Help from knowledgeable server people!

[-God-]

I'll try and keep this short, not an easy thing for my ever babbling brain, but I've always had full management with servers.

I'm thinking about getting one with a new company and they don't have full management. So, I need to get someone to do it for me. I've always been a total dick and have used cPanel, Direct Admin and the run of the mill control panel GUI rubbish and have done no management, as such. My experience on the command line amounts to installing webmin (setting up name servers - BIND) and doing MySQL shit.

So, questions:

1/ Is this something I can do myself with a quick reference guide?
2/ Can I get away with going without a control panel at all? (The idea quite excites me for some reason, despite the fact I'm sure it'll be weeks of pain as I have a near zero knowledge of Linux.)
3/ I presume the main reason to have management is to keep shit up to date, online and h4x0r free. Can I just keep it up to date enough using webmin?
4/ I think I submit less than 5 tickets a month and they amount to mistakes I've made, rather than anything actually being wrong, so if I get a server set-up with a control panel, can it just be left indefinitely or is it gonna fuck up/get fucked up at some point?
5/ Any recommendation for management companies? (I've seen Platinum Server Management, but the owner seems like a cock after reading his aggression on WHT.)

Merci. :bowdown:

 

[LeapswitchIshan]

I'll try and keep this short, not an easy thing for my ever babbling brain, but I've always had full management with servers.

I'm thinking about getting one with a new company and they don't have full management. So, I need to get someone to do it for me. I've always been a total dick and have used cPanel, Direct Admin and the run of the mill control panel GUI rubbish and have done no management, as such. My experience on the command line amounts to installing webmin (setting up name servers - BIND) and doing MySQL shit.

You are more experienced than most people who buy a fully managed server.


Let me answer your questions below -

1/ Is this something I can do myself with a quick reference guide?

You could do installations and configurations, but what about 24x7 monitoring and troubleshooting ? That is the main reason to go for a fully managed server or an external management service, as 1 person can't do it 24x7.

2/ Can I get away with going without a control panel at all? (The idea quite excites me for some reason, despite the fact I'm sure it'll be weeks of pain as I have a near zero knowledge of Linux.)

Yes, you can do this, but it will be a pain if you are hosting a number of websites. A lot of manual work and repetition. Virtualmin/Webmin are free , stable , and make your job easy.

3/ I presume the main reason to have management is to keep shit up to date, online and h4x0r free. Can I just keep it up to date enough using webmin?

Virtualmin , which is built on top of webmin, will alert you about updates and then it is 1 click to update. Please note that, by default they will update using yum or apt-get depending on your OS. These are Not the latest versions of the software. For latest versions, imo, cPanel is your best bet.

4/ I think I submit less than 5 tickets a month and they amount to mistakes I've made, rather than anything actually being wrong, so if I get a server set-up with a control panel, can it just be left indefinitely or is it gonna fuck up/get fucked up at some point?

The point you need to consider, is that you can never know. A server running stable for years, could just have a newly discovered hack. Something similar happened with most Linux 64 bit servers last month. A managed server might help you avoid this.

5/ Any recommendation for management companies? (I've seen Platinum Server Management, but the owner seems like a cock after reading his aggression on WHT.)

PSM are good at what they do. But you need to remember they are a budget company. Clients of budget companies tend to expect the world for nothing, and post loads of negative stuff. So, such companies need to deal with these clients aggressively. Example, BurstNET and as you have pointed out, Ethan of PSM.
You should give PSM a try, from what I remember, they have a 30 day moneyback guarantee.

Ishan

 

[moltar]

But you forgot to mention what are your needs? What you can and cannot do will depend on what you want to do. For an average WordPress blog I'd say you don't need cpanel or any of that extra junk. I'd spend some extra time researching server security. Because if you are not careful, you might get a rootkit or some other nasty shit.

Edit: Decided to add this to the above:

At a minimum when I get a new box, being it hardware or VPS, I do these things:

1) Disallow root login via SSH. So have another user you login as, then su to root, or just use sudo.
2) Move SSH port to something non-standard to avoid scanners.
3) Kill unnecessary services.
4) Make sure the server is up to date. Do not assume it will be. More often that not anything I got was seriously out of date.
5) Do not host mail, in fact, I'd go as far as completely remove mail services from the machine. I usually get Google Apps for domain for anything serious, or simply use domain registrar's forwarding feature.
6) Install and configure csf

Edit 2: Oh ya, I also never host DNS. You just can't make that reliable on 1 server. I either use registrar's, or DNS Made Easy or DynDNS, esp. after Enom's fiasco last year.

