A complete guide to Magento Optimization on a cPanel VPS. The step by step instructions to do this yourself are below.

We also offer this service for $20 to our VPS clients, you can order here: https://www.vpsblocks.com.au/clients/cart.php?a=add&pid=68&carttpl=cart

Also note that steps 1-3 can speed up any cPanel hosted CMS (Joomla, Wordpress, Prestashop etc.), while the rest of the steps are specific to Magento.

1. Install Zend OPCache - Note this is unnecessary on recently provisioned servers as we now have this as part of the cPanel template
It's important to run one of the best caching modules available, and OPCache (formally APC) is one of the best. The instructions to do this are located in a separate knowledgebase article, click here. 

2. Install EnginTron
EnginTron provides some minor speed increases. The instructions to do this are located in a separate knowledgebase article, click here. 

3. MySQL Tweaks

• SSH to your VPS
• Type: nano /etc/my.cnf
• Add any of the following lines that are missing or adjust their values:

[mysqld]
innodb_file_per_table=1
open_files_limit=10240
max_allowed_packet=256M
key_buffer_size = 512M
sort_buffer_size = 4m
read_buffer_size = 4m
read_rnd_buffer_size = 2m
myisam_sort_buffer_size = 64m
tmp_table_size = 128m
query_cache_size =0
query_cache_type = 0
thread_cache_size = 8
max_connections = 400
wait_timeout = 300

• To save press CTRL O
• To exit press CTRL X
• Type: service mysql restart 

4. Turned GZIP on in your .htaccess

• SSH to your VPS
• Go to your home directory e.g. cd /home/username/www
• Type: nano .htaccess
• This should open a file which is already full of information. You need to locate the lines below and make that section match what is below (UNCOMMENT lines by removing the # infront of them)

############################################
## enable resulting html compression

php_flag zlib.output_compression on 
Now the section for “mod_deflate.c” from your .htaccess file and uncomment the settings as follows:

Code: 

<IfModule mod_deflate.c>

############################################
## enable apache served files compression
## http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html#gzip

# Insert filter on all content
SetOutputFilter DEFLATE
# Insert filter on selected content types only
#AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml text/css text/javascript

# Netscape 4.x has some problems...
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html

# Netscape 4.06-4.08 have some more problems
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip

# MSIE masquerades as Netscape, but it is fine
BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html

# Don't compress images
SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:gif|jpe?g|png)$ no-gzip dont-vary

# Make sure proxies don't deliver the wrong content
Header append Vary User-Agent env=!dont-vary  

</IfModule>

• Once you are finished editing to save press: CTRL O
• To quit press: CTRL X

5. Turned on Cache Management in Magento

• Login to Magento Admin
• Go to System -> Cache Management
• Click 'Select All'
• Then next to the word 'Actions' on the drop down box choose 'Enable'
• Click 'Submit'

6. Turned on External Full Page Caching

• Login to Magento Admin
• Go to System -> Configuration
• Scroll down on the left hand side click on Advanced -> System
• Expand the section "External Full Page Cache Settings"
• Select "Yes" to enable external cache
• Leave the cookie lifetime at 3600 seconds
• Set the External Cache Control to 'Zend Full Page Cache'
• Click 'Save Config' on the top right of the screen

Follow this advice to move your website to VPSBlocks without downtime:

