N00b alert! Shell access.

[Down2TheC]

New account, new server. They sent me starter passwords for Plx and virtuaozzo "admin" and "root". Neither seem to work on the shell login that Virt has as an ActiveX Web based thing.

I spent many yrs with Unix boxes... when they said root access, I envisioned doing a telnet into the box and firing up vi. Was I wrong? And which passwd was the one for ssh? Might be a lag in passwd changes that was getting me last night.

Guess I'll start setting up the new fangled way. Plex and FTP.

[Connie]

when they said root access, I envisioned doing a telnet into the box and firing up vi. Was I wrong? And which passwd was the one for ssh? Might be a lag in passwd changes that was getting me last night.

I'm not on VPS but I don't think you can use telnet. For shared hosting I use the same username and password as I do for the for SSH.

[Frank Broughton]

No telnet. But yes SSH. User root pw is the one they sent you in email for plesk. cPanel/whm is what I use as I feel it is better with more features.

[Down2TheC]

Thanks, I'll give it another go.

Ahah! Here's one problem. Never used ssh before and was assuming it was just the successor to ksh. Didn't know it was a connection protocol. After getting Putty and checking out the features, I'll be fine (once I'm away from my work's firewall). Get me to a prompt and I'll be happy.

[Frank Broughton]

Get the application WinSCP and use it - you will like it: http://winscp.net/eng/index.php


Set it up as per Vinnie's tutorial here: TUTORIAL: Configuring WinSCP for JagPC servers.

[Gwaihir]

I spent many yrs with Unix boxes... when they said root access, I envisioned doing a telnet into the box and firing up vi. Was I wrong?

Nope, you can do that just fine, except that telnet has been superseded by the secured version, ssh.

[jason]

You theoretically could run telnet on your VPS, but that would be a very very very very bad thing to do. Best bet is to use SSH, disable connections to port 23 (telnet), and disable root logins from SSH (use a standard user account to connect and then use su or sudo to get elevated permissions as needed). Some people even change the SSH port to a non-standard port to even further obfusicate things.

There is a very good sticky thread at the top of the VPS forum that explains how to do all of this and more to secure your server.

--Jason