In Friendicas bin/ directory is a build in command called console, that provides the following commands:
addon Addon management
cache Manage node cache config Edit site config contact Contact management createdoxygen Generate Doxygen headers dbstructure Do database updates docbloxerrorchecker Check the file tree for DocBlox errors extract Generate translation string file for the Friendica project (deprecated) globalcommunityblock Block remote profile from interacting with this node globalcommunitysilence Silence a profile from the global community page archivecontact Archive a contact when you know that it isn't existing anymore help Show help about a command, e.g (bin/console help config) autoinstall Starts automatic installation of friendica based on values from htconfig.php lock Edit site locks maintenance Set maintenance mode for this node movetoavatarcache Move cached avatars to the file based avatar cache mergecontacts Merge duplicated contact entries user User management php2po Generate a messages.po file from a strings.php file po2php Generate a strings.php file from a messages.po file typo Checks for parse errors in Friendica files postupdate Execute pending post update scripts (can last days) relocate Update node base URL serverblock Manage blocked servers storage Manage storage backend relay Manage ActivityPub relay servers
Please consult bin/console help on the command line interface of your server for details about the commands.
In addition to the tools Friendica includes, some 3rd party tools can make your admin days easier.
Fail2ban is an intrusion prevention framework ([see Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fail2ban)) that you can use to forbid access to a server under certain conditions, e.g. 3 failed attempts to log in, for a certain amount of time.
The following configuration was provided by Steffen K9 using Debian.
You need to adjust the logpath in the jail.local file and the bantime (value is in seconds).
In /etc/fail2ban/jail.local create a section for Friendica:
[friendica] enabled = true findtime = 300 bantime = 900 filter = friendica port = http,https logpath = /var/log/friend.log logencoding = utf-8
And create a filter definition in /etc/fail2ban/filter.d/friendica.conf:
[Definition] failregex = ^.*authenticate\: failed login attempt.*\"ip\"\:\"<HOST>\".*$ ignoreregex =
Additionally you have to define the number of failed logins before the ban should be activated. This is done either in the global configuration or for each jail separately. You should inform your users about the number of failed login attempts you grant them. Otherwise you'll get many reports about the server not functioning if the number is too low.
If you have activated the logs in Friendica, be aware that they can grow to a significant size.
To keep them in control you should add them to the automatic log rotation, e.g. using the logrotate command.
In /etc/logrotate.d/ add a file called friendica that contains the configuration.
The following will compress /var/log/friendica (assuming this is the location of the log file) on a daily basis and keep 2 days of back-log.
/var/log/friendica.log {
compress
daily
rotate 2
}
Ingo has written a Friendica cleanup script admins can use to clean up dormant accounts.
Friendica publishes the server wide blocklists for other servers in the Fediverse. This script will collect the blocklists of servers of your choice and create a merged blocklist from them that you can then import into your own Friendica server.