• Firstly, sign up with us. Make sure you do NOT cancel your old hosting provider, and do not tell them you will be cancelling just yet.
• Setup the new VPS hosting environment, if you use cPanel see: http://www.vpsblocks.com.au/support/Knowledgebase/Article/View/46/0/getting-started-with-cpanel-and-whm
• Copy across all your files to the new VPS
• Backup and copy across your database to the new VPS
• Setup your VPS webserver (if using cPanel this can be done easily see http://www.vpsblocks.com.au/support/Knowledgebase/Article/View/3/0/migrating-a-cpanel-website-to-a-new-cpanel-server)
• Setup your mail server and mailboxes (if using cPanel this is very easy, if you are not using cPanel you can use Webmin or install Mail Enable on a Windows VPS - see http://www.vpsblocks.com.au/support/Knowledgebase/Article/View/56/0/installing-mailenable-mail-server-on-windows)
• Test your site. The best way to do this is to temporarily modify your hosts file to make your own computer believe that your site is hosted on your new VPS. See: http://www.vpsblocks.com.au/support/Knowledgebase/Article/View/57/0/how-to-edit-my-hosts-file
• If your site is database driven you have two options to ensure you don't lose data (you may want to do one last backup of the database from the old host and restore it on your VPSBlocks VPS to ensure data is completely up to date):
  • Modify your database connection in your old hosting and point it to the IP Address of your new VPS (recommended)
  • Add a temporary redirect to your site IP address when people visit your old site, so when users access your site on the old server they are automatically transferred to the new server
• Now that your site is working on both servers and using the database on the new server it's time to change your DNS
• If you are using our DNS servers:
  • Login to your domain registrar and set the name servers associated with your domain to our name servers (ns1.controlmyvps.com.au and ns2.controlmyvps.com.au)
  • Check the 'Manage DNS' section in 'My Account' on our website and ensure all necessary DNS records have been created (if you have subdomains other than www.yourdomain.com.au and mail.yourdomain.com.au etc.)
• If you are using your own name servers in cPanel:
  • Login to your domain registrar and set the name servers associated with your domain to your name servers (ns1.controlmyvps.com.au and ns2.controlmyvps.com.au)
  • Check in cPanel and ensure you have created all necessary DNS records (e.g. www.yourdomain.com.au, mail.yourdomain.com.au, webmail.yourdomain.com.au, subdomain.yourdomain.com.au)
• Now once the DNS change has been made you will need to wait. It usually takes about 48 hours for DNS changes to propogate completely. Once this time has passed and you have checked that your domain does resolve to the new VPS IP address you are ready to cancel with your old host (ensure when testing where your domain resolves that you have removed any changes to the hosts file).

Congraulations! You've now completed a downtime free migration with no impact on your customers. Better still you can expect a 99.99% uptime on your VPS with VPSBlocks!!

Portal Login Explained

If you login to the portal website using your email address and account level password you can administer all your VPSs, change account details, place new orders etc.

If you login to the portal website using your VPS username and VPS password you will only have access to manage a single VPS, no mention of VPSBlocks is made, and no ability to modify your account or order services.

How to change your operating system

If you wish to change your operating system to another one under the same category (e.g. Linux or Windows), you can do so by following the below instructions:

1. Login to the https://portal.controlmyvps.com.au using your email address and password

2. Click on 'Virtual Machines' on the left hand side.

3. Click on 'Manage' next to the server in question.

4. Click on the 'Modify' tab and then choose Upgrade/downgrade options

3. Select your new operating system and 'Click to Continue' and follow the prompts. 

4. Once this is done you will need to reprovision your VPS. This will permanently delete your entire current VPS (including SATA storage if you have it) and issue you a new VPS on the new operating system.

6. Click on the 'Overview' tab

8. Click on 'Reinstall VPS Image' in the Actions window.

This will generally take about 30 minutes to reprovision your VPS.

To install Imagick first make sure you have ImageMagick installed on the server (to install ImageMagick click on the link) on a cPanel server:

• Login to your WHM installation (https://xx.xx.xx.xx:8027/)
• Go to WHM -> Software -> Module Installers -> PHP Pecl (manage)
• In the box below 'Install a PHP Pecl' enter: imagick
• Click the 'Install Now' button
• Imagick will now be automatically installed by WHM on your cPanel server.

Please note: If you are advised you are running an open DNS resolver you must take action as your VPS is most likely being used in attacks against other networks. Please read below for an explanation and instructions on resolving the problem.

An "open DNS resolver" is a DNS server that's willing to resolve recursive DNS lookups for anyone on the internet. It's much like an open SMTP relay, in that the simple lack of authentication allows malicious 3rd parties to propagate their payloads using your unsecured equipment. With open SMTP relays, the problem is that they forward spam. With open DNS resolvers, the problem is that they allow a denial of service attack known as a DNS Amplification Attack.

The way this attack works is pretty simple - because your server will resolve recursive DNS queries from anyone, an attacker can cause it to participate in a DDoS by sending your server a recursive DNS query that will return a large amount of data, much larger than the original DNS request packet. By spoofing (faking) their IP address, they'll direct this extra traffic to their victim's computers instead of their own, and of course, they'll make as many requests as fast as they can to your server, and any other open DNS resolvers they can find. In this manner, someone with a relatively small pipe can "amplify" a denial of service attack by using all the bandwidth on their pipe to direct a much larger volume of traffic at their victims.

