Hi,

I just logged into orbit, and not sure where to start.

Where do I find my IP?

How do I add my domain to the planet? My domain is registered with godaddy and is pointed to nameservers on my previous host - it's an active domain. There is no trace of the domain yet on my account, so need to start from the beginning.

How do I create or login to an ftp account, how do I login to ssh?

How do I check what is installed, what will I have to do to get everything working? My site is php/mysql based.

I'm sure I'll have more questions later.

Your IP/passwords should have been emailed to you in the welcome note, when the server was finished being provisioned.

Looking at the title of your post, you DON'T have a control panel?
If you do not know how to log into SSH, and you purchased a server with no control panel for production use... You may wish to have one installed, then get another server for learning purposes with no control panel.

If you search the forums for some of the questions you asked, you will find some of the questions have already been answered in more detail in previous threads.

Once you log into ssh, you may want to avoid the command "rm" unless you are sure you know what you are about to delete.

To see the IPs bound to the server, use "ifconfig".
To see a list of all installed rpms, use "rpm -qa".

To get a php/mysql site up and running you will need to have apache, php, php-mysql, mysql-server, and then learn a bit about httpd.conf.

Creating an ftp user depends on which ftpd your using, and how you have the userdb setup.

To add a domain to orbit, open a DNS ticket, and provide the IP, and domain, then we can create the zone file. Once the zone file is created you should be able to manage DNS from orbit.

Hi, thanks!

Yeah, on second thought I wish I would have went with a control panel, I thought I might be able to add an open sourced webpanel if I needed it, but I haven't been able to find any.

I was advised on plesk or cpanel, but told this would require an OS reload ( I guess a re-installation/provisioning of the server?).

Actually, I tried to save a little to skip the added monthly fee thinking I could just upgrade earlier, (bad idea I guess) but if I went for cpanel now it would be 45 extra for this month alone. My site runs off donations so.. the extra cost is something I try to avoid.

Is there any way to order/setup cpanel or plesk without doing an OS Reload?

You can rent the control panel directly from the companies that offer monthly rentals...

Thanks skeeter, what companies offer this? I haven't been able to find anything through googling "monthly rental cpanel" and it seems all the distributors listed on cpanel's website are other webhosts. If possible of course i'd rather keep things within The Planet, just the OSreload so soon after the server is setup is too much of a bummer. Then again, I don't want to spend the entire month trying to figure out how to get things working.

Which brings me to my next set of questions:

A domain was added, I have the IP pointed to a secondary IP.

It turns out the reason I couldn't login to ssh was because the server wasn't finished being provisioned.

I still can't figure out how to login with ftp. I'm not sure which ftpd is being used, but both ftpd and userdb should be default. My OS is Centos.

but now, I am wondering how do I put something on the web? usually the path is var/home/www/something or other.. but I don't see anything familiar there and don't know how to add the folders for each domain etc...

Thanks.

If the server wasn't finished being provisioned, that has to happen first. Once its fully provisioned, then you can move forward. I personally would just have ThePlanet do it correctly from the start and that way you don't have to jerk around with it later. Serious time saver.

In fact, they can put in Plesk, Cpanel, Ensim....

The path and locations to files will change based on the control panel you do install...

No wonder I can't find the correct path. Which control panel would you recommend?

I prefer and primarily deal with Ensim because of security measures that can be implemented. With that said, it makes it just a tad bit less "programmers friendly" but not unusable. Cpanel is a close second, and also widely popular. Plesk would fall into 3'rd.

cPanel or Plesk

For the sake of all that is good, please stay away from ensim!!!

Now this isn't something you see every day.

jjhurani: This is just a suggestion if you desire to stay as an employee with a company. Any company. Never bad mouth a product that your company sells. It's ok for you to have an opinion of what you like or don't like. You can even discuss that with your fellow techs at your next lan party. But you Never, Never, Never, voice it to the public. Trust me, it will always come back to bite you in the butt.

You could give WebMin / VirtualMin a shot http://www.webmin.com/

I been playing with virtualmin this last week, and it has come a long way since it's early conception. Learning curve is huge though, and the docs leave a bit to be desired. Defaults are not clearly delineated so that someone can easily figure out what they want changed into what. Huge amount of time is needed to do the "trial and error" process to see if packages created are what you want. Price is right for the moment under their early adoption period. Speed performance is most acceptable, and there are various other API's for use. Real promise if there was better support too. You can spend 2 or 3 days waiting for someone from the community to answer you. Occasionally odd errors show up with the cron jobs too.

OK,

I installed webmin, I started apache and installed php-mysql and mysql-server.

I have vsftpd installed...
I got ftp to half work only by creating a group and adding a new user to the group, and doing chgrp mynewgroup var/www/html

then changing chmod to 775 so that my new user can write to it.

but when I upload a file it's permissions are wrong. it makes it -rw--w---- which is useless. How do I make it use the correct permissions and how do I do this in a more secure way (so I don't have to grant permissions to a group).

Yay, ftp now appears to be working with the correct permissions, but I'd still like to get rid of the 775 thing, how do I do that?

And how do I separate my domains? for instance I have one domain added already, but all my ip addresses and my domain points to the same directory (var/www/html) . How do I add another domain and make it so they are separate?

And I'm afraid search engines will index my site by IP address now, which has never been a problem with shared hosting. how do i prevent that from happening?

And how do I add a database that will allow remote access by specific domains?

If you installed Virtual Min , you should have a link in there Server section of the control Panel to make Virtual servers. It does exactly what you are looking for. It will add the domain to your httpd.conf, give you separate paths, email aliases, etc....

Newexpos is right. Virtualmin or any other control panel for that matter will handle all that. If your looking to do that all by hand, then you probably either should hire someone to administer the server or spend a great deal of time learning all the different things that need to be done.