Electric Death Ferret
by Serge Egelman

Electric Death Ferret is a perl daemon which runs in the background and sets up new system accounts and virtual hosts. If a virtual host is to be setup, you si mply go to the webpage (which is protected via IP checking and htaccess authenti cation), and enter a domain name. You can then select many options relating to this: whether or not you want thsi to be setup as an Apache virtual host, wheth er they get CGI access, suexec, ftp access (currently via ncftpd), and also whet her or not to host this domain in the DNS. If you chose to host in the DNS, you can specify both primary and secondary. If it is only going in the secondary, then you must enter an IP for the master DNS. If the domain is going in the pri mary as well, you must enter some A records. For all of these options there are defaults, such that you can merely enter a domain name to setup a new virtual h ost in apache with a ftp account and hosting in the primary and secondary DNS.


Electric Death Ferret also has the ability to add system users. This feature ha s been added for use by ISPs to add dialup accounts and mail-only accounts. A s ystem account is created with a false shell (i.e. /bin/false) to deny shell acce ss, however the user will be able to use RADIUS authentication and also will hav e a mail account on the system. If the account is to be a mail-only account, ev erything is the same except for there is a line added to the RADIUS file to deny the user from gaining dialup access. A username is entered in the text box, an d then a password is entered, as well as the real name (or whatever you want to appear in the text field). Finally, you have the option to create a mail-only a ccount, add a mail alias for the user (via a sendmail virtual mail table), mail the new user with the account information, and mail a third party with the accou nt information. You also have the option of creating a new alias without creati ng a new account, and also the option of converting a full account to a mail-onl y account.


The name "Electric Death Ferret" was inspired by JoeyLemur, other suggestions such as "BurningGerbil" and "FlamingDog" were by Kha0s. Marketing of Electric Death Ferret made possible by the rest of #LinuxOS
Oh yeah, and then Chris Epler (coworker) found the Ferret pic which I bastardized into the logo.....