ArsTechnica did a decent article on the recent DNS Amplification DDoS attack against Spamhaus, and is worth a quick read to get the basics (and a good visual of the amplification).

The simplest way to protect your system from being abused like this is to limit the addresses your server will perform recursive lookups for to your local subnets. (The specifics of which depend on which DNS server you're using, of course).

BIND

For example, if I were using BIND 9, and wanted to simply prevent DNS recursion from outside addresses, I would use the following code in my config:

options {
    directory "/var/named/master";
    allow-recursion { 127.0.0.1; 10.0.0.0/8; 192.168.0.0/16; 172.16.0.0/12; };

That line of code tells my BIND server to only process recursive DNS requests for the local loopback address (which I guess I could/should set to the local loopback block, the whole /8) and the 3 Private IPv4 address spaces.

Windows Server 2012

OPTION 1

Block external DNS requests with a firewall, such as the built in Windows firewall (use this method if you are running a domain controller and are NOT using the DNS server as an actual name server for public domains)

To my surprise, Windows DNS does not allow you to restrict the addresses to which recursive DNS requests are honored, so this actually the recommended method by Microsoft.

• Select the DNS (TCP Incoming) rule, go to the Remote IP address section and add:
  • 127.0.0.1
  • Any public IP addresses assigned to your VPS e.g. 203.143.X.X
  • Any internal IP addresses assigned to your VPS (if you are using an internal network) e.g. 10.1.X.X
• Now go to the DNS (UDP Incoming) rule and do the same.

OPTION 2

Disable Recursion (use this method if your DNS server is used as a name server for a public domain)

Disabling recursion is good when your DNS server is a public facing DNS server, only providing DNS information for zones it actually hosts (is authoritative for). If your system is a Domain Controller then you must make sure you have another DNS server specified in the network settings other than 127.0.0.1 or it will not be able to resolve any other domains, or use option 1 above. If your server is NOT a domain controller then this is the easiest option as it prevents your DNS server from providing any information other than about the zones it hosts.

• 
  1. Open DNS Manager.
  2. In the console tree, right-click the applicable DNS server, then click Properties.
  3. Click the Advanced tab.
  4. In Server options, select the Disable recursion check box, and then click OK.
     • Since we have a multi-forest environment, and use conditional forwarders for that to work, I'm not going to check that box. Might be something for you to consider as well.

If you want to make your local computer believe that your website is hosted on your new VPS before you modify the actual DNS, this can easily be done by modifying your hosts file.

Windows

• Click the 'Start' button in Windows on your LOCAL computer
• Type in: notepad
• Right click on the link to notepad that appears, and choose 'Run as Administrator'
• When notepad opens go to File -> Open
• Browse to c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc
• Open the file 'hosts' in notepad
• Add a lines to the bottom:

x.x.x.x www.yourdomain.com
x.x.x.x yourdomain.com

• Where x.x.x.x is your VPSBlocks VPS IP address and yourdomain.com is the domain you use to access your website.
• Save the file.
• Close all instances of your browser.
• Reopen your browser and browse to www.yourdomain.com and what you see will be served from your new VPS.

Once you have completed any testing always modify your hosts file again and remove the lines you added.

MAC

You need to edit the file at /private/etc/hosts

If you aren't sure how to do this follow these instructions:

1. Open Terminal

2. Type: sudo nano /private/etc/hosts

3. Enter your administrator password when prompted

4. Edit the file in the same format as for Windows above e.g.
x.x.x.x domain.com
x.x.x.x www.domain.com

5. Press Ctrl-o to save the file

6. Press Enter to confirm saving the file

7. Close all instances of your browser.

8. Reopen your browser and browse to www.yourdomain.com and what you see will be served from your new VPS.

Once you have completed any testing always modify your hosts file again and remove the lines you added.

Portal Login Explained

If you login to the portal website using your email address and account level password you can administer all your VPSs, change account details, place new orders etc.

