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How To Use a Linux Virtual Private Server
Nerval's Lobster writes "Game developer David Bolton writes: 'For my development of Web games, I've hit a point where I need a Virtual Private Server. (For more on this see My Search for Game Hosting Begins.) I initially chose a Windows VPS because I know Windows best. A VPS is just an Internet-connected computer. "Virtual" means it may not be an actual physical computer, but a virtualized host, one of many, each running as if it were a real computer. Recently, though, I've run into a dead end, as it turns out that Couchbase doesn't support PHP on Windows. So I switched to a Linux VPS running Ubuntu server LTS 12-04. Since my main desktop PC runs Windows 7, the options to access the VPS are initially quite limited, and there's no remote desktop with a Linux server. My VPS is specified as 2 GB of ram, 2 CPUs and 80 GB of disk storage. The main problem with a VPS is that you have to self-manage it. It's maybe 90% set up for you, but you need the remaining 10%. You may have to install some software, edit a config file or two and occasionally bounce (stop then restart) daemons (Linux services), after editing their config files.'"
Hire a manager for it or learn to use it. How in hell is this in the front page?
and there's no remote desktop with a Linux server
Spending about 3.8753 seconds on Google would reveal that there are numerous Linux remote desktop clients which can be downloaded for use.
sudo make me a sandwich
If you don't know how to do this, please hire someone. And use Debian stable over ubuntu for servers. It's much more stable and much less full of Shuttleworth.
.... you are new to Linux, and you need some help?
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Beginners/FAQ
gus
.. if only.
Stop trolling us slashdot... this aint news and it aint a legitimate question... please just stop.
As a development environment, I'm not sure why you're not willing to go with a cheap, $200 local/self-hosted server. If you really need to test it online, you could set it up to host to the web, access it over the web, save yourself the monthly hosting fee, and install/configure it how you like.
- Nec Impar Pluribus, or so I'm told.
What exaclty were you expecting? If you want your server to be all setup for you, you'll buy a managed server, and pay a hefty price-premium for them holding your hand the whole time. If you want to save money, then you'll read some man pages and tutorials and figure out how to set it up on your own. Also, if you think you "need" a GUI on your server, then you obviously aren't all that well experienced with server management. If you really can't do any of this on your own, hire a sysadmin. Any sysadmin worth their weight in salt know how to use a linux command line to setup something as easy as PHP and Apache. Hell, most VPS services these days provide template VPSs with these services already setup
What in the world is this crap? I think anyone here who doesn't know:
A. What a VPS is.
B. How to configure a VPS (a.k.a SERVER ).
Does know how to use Google. WTH editors.
neorush
Why the fuck would use a window manager on a server. Just a good way to increase security exposure.
The big problem here is the VPS user has no clue about his operating system, this will end in tears, most likely the hacker kind.
Second is, linux server tools don't need a GUI. Even if you had one, you'd just use it to edit txt (conf) files.
All you really need is putty and WinSCP.
and there's no remote desktop with a Linux server.
HAHAHAHAHA. Oh? You're serious? ALLOW ME TO LAUGH HARDER!
Slashdot is dead, and this is its rotting corpse.
WTF, I see why Taco left.
No remote desktop in linux? Oh teh noes might have to use SSH like a big boy.
I hope this is a joke.
I already gave up on Slashdot once, and kept an eye on it and the quality visibly improved for a while.
If this is the level of crap that we're going to post, I'm happy to abandon the whole site again. I didn't miss it much for its absence.
P.S. If people here don't already know what a VPS is, how to run one, or how to pick holes in that article, this isn't the kind of website I want to frequent, and that's the USERS. The editors / posters? They should know better, ffs.
So far, an article on "Business Intelligence", a video about a fecking jacket, and this article have been enough to undo 10+ years of coming here.
Install freenx - http://www.humans-enabled.com/2012/05/how-to-install-freenx-on-ubuntu-1204.html
Use NX Client for Windows - http://www.nomachine.com/download-package.php?Prod_Id=3835
Use SSH. If you're stuck with windows on the client side, just install cygwin.
Why is this on the frontpage? Is it meant to be a "ask slashdot"? Or just really lame news?
Let me transpose this article to emphasize just how incredibly stupid this submission is:
Hey guys, I'm a game developer and my computer doesn't run things that I need to use to develop games. So I bought a new computer. You see, a computer is a machine that runs software and computes things for you. It has a mouse, a keyboard, and a monitor. Some computers are big, but others are small. For instance, the computer I bought has 4GB of memory. That is more memory than other computers that have 2GB. When you buy a computer, it's maybe 90% set up for you, but you need to install the remaining 10% of things that you'll use and change the settings so it runs the way you like it. Computers are so neat.