 

[-God-]

Thanks guys. I appreciate it and have supplied the wondrous gift of rep as compensation for your troubles!

I have a vps that's been kind of sat around doing nothing, so decided to try and fuck it up by playing around on ssh. (It's not fully managed either.)

I managed to update CentOS on it and tried to upgrade php (the thing is running php 4.4...) to no avail, but it probably gave me a false sense of security as it all (copying and pasting commands from various sites knowing not what they do) felt easy.

PSM are good at what they do. But you need to remember they are a budget company. Clients of budget companies tend to expect the world for nothing, and post loads of negative stuff. So, such companies need to deal with these clients aggressively. Example, BurstNET and as you have pointed out, Ethan of PSM.
You should give PSM a try, from what I remember, they have a 30 day moneyback guarantee.

Ishan

The VPS I mentioned fucking about with above is with Burst and I must admit, I was more impressed with them than reviews would lead me to believe, likely because most people who them are fucking 'tards.

You're probably right about Ethan of PSM as well. I can't imagine the level of newb his service attracts, when most management companies want $100 and more. He can only work with cPanel though and I don't fancy splashing out for a cPanel licence, if I can get away with going control panel-less.

I have used yum, although would be lying if I understood what it actually is, but I imagined using that would keep me up to date, so where do I acquire proper updates that cPanel would use?

But you forgot to mention what are your needs? What you can and cannot do will depend on what you want to do. For an average WordPress blog I'd say you don't need cpanel or any of that extra junk. I'd spend some extra time researching server security. Because if you are not careful, you might get a rootkit or some other nasty shit.

Edit: Decided to add this to the above:

At a minimum when I get a new box, being it hardware or VPS, I do these things:

1) Disallow root login via SSH. So have another user you login as, then su to root, or just use sudo.
2) Move SSH port to something non-standard to avoid scanners.
3) Kill unnecessary services.
4) Make sure the server is up to date. Do not assume it will be. More often that not anything I got was seriously out of date.
5) Do not host mail, in fact, I'd go as far as completely remove mail services from the machine. I usually get Google Apps for domain for anything serious, or simply use domain registrar's forwarding feature.
6) Install and configure csf

Edit 2: Oh ya, I also never host DNS. You just can't make that reliable on 1 server. I either use registrar's, or DNS Made Easy or DynDNS, esp. after Enom's fiasco last year.

When you say do not host mail, what exactly do you mean by that please? Set up pop/imap on another server? And what do you mean by domain registrars forwarding feature if you don't mind telling me? MX records or something?

Thanks again. :bowdown:

 

[l3msip]

I have recently been playing with an unmanaged VPS, and its not that difficult.
If you have some time and enjoy learning, by all means just play about with it, but if you value your time and dont really find such things interesting, you will probably be ALOT better off using a managed cPanel package.

Re the dont host email, thats pretty good advice. I use Google apps for all my email now. Reduces server load, and removes the risk of some shit using your server to spam.

 

[LeapswitchIshan]

Thanks guys. I appreciate it and have supplied the wondrous gift of rep as compensation for your troubles!

Thank you

I have a vps that's been kind of sat around doing nothing, so decided to try and fuck it up by playing around on ssh. (It's not fully managed either.)

I managed to update CentOS on it and tried to upgrade php (the thing is running php 4.4...) to no avail, but it probably gave me a false sense of security as it all (copying and pasting commands from various sites knowing not what they do) felt easy.

If you install CentOS 5.5 via BurstNET's vePortal , you should get php 5.1.6 or similar.

It's still not the latest, but its better than 4.4 .

The VPS I mentioned fucking about with above is with Burst and I must admit, I was more impressed with them than reviews would lead me to believe, likely because most people who them are fucking 'tards.

You're probably right about Ethan of PSM as well. I can't imagine the level of newb his service attracts, when most management companies want $100 and more. He can only work with cPanel though and I don't fancy splashing out for a cPanel licence, if I can get away with going control panel-less.

