Run your own Dedicated Ventrilo Server on VPS

Run your own Dedicated Ventrilo Server on VPS

Now that you have FTP set up it is very simple to get your own Ventrilo server set up. First go to the Official Ventrilo Download page and download the linux server program to your computer with your FTP client. Connect to your server via FTP and transfer the file you downloaded to your VPS server. If you have not set up root access to the FTP server you will only be able to transfer it to the user you logged in as.

Once the file has been transferred you should create a folder to run it. To do this log in as root:

su

Go to the directory you wish to run Ventrilo, I will use the top directory:

cd ..

Create a Ventrilo directory:

mkdir Ventrilo

Copy the file you transferred via FTP to the newly created Ventrilo folder. This may change depending on where you transferred the file:

cp /home/user/ventrilo_srv-3.0.3-Linux-i386.tar.gz /Ventrilo

Navigate to the Ventrilo directory you created using the cd command. Run the commands below to extract the file:

gunzip/ventrilo_srv-3.0.3-Linux-i386.tar.gz

tar xf/ventrilo_srv-3.0.3-Linux-i386.tar

Change into the directory that was created during extraction and run the command:

./ventrilo_srv

Your Ventrilo server should now be running with default values! You can connect to the server using the Ventrilo client and using your IP Address as the host. To change the settings you can edit the ventrilo_srv.ini file.

Note: If you close the console connection the Ventrilo process will also stop. An easy way to get around this is to log into the VNC and open a terminal window from within GNOME. Run the same command to start the Ventrilo server and close the connect with VNC. The terminal window will still be running in the GUI and the server will stay up.

If you have any questions or comments feel free to post them below.

Thanks!

Setup VNC to Access GNOME Desktop on CentOS 6

Setup VNC to Access GNOME Desktop on CentOS 6 using UltraVNCViewer

Now that you have your VPS running and have set up FTP access you may want to move away from using command line and start to use a GUI. To do this you must install a Desktop Environment and VNC service. For this tutorial I will be using GNOME Desktop Environment and tigervnc.

Install and set up VNC

Start off by logging into root with the command

su

After correctly entering the password you should be logged in as root. Now run the command

yum install tigervnc-server

and enter y when prompted.

You should see Complete! when the server is successfully installed.

Log into the user you wish to access VNC with using the command:

su username

Create a VNC password for the user with the command

vncpasswd

You will be prompted to create and verify a password that you will use to log in to VNC with.

You now need to edit the VNC configuration file. For this you need to use a command line text editor. CentOS comes with vi for editing files however many people find nano easier to use. For this tutorial I will use vi however you may use whichever is easiest. (nano can be installed as root with the command yum install nano).

Open /etc/sysconfig/vncservers in vi with the command:

vi /etc/sysconfig/vncservers

You will now be in the vi editor with the file vncservers open. You can use the arrow keys to move around the file. To edit the file press i. You need to change the lines:


# VNCSERVERS="2:myusername"
# VNCSERVERARGS[2]="-geometry 800x600 -nolisten tcp -localhost"

to:

VNCSERVERS="1:username"
VNCSERVERARGS[1]="-geometry 800x600"

Replacing username with the username you assigned the VNC password to above. Once you have made these changes press escape, then type :x and press enter. This should save the file and exit vi. To confirm you have made the changes use the command:

cat /etc/sysconfig/vncservers

And you should see the changes.

Install GNOME Desktop Environment

To install the GNOME Desktop Environment enter the command as root:

yum installgroup "Desktop"

Press y and enter when prompted. If successful you should see Complete!

Start the VNC Service and Connect

Start the VNC Service with the command:

service vncserver start

You should see a success message if the service has started successfully.

To connect to the VNC Service I am using UltraVNCViewer. You can download this from here. Open UltraVNCViewer and you should see this screen:

Enter the IP Address of your server next to VNC Server: and add :1 to the end to indicate the port number.

Press connect and you should be prompted for a password. Enter the password you used for the VNC Password and you should connect. You should now be displayed a GUI as shown below:

Congratulations! You have now got your desktop and VNC successfully running. Now you can use the GUI to install new software instead of using the command line.

Note: If you attempt to connect to the VNC Server and it is just a black square try and restart the server. This has helped before.

If you have any comments or questions feel free to leave them below.

Thanks!

Setting up FTP on VPS

Setting up FTP on VPS

Setting up and FTP service on your server can be very useful if you wish to use the server to remotely store files. This tutorial will show you step by step how to set up FTP on your VPS so you can connect to it using any FTP client.

Installing

To have FTP access to your server you must first install the FTP software. Log in to your VPS and type in 

su

This is the command to switch user into the root user and you will be prompted for a password. Once you have entered the password check you are root by looking at the command line, it should look like:

[root@hostname username]#

Now install the FTP server with the command:

yum install vsftpd

Enter y when prompted and you should see Complete! once the service has successfully been installed. If you wish to configure the FTP service you can edit the file /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf however the default settings will allow you to connect using the user account you have created.

