vps setup questions

[J.Wales]

I need some help setting up my vps. I just set up webmin, after I got the vps. Now i'm wondering what else. How setup is the vps from the start? do I need to install anything for basic webserver/email?
What about ftp users, I was looking in webmin and can not find a place to add ftp accounts.
Everything great so far, still learning..
Thanks.

[masshuu]

If you install vsftpd, it uses user logins and their home directory for ftp login and directory. If you need to you can set options to chroot them to their directory(so they see /, not /home/username/ )
For webserver you can simply use apache. I know some of the OS templates doesn't have it installed by default.
For mail, it depends on what you want to do. I personally just forward all my mail addresses I want to receive mail on, which is a fairly simple process.
Installing postfix, then under webmin you can go to Virtual Domains and Add new Mapping. Name is the email you want to receive mail for, Maps to is the destination you want to forward to.
Alternatively if you want to deliver to a local user, you would enter a local username here instead of an email. Then if you install dovecot, simply use the user's login details for the pop login and you can use an email client to check your mail.

I might also note after you install new software, click the Refresh Modules so that it sees the new software(like apache or postfix)

[J.Wales]

Thanks,
the only thing that eludes me, maybe I don't understand exactly how it works, is the ftp. If I have site A pointed to public_html/siteA/ and Site B pointed to public_html/siteB/ how can I create ftp users to loginto those locations? I see appache is running in my services for webmin, but I don't see a public_html directory or I'm not sure where it is located. Will vsftpd work as a module in webmin?

---------- Post added at 09:41 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:43 AM ----------

Also, I set up vsftpd successfully, webmin module is installed, but when trying to configure, webmin can not find the vsftpd.conf file. I looked in my etc dir and there is no vsftpd.conf file. I installed vsftpd with 'yum install vsftpd' which installed v2.05 or something like that. The service started ok with /sbin/service vsftpd start

[masshuu]

If you run `find / -iname vsftpd.conf` you should find it. One in /etc/ should be it, as long as it isn't like mine and theres one in /etc/ and /etc/init/

As for anything fancy, you can create more users that have their home directory set to public_html/siteA/ and public_html/siteB/
The downside to this method is you start to create allot of users you need to manage.
Also you may want to set users shells to '/sbin/nologin' unless you want to give them ssh access(useful for sftp actually, which is what I use)
A more advanced option is to go with proftpd, which allows you to set a mysql/postgresql database for user logins.

[J.Wales]

Thank you, I should have realized that webmin was looking for .conf file in /etc/ folder but that isn't necessarily where vps may have defaulted it too... It was actually in /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf So I just told webmin where to find it and it was happy.

Thanks everyone for the help, so far i'm happy with the way things are going. I just have to learn my way around the server. Once I figure out:

• the directory structure

• where ftp folders go

• where public html go

• setting up email boxes

• how it all ties together

• and managing it all

I'll be good! lol

---------- Post added at 04:10 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:03 PM ----------

one more thing, if I should choose to get another ftp server module, such as the proftpd you speak of, should I uninstall the vsftpd and module? If so how do I go about uninstalling it?

[masshuu]

Directory Structure:

/bin/ - important programs
/dev/ - hardware
/etc/ - configeration files
webmin usually deals with this if you do it though webmin
/etc/apache/sites-available/ - configuration files for apache websites
/etc/apache/sites-enabled/ - configuration files enabled, usually via a symbolic link to a sites-avalable configuration
/home/ - users
/home/username/public_html - usual location for webspace
/sbin/ - shared binaries
/var/ - usually has logs and other stuff
/tmp/ - temporary files

FTP folders, as determined by vsftpd is determined by the users home directory, usually /home/username
public html is as noted as above
email is usually done by each user in the system can store email. using postfix as noted above, you can redirect mail address to a user.

[leafypiggy]

As a note, you can give users their own /public_html/ and map it to your own domain.

It's an apache configuration setting called User Directories. You can look it up on ApacheDocs.

Example:

http://labs.neilhanlon.com/~neil/ maps to /home/neil/public_html/, as opposed to /var/www/

[bidzey75]

Thanks everyone for the help, so far i'm happy with the way things are going. I just have to learn my way around the server. Once I figure out:

• the directory structure

• where ftp folders go

• where public html go

• setting up email boxes

• how it all ties together

• and managing it all

I'll be good! lol

I've been looking at this too, I'm pretty much in the same shoes as you. Looks like virtualmin makes this a breeze but I didn't bite the bullet yet so I can't say for sure.

I've been doing a lot of reading about configuring a VPS account and I'm not sure about choosing a server name. The sign-up form say "Choose any server name: - e.g. server1.x10vps.com" Are you limited to the name? Is there guidelines? (like ".x10vps.com" have to be used)

I have all my domain name with 1 registrar and want to keep it that way. So I set the name servers from there (ns1.example.com and ns2.example.com) I'm not sure if virtualmin creates the name servers for you or if this is associated automagically with the server name when you choose it, or if I have to configure that myself.

[masshuu]

You are free to use whatever name you want. This turns into the VPS's hostname.
The nameserver records don't actually do anything. They are just part of the solusvm plugin for whmcs.

[bidzey75]

thanks for the info masshuu