How To Set Up A Linux Cloud Server

Step 1: Log In to your account

Log In to your account. If you don’t have an account, please sign up for a Free Trial. You are now in the control panel. Here you can set up, stop and start servers, and create and manage the drives that you install the servers on to.

Step 2: Add a server and a hard drive. Start your server

In the top menu bar, you’ll see an ‘Add’ button for adding servers and drives. Add a server called ‘test’, pre-installed with Debian Linux 6.0 and a 10 GB drive, and click on ‘Add’. Your server and its drive will appear in the control panel, but the drive will initially show “imaging” while the operating system is copied onto it. Wait a few seconds until the image processing has finished. On your server, click the Start icon. In your server, you will see an IP address and VNC password which you will require for the next step. You can set up pre-installed servers and drives for many common operating systems, here are the options available when you’re adding new instances >>

Step 3: Connect to your server

Connect via VNC: Launch our in-browser VNC viewer by clicking on ‘Show screen’. See our VNC tutorial for more details, including how to connect via a local VNC client. You can log in over VNC as “root” with a blank password, or with username “toor” and your VNC password. Connect via SSH: You can also connect to your Linux Cloud Server using SSH. SSH is built into Linux and MacOS. We recommend PuTTY as an SSH client for Windows. You can log in over SSH using the username “toor” with your VNC password, or using the username “root” once you have set a root password on the server.

Congratulations you now have a Linux Cloud Server!

Now your server is running, it is a fully-functional Debian Linux system. You can shut it down and the data will be stored on the drive. You can reboot (restart) it again and the data will still be there, along with the configuration and the data and the software that you’ve installed on it.

Options available when you’re adding new instances:

  • You can add a server or a drive only. When you add a server, you get the drive and a server that’s set up to boot from that drive. When you add a drive, you just get the drive.
  • You can supply a name for the server and/or drive.

Then we have a range of installation types:

  • Pre-installed: take one of our standard images and make a copy of it onto a drive in your own account. We have Debian, Ubuntu, a variety of Linux and Windows images.
  • Self-install from CD: here the server is running one of the install CDs we have provided centrally, and it’s also attached to a blank drive in your account. You install from the CD to the drive. We have a wide variety of Linux options as well as FreeBSD and a variety of Windows trial CDs that you can install as a trial or activate with your own licence keys.
  • Boot from live CD: boot off a centrally provided CD image with no permanent data storage.
  • Boot from existing drive: if you have a drive already and just want to create a server that uses it.

How to check whether the cPanel ports are open

You may experience issues with the non-standard HTTP ports cPanel works with. Usually, cPanel can be opened via:

  • https://yourdomainname.com/cpanel
  • https://yourdomainname.com:2082
  • https://cpanel.servername.com

Sometimes local firewalls allow only access to sites on port 80. In such cases, use the last URL. Note that the third address is a web based proxy which provides you with the option to access your cPanel via the default HTTP port 80. We have set this extra service for our customers whose Internet Service Providers block ports 2082 and 2083.

You may experience issues with the non-standard HTTP ports cPanel works with. Usually, cPanel can be opened via:

  • https://yourdomainname.com/cpanel
  • https://yourdomainname.com:2082
  • https://cpanel.servername.com

Sometimes local firewalls allow only access to sites on port 80. In such cases, use the last URL. Note that the third address is a web based proxy which provides you with the option to access your cPanel via the default HTTP port 80. We have set this extra service for our customers whose Internet Service Providers block ports 2082 and 2083.

You may check if the ports are blocked executing the following commands:

If you are running Windows do the following:

  • Click Start
  • Click Run
  • Type cmd
  • Type telnet yourdomainname.com 2083
  • Type telnet yourdomainname.com 2082

If you are running Linux do the following:

  • Start your Linux/Mac OS console terminal
  • Type telnet yourdomainname.com 2083
  • Type telnet yourdomainname.com 2082

If the port is not blocked the results should look like the following one. Trying IP_of_the_server ( 10.10.10.10 for an example )…

Connected to servername.com.Escape character is ‘^]’.