This article isn't even asking a fucking question. It's just somebody telling the Slashdot crowd what a VPS is. What the fuck?
Sorry, the DNS lines must have gotten crossed. This is actually Yahoo! Answers.
I've run Linux at home for ages. I use my Linux computer at home for email, development, and a whole host of other things. I don't need a remote desktop. The whole concept of one is completely foreign to the Linux world. Nobody would ever make one because the idea is pointless in a Linux environment.
ssh and the command line are all you really need, and they are significantly more flexible and powerful than any GUI I have used. And if you really need a GUI, that's what X11 is for. X11 is completely network transparent. You can run an X11 program on any random computer and have it display just fine on your desktop.
I don't know how to find a good X11 'server' (yes, the thing that runs on your desktop and actually pushes pixels around on behalf of GUI programs is a 'server' because it performs services (manipulating your display) on the behalf of clients) for Windows is. But you should investigate and get one if you really must have a GUI.
I actually find Windows reliance on remote desktops to be really primitive and constraining. Whenever I try to mess with how Windows is supposed to work through a GUI I'm always left wondering what really just happened. So many little invisible things and no way to really see how they all interact. You just have to trust the partial fiction displayed to you to be a reasonable reflection of the underlying reality. It's very frustrating and cumbersome.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Why do people always hate the GUI? The reason it is on computers is that people find it useful. I install the GUI tools on many of my servers. I remove gdm or lightdm as appropriate... But being able to xtunnel handy apps is one way to make my work easier. CPannel or webmin is a way other people use a GUI.
As for a security risk, that is total bullshit. You are running it all through ssh. The only exposure is ssh, and if that is hacked, why bother "hacking" x as well? (Especially since it is not running on any ports...)
Because it is not possible to automate and not really useful.
Any task a gui can do a can be done faster without it.
Mod this up further. And learn to use screen.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
This is a forum level post, not a front-page Slashdot level.
Good-bye
Don't anthropomorphize your daemons. They hate that!
This is akin to someone writing into Car & Driver asking,
"HOW TO DRIVE CAR???? PLZ HELP!!"
I did not know that and I bet, almost no one here on /. either.
In the linked article, the author says:
Logging in to the root account, even over SSH, is potentially a little risky. If a key-logger gets installed on my desktop PC or a hacker breaks the password, then it’s game over. It’s possible to configure SSH on the server to use a public key/private key for remote logging, so I’m looking into setting that up.
Why is a a key-logger an issue for SSH, but not for whatever mechanism he'd use to manage a Windows server?
Logging on as root is risky, but not because of a keylogger - if he'd logged on with a non-root account that has sudo access, he wouldn't be any more secure. Using SSH public/private keys is definitely a good idea, but if someone has been able to install a keylogger on your computer, then there is no reason to think that they can't also grab your SSH keys and the passphrase to the keys.
www.xrdp.org
Works very well.
Step 1. Learn to use *nix as it was designed to be used, through the shell. I know you skipped this step because you think cPanel is a good idea.
It is a wonder Linux has such an image problem with anyone, but the converted. Granted this article may not be the best, but let's do a quick google search for the actual article that the poster is refering to:
http://news.dice.com/2012/12/10/linux-virtual-private-server/
David Bolton talks about what he did. Good or bad, he documents it and shares it with his readers.
What do I read here, explatives, degrading remarks, and just plain snobbery. Here and there are some useful remarks. What I was hoping is to read a helpful discussion on what he recommends/did and what could be done better and how. There is so much vitriol to sort through, I don't even bother.
Pathetic.
Mid-Eastern Pennsylvania Gaming Convention
it looks like you just told someone how to do something that you have never done yourself.
Not to mention...if you try usinig/installing some tools, like Oracle, which forces you to use a java GUI to install and other configs....you have to have X running.
Command line only, is often not a valid paradigm, depending on what you want to do with Linux these days, especially if using commercial software on it.
On the plus side, though, having a headless server discourages you from installing Larry's beast and keeping it well fed.
If you've got that much money to burn you might as well install PostgreSQL or (shudder) Hadoop and hire some real competent software/system/* engineers
When faced with Virtual Management issues, I hire a Virtual Manager! They never show up for work, but they never complain either.
This is the type of guy who will store his source code in the cloud, then act surprised when his VPS company crashes and he loses all his data.
Get off the cloud man, you clearly have no idea what you're doing and will pay dearly for it in the long-run.