If you login to the portal website using your VPS username and VPS password you will only have access to manage a single VPS, no mention of VPSBlocks is made, and no ability to modify your account or order services.

How to upgrade or downgrade your memory / RAM

If you have an existing VPS and would like to upgrade resources, you can do so by following these instructions:

1. Login to the https://portal.controlmyvps.com.au using your email address and password

2. Click on 'Virtual Machines'

3. Click on 'Manage' next to the machine you wish to modify.

4. Click on the 'Modify' tab

5. Click on 'Upgrade/Downgrade Options'

6. Here you can add extra RAM, CPU Cores, Bandwidth and Disk Space. You can also select a different operating system, however, for the new operating system to take affect you must reprovision your VPS (see: https://www.vpsblocks.com.au/support/Knowledgebase/Article/View/85/0/how-to-reprovision--reinstall--setup-your-vps-again )

7. On the following screen you can also select to schedule the upgrade (Choose 'Now' to have it occur immediately).

Note that when you upgrade CPU, RAM or Disk Space upon receiving payment your server will automatically be shutdown, the resources modified and restarted at the time you scheduled.

Accessing SSH from Windows

To access your machine using SSH (all Linux variants) we recommend downloading the program 'Putty'.

This is a very easy to use SSH client. Grab putty at: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html

For Windows users just download 'putty.exe' on Intel x86.

The download is not a setup file, it is the actual program, so put it wherever you like (desktop is handy).

• Run 'Putty'
• Enter the Host Name: the IP address provided in the setup email
• Ensure the connection type is 'SSH'
• Enter a name for your connection
• Click 'Save'
• Click 'Open'
• You will now be prompted to login
• Enter the username: root
• Password: the password you supplied

If you are unsure of your password or IP Address please refer to the setup email sent to you immediately after your new VPS was provisioned.

Accessing SSH From Terminal on MAC (or desktop Linux variants)

Open Terminal

Type: ssh root@203.143.x.x
(where 203.143.x.x is the IP address of your VPS)

You will be prompted for your root password. Enter it and you will be logged successfully into your VPS via SSH.

Portal Login Explained

If you login to the portal website using your email address and account level password you can administer all your VPSs, change account details, place new orders etc.

If you login to the portal website using your VPS username and VPS password you will only have access to manage a single VPS, no mention of VPSBlocks is made, and no ability to modify your account or order services.

How to upgrade your processor / CPU cores

If you have an existing VPS and would like to upgrade resources, you can do so by following these instructions:

1. Login to the https://portal.controlmyvps.com.au using your email address and password

2. Click on 'Virtual Machines'

3. Click on 'Manage' next to the machine you wish to modify.

4. Click on the 'Modify' tab

5. Click on 'Upgrade/Downgrade Options'

5. Here you can add extra RAM, CPU Cores, Bandwidth and Disk Space. You can also select a different operating system, however, for the new operating system to take affect you must reprovision your VPS (see: https://www.vpsblocks.com.au/support/Knowledgebase/Article/View/85/0/how-to-reprovision--reinstall--setup-your-vps-again )

cPanel is great as a complete hosting package. But if you don't need features like a web based file manager, VestaCP is a free control panel that offers speeds far surpassing that provided by cPanel. It's fantastic for hosting CMS based websites such as Magento, Joomla, Wordpress, Drupal etc.

Check out our sample Magento website running on a basic 1 CPU Core, 512MB Ram Linux Ubuntu 14 server at http://203.143.83.193/

Note: If you are not confident in following these instructions we offer this installation as an optional service to our customers during the ordering process. We recommend you choose Ubuntu 14 as your operating system, and during the order process will be asked if you would like the Vesta Initial Setup, the cost is only $20.

INSTALLING VESTA CONTROL PANEL

Start with a VPS, for Vesta we recommend Ubuntu 16 or Ubuntu 14

SSH into your new VPS

Type: curl -O http://vestacp.com/pub/vst-install.sh

Type: bash vst-install.sh

Important note: If asked for a hostname you must put the name you gave your server e.g. vps.yourdomain.com. If you do not put the same name services will not be able to resolve the hostname to your local VPS and it will cause issues with NGinx and some other services.

To start the installation press: y

Enter your email address

The installation will complete and at the end display your login credentials

Now run: update-rc.d mysql disable
*Note: This is an Ubuntu 14 oddity, as otherwise two mysql processes will be started upon startup. 

