Connecting to your new CentOS-Redhat VPS

The only way to connect to a new server is through SSH. There is no control panel or FTP server set up yet because it’s new. Your hosting provider should have sent you a password and IP number to log on with. Make sure you have those 2 pieces of info and you can connect through your free Putty SSH program.  Download and run Putty and you will be greeted with this screen:

Type the IP number your host gave you into the “Host Name (or IP address)” box.  Be sure to keep all the periods in between the numbers. Now press the “Open” button and you should be greeted by a black window like below. If it didn’t connect make sure you typed in the correct IP number with all the periods between the numbers and nothing after the last number.

Now where it says “login” type the word “root” without the quotation marks, then press enter.

Next enter the password your host provided you and press enter.

Now you are connected to your VPS and have absolute power and control. It’s good to update everything before you start, so type: ” yum -y update ”  without the quotation marks. This may take a few minutes.

After it finishes updating we will add a free control panel. I like Webmin.  It’s free and easy to install.  Now type, and when I say type I mean copy and paste in to the SSH terminal. right click to paste text into Putty :

yum -y install perl-Net-SSLeay perl openssl

This loads all the dependencies needed to install Webmin.

Now type or cut and paste:

rpm -ivh https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/webadmin/webmin/1.831/webmin-1.831-1.noarch.rpm

That should download and install the Webmin control panel.

If that should fail type:

wget https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/webadmin/webmin/1.831/webmin-1.831-1.noarch.rpm

to download the webmin RPM package.

Then type:

rpm -ivh webmin-1.831-1.noarch.rpm

to install the package you just downloaded.

The links for downloading Webmin in the commands above will work until they update it again. You may have to adjust it with the new version numbers.

Now that webmin is installed:

Go to https://your_ip_number:10000 in your browser

After confirming all the security exceptions and finally getting to your Webmin control panel, you are greeted by a Login form:

Enter “root” as the username, without the quotation marks.

Now enter the password your host sent you when he sent your server info.

Remember to bookmark this page, you will be here a lot.  The username will be root and the password will be the password your host gave you. This should be what you have now:

This is the control panel for your VPS. You can control virtually every aspect of your VPS from here.

Now we want to create a user account other than root.   We will call this user “Oscar”   you may use any name you like.  Go to the left hand menu of the Webmin page and click “System”. Then click “Users and Groups”.

Now go to the top of the page and click “Create a new user”.

Type in the username you would like to create, in our case “Oscar”.  Capitalization has to be the same always and counts, (case sensitive)  so remember if you use upper-case letters.  Next type your real name.  Then go down and select “Normal Password” and type in the password you would like your new username to have.  Leave everything else the way it is and go to the bottom of the page and click the “Create” button.  You will need to remember this username and password, so be sure to put it in a safe place.

 

Next go to the menu on the left   and go to Servers->SSH Server.  You should be at a page that looks like this:

Click the “Authentication” icon and set “Allow login by root?” to “no” , click the “Save” button. Next click the “Apply Changes” button.

You can also connect to your server with SFTP to transfer files to and from your server. Download and install the Filezilla client, not the server,  on your computer.

Open the Filezilla program you just installed and click the Open Site Manager icon near the top left of the window.

When the Site Manager pops up fill in the “Host” field with the IP number your host sent you.

For “Protocol” select “SFTP – SSH File Transfer Protocol”

For “Logon Type” select “Normal”

Enter the username and password you created a few steps back. Don’t try to login as root because we blocked root login in the previouse step.

When the program connects you will be presented with this screen:

The left side of the program is the contents of your computer. The right side is the contents to your home folder on your server. You can transfer files back and forth by dragging and dropping or righ clicking and selecting your desired action from the menu.

If everything has gone well, you can now login by both SFTP and SSH with your new Username and Password and not through your root password. This is done for security reasons.  You can also login to Webmin control panel  and configure your server through it.