This servers didn’t came with a control panel (better for me), so the first thing I did was to login:

ivan@mini:~$ ssh root@23.45.12.56

After this I checked the OS, version and architecture

[root@V100205C4HB9V-1 ~]# cat /etc/*release*
CentOS release 5.4 (Final)
[root@V100205C4HB9V-1 ~]# uname -a
Linux V100205C4HB9V-1 2.6.18-028stab064.7 #1 SMP Wed Aug 26 13:11:07 MSD 2009 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
[root@V100205C4HB9V-1 ~]#

Ok, now that I know the OS I create a normal user to avoid using the root account.

[root@V100205C4HB9V-1 ~]# useradd –Gwheel ivan

Then I change the server name to mygdon

[root@V100205C4HB9V-1 /]# sed -i 's/V100205C4HB9V-1/mygdon/g' /etc/sysconfig/network
[root@V100205C4HB9V-1 ~]# sed -i 's/V100205C4HB9V-1/mygdon/g' /etc/hosts
[root@V100205C4HB9V-1 ~]# echo HOST.DOMAIN.com > /etc/hostname
[root@V100205C4HB9V-1 ~]# hostname -F /etc/hostname

Unfortunately I was unable to persist the new hostname, because it is a VPS server, there are ways around this, but didn’t have the time to make the changes so I just moved on, and leave this for later

The next thing I did was update the OS, and add the rpmforge repo because I will need some apps from there

[root@V100205C4HB9V-1 ~]# yum update
[root@V100205C4HB9V-1 ~]# yum upgrade
[root@V100205C4HB9V-1 ~]# wget http://packages.sw.be/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.5.1-1.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm
[root@V100205C4HB9V-1 ~]# rpm -Uhv rpmforge-release-0.5.1-1.$dist.rf.$arch.rpm
[root@V100205C4HB9V-1 ~]# yum update
[root@V100205C4HB9V-1 ~]# yum upgrade

Then I installed some packages I often use:

[root@V100205C4HB9V-1 ~]# yum install htop screen vim-enhanced

The VPS already had a web stack installed I just did some configuration:

Configuring Apache Virtual Hosts

[root@V100205C4HB9V-1 ~]# mkdir /var/www/vhosts/{site1, site2} –p
[root@V100205C4HB9V-1 ~]# vi /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

Here I Uncommented the following directive

NameVirtualHost *:80

and Added a default vhost a new vhost

<virtualhost *:80>
    DocumentRoot /var/www/vhosts/default
    ServerName mygdon.site1.net
    <directory /var/www/vhosts/default>
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride All
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
    </directory>
    ErrorLog logs/mygdon.site1.net-error_log
    CustomLog logs/mygdon.site1.net-access_log common
</virtualhost>
 
<virtualhost *:80>
    DocumentRoot /var/www/vhosts/site2
    ServerName appname.site2.net
    <directory /var/www/vhosts/site2>
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride All
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
    </directory>
    ErrorLog logs/appname.site2.net-error_log
    CustomLog logs/appname.site2.net-access_log common
</virtualhost>

then restarted the apache server:

[root@V100205C4HB9V-1 ~]# service httpd restart
Stopping httpd:                                            [  OK  ]
Starting  httpd:                                            [  OK  ]

and  I wrote a simple php file to test this out:

[root@V100205C4HB9V-1 ~]# echo '<? phpinfo(); ?>' > /var/www/vhosts/site1/index.php

And because I haven’t configured a DNS server I just temporarily added the server to my hosts file (On my local machine):

root@mini:/etc# echo 'subdomain.site1.net 54.65.74.23' > /etc/hosts

and here is the result:

Configuring Mysql

Once I had the virtual hosts configuration in place I added a mysql user and changed the default root password:

[root@V100205C4HB9V-1 vhosts]# mysql
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 5
Server version: 5.0.77 Source distribution
 
Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.
 
mysql> show databases;
+--------------------+
| Database           |
+--------------------+
| information_schema |
| mysql              |
| test               |
+--------------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)
 
mysql> UPDATE mysql.user SET Password=PASSWORD('pass-here') WHERE user='root';
Query OK, 3 rows affected (0.02 sec)
Rows matched: 3  Changed: 3  Warnings: 0
 
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)
 
mysql> CREATE USER 'ivan'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'pass-here';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)
 
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'ivan'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
 
mysql> CREATE USER 'ivan'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'pass-here';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
 
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'ivan'@'%' WITH GRANT OPTION;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
 
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
 
mysql>

Now the server is  ready for adding some virtual hosts, I just need to configure a DNS server and the mail server, but because the DNS is on another server and already working I just have to add a new zone, as for mail server, this server will be only used to send emails so I don’t need to dig in postfix configuration files for now.

I’ll write another post regarding the security, but for now this will work.