOS and ufw on Debian and Ubuntu. Initially, Lifeboat configures ports 80 and 443 open for inbound web requests and opens the currently active SSH port. All other inbound ports are closed. To protect the server from brute-force attacks, fail2ban intrusion prevention software is installed.

Lifeboat can also assist developers in disabling ssh password authentication to add an additional layer of security. This can be found in the Server Tools section under Security > Authentication.

Home Folder

Lifeboat sets up a base camp folder in the home folder for the user account provided to connect.

~/.com.strawberrysw.Lifeboat/

This folder is considered invisible on Unix systems. When using other software to access the server, it may be necessary to use "Show Invisibles" to see the Lifeboat folder.