Now that the server is installed you must run the service, to do this enter the command:

service vsftpd start

If successful you will see:

Starting vsftpd for vsftpd:              [  OK  ]

The FTP service is now running and you are able to connect to it. 

su username

Will take you out of root and into your user account again.

Connecting to FTP server

To connect to your FTP server you must install FTP client software on the computer you trying to access the server from. You can use any FTP client you wish however I will be using FireFTP, a Firefox addon as my client. You can download the addon from fireftp.net. After installed, restart Firefox and open FireFTP by selecting the Firefox button at the top left, Web Developer, FireFTP. A new tab should open similar to this:

Select create an account in the top left and a box should pop up. Enter the IP address of the server next to host and use the user account and password you created for the Login and Password boxes. Once completed it should look similar to:

Click OK and in the top left you should now have the option to connect to the account you just created. Press connect and as long as the details you entered were correct you should connect to the FTP server as shown below:

The left side is your computer and the right is the server. To transfer a file to the server select the file in the left side and choose a destination on the right side. Select the arrow pointing to the right while your file you wish to transfer is selected and the file will be transferred to the server.

Congratulations, you have successfully set up FTP!

Note: By default you will not be able to access the server as root. This can however be changed by editing the file /etc/vsftpd/user_list and removing root from the list. After doing this and restarting the service (service  vsftpd restart) you should be able to log in as root.

If you have any questions on comments feel free to ask them!

Thanks

How to Create your FREE VPS

Create you Free VPS

Have you ever wanted to create your own VoIP server? Perhaps have some available storage in the cloud you can access from anywhere in the world? Maybe you wish to have your own website. Well then setting up a VPS would be perfect for you and what better way to do this with a free VPS?

While there are many free VPS options out there I have gone with host1free. They offer:

• 128mb of RAM
• 348mb of VSwap
• 10gb of disk space
• Unlimited bandwidth

To sign up for their service go to http://members.host1free.com/vps?ac=h1f_register_vps and fill out the details. I suggest using CentOS 6 as this is the version I am using in this post. It can take up to a week for the server to be fully set up for you however it only took 24 hours for me to get an email stating my server was ready to go. Be sure to use a valid email address as details about how to log are sent here.

Initial Setup

Once you have been sent your log in details and logged in your page should look similar to this:

Congratulations, your server is running and you have access to the control panel!

The control panel gives you an overview of what is happening on your server. If you ever have any issues and break the server, pressing the Reinstall button will allow you to start from scratch, as well as choose other OS's you may wish to try.

The first step to using your server is to set the root and console passwords. This is simply done by clicking the Root Password tab in the Controls section and setting a new password. While you are doing this feel free to click through the other tabs to see what controls are available to you, you might find something useful in there I overlook in this blog.

Connecting to the Server

Now that the server is up and running and you have set the root password you probably wish to connect to it so you can start using the server. To do this you need software that allows you to connect to the server via SSH. I am using Putty which you can download from here. Putty is a powerful SSH and Telnet client which you will spend a lot of your time using. It is a stand alone application so there is no need to install anything and it can be run from portable devices such as flash drives.

Opening Putty will show this screen:

To connect to the server leave everything at their default setting and enter the IP address of the server in the Host Name box. To find the IP address of your server go to the control panel and on the main page the IP address is the second row from the top. Then click Open and a console screen should appear.

The console screen will ask which user to log in as, type in root. You will then be prompted to enter the password which will be the password that you set up when you changed the root password. After you enter this in you will have successfully logged into the server. You now have full access to your server to do as you wish. 

What now?

Updating

Before you go off and start running your website or installing your FTP server I suggest you update the installed software to the latest version. To do this enter.

yum update

yum allows you to install, update and remove software on your server. After typing this command the server will check for updates. You will be prompted a few times if you wish to continue. When prompted type y and press enter to accept the changes. Let the server update and you will be notified when it is complete.

User Accounts

My final suggestion before you start using the server to install software is to set up a user account. Currently you are logged in as root which has complete access to everything. While this may sound good it can easily kill your server if you enter a command incorrectly.

Adding a new user is easy. Enter the command below, replacing <username> with your name.

useradd <username>

You have now created the user however you need to assign a password. Enter the command below, replacing <username> with the name you used above.

passwd <username>

If the password was correctly changed you should see

passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.

output to the console. 

Now you can open a new console window and log in as the user you just created. You can create as many users as you wish for any people who will be using the server.

You have now successfully signed up, created and updated your server and it is ready to use. If you have any questions or comments feel free to add a comment.

Hope this helped!