Spring Server VPS Basics for Ubuntu/Debian

This article provides basic information on setting up your new Spring Server℠ VPS instance.

Give your VPS a Name

When creating a new Spring Server VPS instance, you will need to enter a valid DNS hostname. This is used to give the instance a name as well as define certain settings, such as the instance's initial reverse DNS resolution. There are three general options:

Using Custom DNS

As of this writing, a Custom DNS zone matching a Spring Server instance is free of charge for the duration of the Spring Server subscription. For example, if you have a Custom DNS for domain.com and create a Spring Server instance for ss.domain.com, the Custom DNS zone for domain.com will be free. This applies to both renewals as well as new Custom DNS/Spring Server instance purchases, and is the recommended option for customers interested in both a new domain and a server on which to build it.

You can add Custom DNS on the Add Zone Services Wizard here, then add the Spring Server VPS here. Once you check out, the Spring Server instance should be up and running within fifteen minutes, and the Custom DNS zone should begin resolving within an hour. Be certain to configure your Custom DNS zone to match your new Spring Server instance's IP address, which is displayed on the main information page for the service.

Using a Dynamic DNS hostname

If you wish, you can also use a Dynamic DNS Free or Pro hostname for your Spring Server VPS. Simply visit the Add Dynamic DNS page, create the hostname, create your Spring Server VPS instance, and update the hostname to use the instance's IP address.

Using third-party DNS

You may use third-party DNS with your Spring Server instance by simply creating a host record that matches the service's name and IP address. The instance's reverse DNS can be modified through its configuration page.

Installing Programs

You can use apt-cache and apt-get to search for and install application. To search for programs in the apt installer system, enter:

apt-cache search ipv6

Helpful Tools

To make life easier, we highly recommend installing the following programs with this command:

apt-get install build-essential cron dnsutils gcc gdb lynx make man manpages-dev nano ndisc6 screen tcpdump tcpflow telnet wget

Setup A Web Server

One of the first applications installed on most Spring Server instances is a webserver. To help you get set up quickly, here are a few of our favorite software packages:

PHP Apache Flavored VPS

To install a webserver with PHP, follow these steps:

mytest:~# apt-get install apache2 php5

Create a file at /var/www/index.php with <? echo "Hello World"; ?>, and point your browser to http://[hostname]/ to see "Hello World". If you do not see "Hello World" and your browser tries to save/open the .php file, run the following two lines of code:

mytest:~# a2enmod php5
mytest:~# /etc/init.d/apache2 force-reload

Again, point your browser to http://[hostname]/ and you should now see "Hello World".

Ruby on Rails Apache Flavored VPS

To install a webserver with Ruby on Rails, follow these steps:

apt-get install ruby libzlib-ruby rdoc irb rubygems rails apache libapache-mod-fastcgi libfcgi-ruby1.8
cd /var/www
mkdir rails
cd rails
rails yourapp

Visit http://[hostname]/rails/yourapp/public/ and you will see you are up and running.

mod_perl Apache Flavored VPS

You can setup mod_perl with HTML::Mason, the sample advanced template system that Amazon (and DynDNS.com) uses.

mytest:~# apt-get install libapache2-mod-perl2 apache2-mpm-event libhtml-mason-perl

Modify your httpd.conf to include the following:

PerlModule HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler
<Location />
SetHandler perl-script
PerlHandler HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler
</Location>

Add in a file that has <% 2+2 %> and point your browser to http://[hostname]/ to see 4.

See HTML::Mason for more information.

Monitor Your System with Munin

To help track your system's resources, we recommend using Munin. Munin is an easy to use tool to see your system's performance and system usage in a handy web interface. To get started, use apt-get to install the munin packages and its dependancies.

mytest:~# apt-get install munin munin-node

After it installs, you should see: Starting Munin-Node: done.. Then you need a web server to display the graphs.

mytest:~# apt-get install apache2

Create /etc/apache2/sites-available/monitoring and make it look like this changing ServerAdmin and ServerName:

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
ServerName
monitoring.example.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/munin
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
</Directory>
LogLevel notice
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log
ServerSignature On
</VirtualHost>

Finally:

a2ensite monitoring
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Now that Munin is installed, visit your VPS at http://[hostname]/munin/ and you should see some graphing.

Much of this content was taken from Debian/Ubuntu Tips & Tricks.

Oops!

Accidentally entered rm -rf * as root? Locked yourself out of SSH with a mistaken iptables entry? If you get to a point of no return, you can always rebuild your VPS as many times as you want. Request a rebuild and in 10 minutes, you will have a new server ready to go.

If you're not quite over the edge, but you do need to regain access to your machine, you can learn about using the Serial Console to log into your machine here.