The OP is using as a server. I'd hope he is following best practices and developing locally (and securely) and deploying on the network. Especially if he is unfamiliar with the production environment.
Ultimately, the OP should probably install VirtualBox or another virtualization solution on his/her Windows 7 desktop, and figure out the deployment strategy before exposing their work on the network. It doesn't cost anything but a little bit of time, and the pay off is understanding what you are pushing out in the real world.
it looks like you just told someone how to do something that you have never done yourself.
Yes, but hopefully it's enough to lead him towards the solution, and I think the response to this article has established that /. readers (commenters?) don't need handholding.
The first Google result is this: https://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=833167
I've been reading /. for some years now.
/.?
When I read this post, first I thought it was some kind of joke.
Then I started to feel the urge to hit someone, really hard.
Seriously people, how the heck does a beginner's beginner's noob's writing like this land on
Teenage Linux beginner bloggers do better than this.
You people need to reset your quality checking methods, and fast.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
As for the security risk, you are mostly correct. There is little exposure to running an X app over ssh. A few theoretical issues maybe but, nothing serious.
The thing is, its not what us experienced unix folks do, and with good reason. I have spent more time writing custom scripts to add and manage users than I have used gui tools to manage them. Its nice to be able to click and add a user, its nicer to be able to write a script so I can do it exactly the same way every time, or hand that duty off to someone else with sudo privs and not have to worry about giving him root access, or to implement some custom system where passwords are auto-generated and mailed out etc.....
Frankly the problem isn't the gui tools per se. Its that a linux system is very complicated with a lot of moving parts. On the plus side, this means you can tear it down to the bear minimum and customize it to your hearts content, only limited by your imagination and skill, On the minus side, you can really get out into some major weeds to the point that even the best admins will be calling it a rebuild.
If you are just getting by on gui tools, you are asking for trouble.... HOWEVER..... I don't want to entirely knock them. *I* started out with them. Since then however, I have totally abandoned them. When I use X11 over ssh, you can bet its because I am using something that just gives me no other way. (some software installs...ugh)
My advice would be...if someone wants to seriously go down this path...do it...but do it knowing full well its going ot be a major learning experience. I would setup a second VPS or even a system at home, just to experiment with....
If you really want to get competent: ;) Its also more powerful than you can possibly imagine. It is worth learning.
1. Find out what your tools are REALLY DOING. Find out what the command line equivalents are, see what the differences are.
2. Don't fear vi. It is less true these days that you are likely to find yourself sitting in front of a dead system at 3 am and the only tool that works is vi. Especially on linux (more so than many more traditional systems) vi is not your only option, nor your only good one. All that said.... it *IS* the gold standard for sysadmin editors. Its what the cool kids use
3. Consider learning some shell script. Its very powerful, its also the exact same language you type at the shell. Learning shell syntax will save you time, even if you never save anything to a fixed script.
4. Remember this is a job people get paid and paid well to do. You are dabbling in my career here. Don't expect to be an expert over night, and don't make too many commitments. I have been at it for 12 years professionally.... it takes time and experience to get good.
That said.... it seems this is all about web game development? If so....hey.... development? Have a blast man! However, if you are expecing to actually run code for public consumption? I would be a bit worried, expect downtime while you figure it all out.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I have to disagree with this. GUIs are not the end-all-be-all of computing by any means, but they have their uses. I would be loathe to edit graphics using a CLI, for example, other than the most routine rotation, scaling, etc.
Fine and dandy if you're operating on a workstation, if you're doing this on a server (which is the focus of this conversation) you're doing it wrong. Command line graphic manipulation is mature and powerful, although not nearly as intuitive as using a GUI. It's worth it in the long run if you're offering services to users that depend on re-sizing photos, watermarking, and related asset generation rather than depending on someone for photoshop macros. Unless you want to argue that Facebook employs an army of photoshop monkeys with stellar performance...
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
In other news:
"Some Random Moron writes: 'For my reading of email, I've hit a point where I need a PC. (For more on this see My Search for Email Clients Begins.) I initially chose a Windows 7 PC because I know Windows best. A PC is just a "personal computer". "Personal" means it is an actual physical computer, running as if it were a real computer. "Computer" means it's an actual physical computer, running as if it were a real computer. Recently, though, I've run into a dead end, as it turns out that Windows 7 doesn't support Sparrow. So I switched to a Linux PC running Ubuntu desktop 12.04. Since my main smartphone runs iOS, the options to access my mail are initially quite limited, cause I'm a moron, and don't know how to use google. Though I pretend to be a web developer, I'm entirely outside my comfort zone if there isn't a big bold "easy button" for any trivial task I attempt, even when that task has been solved, posted about, blogged about, and had software specifically written to solve my exact issue. The main problem with a PC is that you have to self-manage it. It's maybe 90% set up for you, but you need the remaining 10%. You may have to install some software, edit a config file or two and occasionally bounce (stop then restart) daemons (Linux services), after editing their config files.'"
