ChicagoVPS setup

 ChicagoVPS.net’s cheap VPS offers attract many customers. However, unlike some other VPS providers, setting up a VPS is not that easy because you get a really minimum (naked) system after ordering a package from chicagoVPS, which includes nothing but some linux commands.  We will give you a step by step guide on how to set up/configure the VPS, install commonly used software on the VPS after you purchase. I assume you have installed VPS with CentOS 6.

An annoying thing is by default, only port 22 (which is used for ssh connection) is opened. The other ports are blocked by firewall. So if you telnet your ip from another machine, e.g., telnet 123.123.123.123 80, you will get the error message: telnet: connect to address123.123.123.123: No route to host.  This message is very confusing as it leads you to think about the route command or something related to the route. Actually it is nothing about route table at all because you can connect to your VPS using an ssh terminal such as putty.  This problem is caused by the firewall rules. So the first thing after  you login your VPS is shutting down the firewall by issuing the command: service iptables stop. Of course you can modify the iptables to open certain ports, but for simplicity, we just stop the firewall for now so that the software installed later can work normally.

To managing a variety of websites/domains on VPS, I recommend to use a control panel instead of editing the configuration files manually. I used kloxo-mr but found it is not as good as I thought(you can refer my post to see why I say so.) I decide to switch to another control panel. After searching google for the VPS management software and filtering out the obvious ads, a control panel called webmin attracts my attention as it gets a lot of good words on the Internet. However, it turns out to be a piece of junk (or assembly of junks) after I finally install it and see its GUI. I wonder why the internet are full of bullshit. But for you who have not installed this software and seen its appearance, I would like to introduce to you how to quickly install webmin and see the facts.

The webmin official site lists the rpm and tar packages for you to install. But CentOS users are customed to using yum. Then you should follow these instructions to install webmin:

1. create a file /etc/yum.repos.d/webmin.repo with the following content:

[Webmin]
name=Webmin Distribution Neutral
#baseurl=http://download.webmin.com/download/yum
mirrorlist=http://download.webmin.com/download/yum/mirrorlist
enabled=1

2. install wget: yum install wget

3.  wget http://www.webmin.com/jcameron-key.asc

4. rpm --import jcameron-key.asc

5. yum install webmin

At this time, webmin is installed on your system. You can type http://yourvpsip:10000 in a browser to see the login page of webmin.  But do not login for now because your password will be leaked. You should use https instead of http to enhance security. However if you type: https://yourvpsip:10000, you will see the error message like: “SSL received a record that exceeded the maximum permissible length”. You should install ssl-related packages and enable ssl for webmin as follows:

yum -y install perl perl-Net-SSLeay openssl perl-IO-Tty  openssl-devel perl-Crypt-SSLeay

Some of these packages may be not necessary but I do not know which packages are necessary so install all of them for now.   I got these package names from http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/webmin-ssl-received-a-record-that-exceeded-the-maximum-permissible-length-4175468188/ and http://www.webmin.com/rpm.html but none of the websites mentions the following key step:

modify /etc/webmin/miniserv.conf by changing ssl=0 to ssl=1

Then restart webmin service:

/etc/init.d/webmin restart

Now you should be able to connect your VPS via https. After login with the root account(the same as ssh login account), you will see, as I said, the piece of junk. What we need are some functionalities as in CPanel to accomplish the tasks like adding a new website. Unfortunately, I cannot find an easy way to do these tasks in webmin.

After researching for a while, it is said you should install a webmin add-on called virtualmin to manage your websites. However after installing virtualmin, the GUI is also a mess. You cannot even find a file manager to upload your website files.

Oh shit! Virtualmin has a pro version that you must pay to use. No wonder there are so many good words on the Internet. Even worse than kloxo-mr. I will remove webmin from my system. Waste a lot of time, fuck!