Different results will mean that the port is blocked and you should use the web proxy link provided above.

cPanel Databases Tutorial

The Databases section allows you to create MySQL and PostgreSQL databases and users, to modify databases and access to them. SQL stands for Structured Query Language. SQL is an international standard in querying and retrieving information from databases. PostgreSQL is an object-relational database management system. MySQL is essentially an SQL server – it responds to requests for information that are written in SQL. You can communicate with MySQL using a wide variety of programming languages (PHP being one of the most common). MySQL is Open Source software and free for use. There are several tools in the cPanel Database section:

The Databases section allows you to create MySQL and PostgreSQL databases and users, to modify databases and access to them. SQL stands for Structured Query Language. SQL is an international standard in querying and retrieving information from databases. PostgreSQL is an object-relational database management system. MySQL is essentially an SQL server – it responds to requests for information that are written in SQL. You can communicate with MySQL using a wide variety of programming languages (PHP being one of the most common). MySQL is Open Source software and free for use. There are several tools in the cPanel Database section:

How to Install an SSL Certificate in Plesk

For the do-it-yourself types, Modular Merchant does allow our clients to install SSL certificates in their hosting accounts themselves. This tutorial lists the steps involved in installing a third-party SSL certificate on your domain, using your hosting account’s Plesk control panel. This article is the extent of the technical support that Modular Merchant can provide to users who are installing an SSL certificate themselves that was purchased from a third-party SSL provider.

What is a SSL Certificate?
An SSL (Secure Socket Layer) Certificate is a file containing the “fingerprint” of your server and your domain name. This fingerprint is encoded for security, so that it cannot be forged. The certificate is uploaded to a specific location on your server, where it will be used when a page on your website is loaded in a secure, “https” environment. If the certificate is found, and its contents match the fingerprint of your server and domain, then the secure “https” version of the web page will be allowed to load. Otherwise, a security warning will be displayed by your web browser software.

Do I need a SSL Certificate?
When a webpage is loaded in a secure “https” environment, the page’s content is encrypted by the server before it is displayed on-screen, so that it cannot be read by third parties. This prevents malicious third-parties from obtaining any sensitive data contained on the secured page.

If your shopping cart is hosted under your own domain or subdomain (such as www.MyDomain.com), then you will need an SSL certificate for your store. Not only is an SSL certificate required for PCI compliance, but credit card companies will only accept online orders that come from a secure “https” connection.

SSL Certificates are assigned at a website’s subdomain level. That means that if your site is split into two subdomains, such as https://www.MyWebsite.com and https://store.MyWebsite.com, and you want them both to be secure, you will need two SSL certificates, one for the “www” subdomain and a second for the “store” subdomain.

 

 

What are the steps to adding a SSL Certificate to my website?

  1. Create a “Certificate Request Key”.
  2. Obtain and install the SSL Certificate Key.
  3. Apply the SSL Certificate to your website.

Let’s review each of these steps in detail…

How to create a backup of your site and restore it?

You can create a backup of your site quite easily. Account backups can be performed using the cPanel -> Backups functionality for your hosting account. If your account is not too big in size (under 500Mb) you can perform a full account backup just with one click.

If the account is too large (over 500Mb) for the full automatic backup the files and the databases should be backed up separately. In this case you would need to know what your web site consists of and thus what should be backed up/restored. Sites consist of files and databases. You must take care of them all if you want to have your site exactly the way it has been before.

How to backup/restore your files?

In order to backup your files, you should download all the files from your public_html folder to your computer using your favorite FTP client. After that you can easily upload back the files to your hosting account and your website will be restored.

How to backup/restore your database?

Once having all the files on your computer, you should make a dump of your MySQL database. Click here to learn how to backup/restore your MySQL database.

You may also request an affordable backup creation of your whole account by posting a ticket from the Exclusive Professional Services tab inside your Help Desk area.

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