Seriously....can't remote into a Linux server? WTF?
I prefer tmux too, but one nice thing about GNU screen is its ability to be a simple dumb terminal (screen /dev/ttyS0 9600 e.g.).
Ever.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Not to mention...if you try usinig/installing some tools, like Oracle, which forces you to use a java GUI to install and other configs....you have to have X running.
Command line only, is often not a valid paradigm, depending on what you want to do with Linux these days, especially if using commercial software on it.
Oracle is a bad example for your point since you don't have to have X running on the target host. You simply need to export your DISPLAY (over your SSH tunnel of course) back to your X workstation. Works fine and you don't need an X server running anywhere it isn't needed. Having X apps and X libraries installed (so you can remote display apps when needed) is much different having X running on a server that is not meant to have direct human interaction (e.g. not a terminal).
And if you are a competent Oracle Admin you save the config when you are done so that subsequent installs can be done with the silent installer so no manual interaction is needed.
Many photo editing tasks can be done faster without a gui.
Resizing, cropping, converting, compressing, etc.
Have you done manual partitioning of gpt partitions (no fdisk)? Do you really enjoy cutting and pasting hugh block numbers around? Is there anything that is a fraction as intuitive as gparted?
While I still drop out to a command line for 1/3rd of my copy commands, when plucking 12 "unlike files" out of a directory of many and placing them in a another, CTRL-clicking them feels noticably faster than typing them or playing with expressions to try to pick them out of the noise...
If the server served printers (though I doubt the poster's does), I have to admit the graphical cups interface is nice....
So is it still time to raise our fists in the air and shout: Yggdrasil 94 forever!
Or are we turning the corner on intuitive command line replacments?
What has happened? It used to be so nice place to be.
I admire your long term memory. You remember 15 years ago like it was yesterday.
Oh and a couple of things I really should have mentioned.... save yourself some trouble, and make sure you have dos2unix.
Because I know you wont learn vi overnight (or do what i did and avoid it for several years), and you will likely find some shell extention that does sshfs or realize that you can use winscp to sftp into the box and then right click on a file and edit, or you will just copy a file locally and edit it, and reupload.
At some point, you WILL transfer a file that has the wrong line endings, and it will be one of the ones where it matters (there are many times it is not a problem, shell scripts are not one of them). The file command will often tip you off to dos line endings, and dos2unix will do the conversion.
If you want to move a file or several files from one unix machine to another, but have to copy to a windows machine inbetween.... make a tarball and move that instead.
Oh and always set putty and winscp to use blowfish as the first cipher....it speeds up file transfer times significantly over the AES default.
And always make backup copies of config files before you edit them. Consider installing git and using git for this purpose right in /etc
If nothing else, being able to do a "git diff" and see everything you have changed since the last commit will be inordinately helpful when making posts asking for help in online forums.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
You need NXServer.
Consider XFCE for your desktop environment. Leaves more memory for doing things that are actually useful.
Define "faster".
Do you mean a task can be scripted to run in batches to use a predefined (dynamic or otherwise) input and output condition? Then yes.
Do you mean an expert in the specific task at hand with experience using the required tools? Then yes.
Do you mean a task can be executed and reach completion faster without the computational overhead of having to load a UI? Then, probably, yes.
For pretty much anything else, it's a wash because the computer isn't the limiting factor. The user is. This isn't the 1970's. Computer time is cheap. Ridiculously cheap. So cheap that nearly every individual is walking around with more computational power idling in their pocket than anybody ever dreamed could possibly exist in the 1970's. Human time is expensive. Humans have to learn to use things, and humans a better at learning to use objects that represent things they can relate to instead of abstract names with little to no concrete meaning. The majority of the world doesn't like command lines. They like a UI that they can understand. That computer experts in this day and age are still fighting this battle shows that while they certainly understand the computer, they don't understand the user at all.