I have used yum, although would be lying if I understood what it actually is, but I imagined using that would keep me up to date, so where do I acquire proper updates that cPanel would use?

cPanel uses source code. You can get the source from respective websites, example php from php.net

Building and Installing source is quite easy -
Extract
./configure - options
make
make check
make install

The main problem is configuring it correctly and making sure that the dependencies are satisfied.

When you say do not host mail, what exactly do you mean by that please? Set up pop/imap on another server? And what do you mean by domain registrars forwarding feature if you don't mind telling me? MX records or something?

Thanks again. :bowdown:

He means do not install any mail server on your vps/server. yum remove sendmail should remove it.

You can host DNS somewhere and point your MX records to Google apps. Or in your domain registrar, go to Email forwarding and forward all emails to your domain to any of your normal email addresses.

 

[nmridul]

Check the "centmin" script - It will install almost everything you want on a centos low end server to run a wordpress. Just run it on the fresh system and you should be ok to go with security and tuning.. It is easy to run

BTCentral - Centmin (Projects)

And then install csf firewall and you should be good to go.

I was in a much worst situation a year before. No Linux experience and just knew some command line stuffs. I took a cheap $15 per year vps (yes, you get these once a while in forums or check lowenddedi ) and learned from the tutorials. And then webmin was handy - it reduced the command line burden to an extend.

But I suggest to not put the site live till you had a good feel of the server.

 

[-God-]

He means do not install any mail server on your vps/server. yum remove sendmail should remove it.

You can host DNS somewhere and point your MX records to Google apps. Or in your domain registrar, go to Email forwarding and forward all emails to your domain to any of your normal email addresses.

I'm completely confused by this. I used to add a domain in cPanel or an account in WHM or something, then add mail accounts for said domains and set these up in Thunderbird/Mail/Outlook as normal pop/imap accounts so I can send and receive as my domain.

Forgive my slowness, but why do I want to use Gmail for email over email on my own domain? Clearly I'm missing something because I can't see why 2 of you would suggest removing sendmail and using Gmail. (Unless by Google Apps you mean something else entirely, as I'm not sure what can be done with mx records and or Google Apps.)

I feel or naked and n00b like now.

 

[moltar]

I use BurstNet. They are pretty good and reasonably priced. Another cool feature they have is they offer Gbit connection for their premium VPS plans.

As for the mail server. What I mean is do not install mail server software (e.g. postfix) on your server. Google Apps for Domain offers email capability with Gmail-like interface, which beats any open source web email client out there. And you also get all the other apps, like docs, etc... Finally, they have recently "merged" Google Apps with Google Account. Meaning you can get Analytics, Webmaster Tools, and all the other tools under your Google Apps account. Previously you had top open a Google Account with you Google Apps email address separately, which was very confusion and annoying, because you cannot be logged in both at the same time.

Many domain registrars (Enom, NamesCheap, Godaddy to name a few) provide DNS management under your domain settings. Basically they host the DNS for you, instead of you having to host your own DNS servers. You can just edit the DNS entries from their interface. So usually, instead of changing the DNS servers under your domain account, you simple change the A record to point to your server's IP address, and that basically takes care of it. You can also edit MX records to point to Google Apps, or if you insist on hosting email yourself, then point it to your own server.

 

[-God-]

Thanks moltar. Apparently I have to spread more rep before giving anymore to you!

I understand now. I have DNS setup elsewhere, well with namecheap, just never used A records, C Name and MX Records before. I normally just add the dns of my server and Robert's your father's brother.

I'm quite embarrassed to have not heard of using Google in that way before. Sounds good, although anytime I use anything of Google's I feel like I'm slowly handing my soul to Satan.

 

[moltar]

I'm quite embarrassed to have not heard of using Google in that way before. Sounds good, although anytime I use anything of Google's I feel like I'm slowly handing my soul to Satan.

I feel ya! That is why in most cases, where it's just something quick and/or disposable, you can just use the forwarding feature that some registrar's offer. I know Enom offers it for free. Again, under your domain settings, you can simply set it up to forward info@yourdomain.com -> youractual@email.com. So you don't need to run mail servers and all that jazz for these simple use cases. Pretty much the only time I'd setup Google Apps is for something serous, where there are employees involved and they need their own mailboxes.