VPS Tutorial

Published at: 1 June 2009

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So far, this website has been hosted on a dynamic hosting account. Now I've ordered a VPS (Virtual Private Server). Most common options are Static hosting; Dynamic hosting; VPS; Dedicated server or a Colocated server.

Dynamic hosting is pretty much the same as static hosting, but containing PHP and database support, mostly MySQL. With a colocated server, you have your own physical server, but when hardware is defective, you'll have to drive to the datacenter yourself. A dedicated server is pretty much the same thing, but with this, the hoster will take care of delivery and maintenance. A VPS is a dedicated server hosting various virtual machines, with a maximum of 5 in my case. You'll need a command-line interface (Putty) to install an operating system (Linux) and the rest of the server applications. The applications I need, you'll find below:

VPS Reinstall

If there's an operating system on the VPS, this one has to be shutdown first. If you choose reimage, you'll get a list with available distributions. I chose Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope). This tutorial will also be useful if you choose Debian. Maybe some files will be located elsewhere. This tutorial assumed you are logged in as root. If you aren't, some of the commands like apt-get can't be executed without putting sudo in front of it.

shutdown
reimage
# Choose
I wish to reinstall vpsxxx
# Remember password
boot

Console

To login on the virtual machine, I'll change the password immediately, because the given password won't be easy to remember:

console
# Login with the acquired password
passwd
# Enter the new password twice

We can use the console to add new applications.

Midnight Commander

With Midnight Commander you have an interface like Windows Explorer to browse through your files.

apt-get install mc

Nano

Nano is a text editor that will come in handy when editing configuration files. It may be already installed. In Midnight Commander you can use Alt+4 to edit files.

apt-get install nano

Apache

The web server.

apt-get install apache2

By default, Mod Rewrite isn't installed. With the default settings, .htaccess isn't supported:

a2enmod rewrite

To support .htaccess, /etc/apache2/sites-available/default has to be edited:

<virtualhost *:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
DocumentRoot /var/www

<directory>
    Options FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride All
</directory>

<directory "/var/www">
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    AllowOverride All
    Order allow,deny
    allow from all
</directory>

ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/

<directory "/usr/lib/cgi-bin">
    AllowOverride None
    Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</directory>

ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log
# Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
# alert, emerg.
LogLevel warn
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined

Alias /doc/ "/usr/share/doc/"

<directory "/usr/share/doc">
    Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
    Order deny,allow
    Deny from all
    Allow from 127.0.0.0/255.0.0.0 ::1/128
</directory>
</virtualhost>

PHP

Dynamic websites require PHP. With PHPSysInfo you can view server specifications through your browser using an HTML or XML file. If an application uses too much memory, you can easily troubleshoot it with PHPSysInfo. How you can install other modules, like GD, you'll see further on in this article.

apt-get install php5
apt-get install phpsysinfo

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL is a database, MySQL's big brother, which you can use as well of course. However, in this tutorial I'll only explain PostgreSQL. I'll show how to add an user and a database too. You can use this user to login into PHPPgAdmin, the web interface of PostgreSQL.

apt-get install postgresql
# Install databasemanager
apt-get install phppgadmin
# Create user
su - postgres
psql template1
CREATE USER tom WITH PASSWORD 'myPassword';
CREATE DATABASE jerry;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE jerry to tom;

Pure-FTPd

You can use a database to administrate user accounts for the FTP server (Pure-FTPd). This way you can create FTP accounts on your website too. You can choose pure-ftpd or other predefined packages, containing MySQL: pure-ftpd-mysql, or in my case, PostgreSQL:

apt-get install pure-ftpd-postgresql

If you've configured everything right, you can create a table accounts in your database, using PHPPgAdmin. And then use this table to create virtual FTP accounts:

CREATE TABLE accounts (
    id character varying(30) NOT NULL,
    group_id character varying(30) NOT NULL,
    home_dir character varying(200) NOT NULL,
    username character varying(30) NOT NULL,
    password character varying(50) NOT NULL,
    expired boolean DEFAULT false
);

To make the virtual accounts work, you need a normal account with the right privileges:

groupadd pureftpd
useradd -g pureftpd -d /var/www tom
chown pureftpd:tom /var/www
passwd tom
# Enter password

It's advisable to create a backup of the following files. First edit /usr/local/pgsql/data/pg_hba.conf:

local   all     postgres    ident                       sameuser
local   all     all         ident                       sameuser
host    all     all         127.0.0.1/32                md5
host    all     all         ::1/128                     md5
host    system  system      127.0.0.1 255.255.255.255   md5
local   all     all         ident                       sameuser
# host  all     all         127.0.0.1 255.255.255.255   md5 

# host  all     tronix      0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0             md5 
# host  sameuser all        0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0             md5 
# host  all     all         0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0             reject

Then /etc/postgresql/8.3/main/postgresql.conf:

listen_addresses = 'localhost'
# If you want other users to be able to login on your server, 
# you can enter the ip address of the server, or '*'

/etc/pure-ftpd/db/postgresql.conf:

PGSQLServer     localhost
PGSQLPort       5432
PGSQLUser       postgres
PGSQLPassword   xxx
PGSQLDatabase   swimmer_zone
PGSQLCrypt      md5
PGSQLGetPW      SELECT password FROM accounts WHERE username='L'
PGSQLGetUID     SELECT id FROM accounts WHERE username='L'
PGSQLGetGID     SELECT group_id FROM accounts WHERE username='L'
PGSQLGetDir     SELECT home_dir FROM accounts WHERE username='L'

/etc/default/pure-ftpd-common:

STANDALONE_OR_INETD=standalone

Pure-FTPd saves its settings in small files, the name of the file is the name of the setting and the contents are the value of this setting. You can create these files like below. To give everyone access only to their own home directory:

echo "yes" > /etc/pure-ftpd/conf/ChrootEveryone

You can enter home directories in the database. The following directive allows you to create them automatically, when they don't exist yet:

echo "yes" > /etc/pure-ftpd/conf/CreateHomeDir

Use the directive below to check permissions on files or directories:

ls -l /var/www

If the home directory is created, it also gets the right permissions group_id for groups, or id for users.