Seriously, you might as well just say "it's faster to grow your own silicon chip specifically dedicated to your task instead of relying on the much slower general purpose processor". The statement is true only in the context of all the background preparation work already having been done. Certainly, there are situations where you need to be an expert, or need to script the task, or actually care about performance overhead, or actually need a dedicated silicon chip. However, to argue that the first steps of any layman should be to become an expert -- regardless of the complexity of the task -- is absolutely ludicrous. "LOL RTFM" is not an appropriate response to someone asking for help. Ever. If that's all you've got just don't say anything and let someone else actually answer the question.
This is the problem with the Linux community. It is assumed that everyone must be technically an expert to use a computer, and that is absurd. I'm not a certified mechanic, but I own a car. I'm not an aerospace engineer, but I use an airplane. I'm not a classically trained chef, but I have a kitchen. I'm not plumber, electrician, carpenter, or gardener, but I own a house. Expertise should not a prerequisite to using a computer to accomplish a task.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
Dear slashdot editors, please forward this onto corp if it was upmodded enough to notice.
Because of this article pushed through geek.net, I am blocking all of your ads for one month.
That article is total drivel and crap. I don't care if you thought it was good. I don't care what demographic some idiot thought they were getting out to.
It's so dumbed down and idiotic as to be offensive. It isn't a legitimate slashdot. It isn't a legitimate ask slashdot as evidenced by the offsite link. It isn't even really a question. It's a shitty attempt to get us to click through to a crappy article with a crappy question written by someone who evidently can't even use google or IRC correctly.
Fuck your slashvertisements.
You have no clue, when doing X over ssh, the X11 server AND window manager run on your local computer not the remote host. This mean you can run a graphical app on your server, such as a graphical frontend or a file manager, without Xorg or a window manager installed on the server. On the Windows side, you only need putty and Xming ; remote windows behave seamlessly like local Windows windows, though a braindead container window managed by the piece of shit twm is an option.
"the options to access the VPS are initially quite limited, and there's no remote desktop with a Linux server."
http://www.openssh.org/ - this goes on your server
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html - this goes on your windows 7 desktop
This is how linux works
https://code.google.com/edu/tools101/linux/basics.html
most configs are text files you edit
http://www.lagmonster.org/docs/vi.html
thats vi.
or nano learn to use this too
http://www.nano-editor.org/
updates are done with apt.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Packaging_Tool
http://packages.ubuntu.com/ - packages you can find by looking through ubuntu's web catalouge. Yes there is a search function.
Thats the polite way of saying RTFM. In a previous life, I'd call you an idiot.
In this life, it sounds like your in need of a full time sys admin, and I'm your man.
Though I didn't use a GUI in my article, there are many ways a GUI (I'm thinking Windows Explorer) can be used to select files by size, file type for copying etc faster than from a command line. You can select multiple files from up or down a hierarchy of folders. On Linux, it's not so clear cut. Back in the Dos days in the early 1990s Xtree Gold pissed over anything you could do in Dos. That was a GUI that kicked ass. WinSCP does make working with Putty a lot easier.
Thank you for a useful constructive comment. Lots of negativity elsewhere sure erodes the soul. The VPS is for a game processing engine I'm creating working to do reasonably sophisticated processing then updating a database that feeds a website. The kind of thing you can't do in a shared web server where scripts have a 30 second time out. I will have it professionally managed when I launch (months away) but the VPS is mainly for performance testing., I have a Linux box at home running Ubuntu 12:04 which er does have a desktop- easier to setup a server version then add desktop than install desktop and add servers, I'll take your advice about Vi. Being a Windows developer by day, I'm used to that environment and Programmers notebook etc but you make a good point about Vi
On the contrary, viewing flat text files, for example, is a lot better than going through eleventyteen different tabs and dialog boxes, and THEN having to go and edit a metabase through the equivalent of PEEK and POKE. Granted IIS has gotten a little better with Windows 2008, but there is no less clicking between a zillion different tabs and dialogs and forms than previous versions. In apache, it's all right in front of you in .conf files, and in instances where other .conf files are included it's very straightforward. Sure, you might have to do some RTFMing and have a clue, but a sysadmin should know how the system works and be willing to RTFM anyhow.
The command line can be very intuitive - more so than clicking in this huge graphics-rich, slow and cumbersome administrative UI.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
If you edit a text file you know what you've done. For a sysadmin that's quite important. With a GUI 'things happen'. Are your changes in one file or a dozen? When will the next be backed-up. If you restore some of them and not the others then what? I really like tools I can point a mouse at to flip a switch rather than having to trawl through acres of 'documentation' and then test hoping I've got the case-sensitive flags right and the actual version matches the docs or is compatible with foo, but for sysadmin work you need to learn tricky text files that are the links in the chain you lead your tiger by.