Disable AppArmor for Bind9 (named) so DNS serving will function properly

AppArmor by default prevents Bind9 from reading it's own database files under /home/<user>/ location. So you need to run these commands:

ln -s /etc/apparmor.d/usr.sbin.named /etc/apparmor.d/disable/

apparmor_parser -R /etc/apparmor.d/usr.sbin.named

service bind9 restart

Visit https://YOURIP:8083 in your browser

Login using the credentials supplied to you

AUTO UPDATES

We recommend turning on autoupdate

On the top bar, click on 'Updates' and click on [ enable autoupdate ]

USERS

By default the 'Admin' user exists. You can create another user in the 'USER' section. Ensure any passwords you enter are very secure, particularly if you enable SSH access for any users you create. For each user you create, as well as the admin user you can also set default name servers. If you are using your own name servers enter them by editing the user, if you are using our provided name servers, enter them (ns1.controlmyvps.com.au / ns2.controlmyvps.com.au)

CREATING A WEBSITE

Click on 'WEB'

Click on 'edit' next to the default domain

Here you should set the default settings for the webserver. For best performance we recommend you turn on Nginx Support and set the Nginx Template to default then click 'Save'

Note: Leave the Apache Template as default. If you want to set it to php-fcgi for extra performance you must have more than 1G of RAM, but you need to modify a file manually in SSH.

Edit /etc/apache2/mods-available/fcgid.conf (Ubuntu) (/etc/httpd/conf.d/fcgid.conf on CentOS):


<IfModule mod_fcgid.c>
  AddHandler    fcgid-script .fcgi
  FcgidConnectTimeout 20
  FcgidMinProcessesPerClass 0
  FcgidMaxProcessesPerClass 10
  FcgidMaxProcesses 50
  FcgidIdleTimeout 60
  FcgidProcessLifeTime 120
  FcgidIdleScanInterval 30


  # Change the rate at which new FastCGI processes are spawned under load. Higher=faster
  FcgidSpawnScoreUpLimit 10

  # Higher number = spawning more FastCGI processes decreases the spawn rate (controls runaway
  FcgidSpawnScore 2

  # Higher number = terminating FastCGI processes decreases the spawn rate (controls runaway)
  FcgidTerminationScore 2

  # Increase the FastCGI max request length for large file uploads (needed for some sites)
  FcgidMaxRequestLen 1073741824

  FcgidMaxRequestsPerProcess 100000
  FcgidIOTimeout 1800
</IfModule>



You cannot edit the name for this website. This is the website that will always appear when you visit the IP address directly or any domains listed in the 'Aliases' section.

If you are hosting a single or main website you can use the default website, and enter the domain names in aliases. Note by doing this that you will have to add MAIL manually for the domain.

Alternatively, click on 'WEB' again and this time choose 'Add Web Domain' and add your new website.

ENABLING SELF-SIGNED SSL ON YOUR WEBSITE

To enable self-signed SSL on your default website so things like webmail are accessed via SSL you need to do the following.

Click on 'WEB'

Click on 'edit' next to the default domain

Check the box next to 'SSL Support'

Click on 'Generate CSR' (this opens in a new browser window/tab)

Fill out the details, and change the Domain to a domain name that resolves to the server

Then copy and and paste each of the details into the editing domain section. Note that they are not in the same order, so ensure you copy the certificate and key correctly. THe SSL Certificate Authority would be blank.

Click 'Save'

You will get warnings due to this being a self-signed certificate, but logging in via webmail will be secured.

DNS RECORDS

When you add a website the DNS records are automatically created for it. However, it's up to you whether you want to create your own DNS servers (ns1.yourdomain.com/ns2.yourdomain.com) and use Vesta to manage your DNS records, or use our provided DNS servers (ns1.controlmyvps.com.au/ns2.controlmyvps.com.au) and enter the DNS records yourself in our control panel.

If you setup your own DNS servers, you can edit/add any DNS records in the DNS section. Note that if you do not setup your own DNS servers then anything you do in this section will not be public or have any impact in the rest of the internet - e.g. you should make changes you need in our provided control panel.

MAIL

To setup mail for your domain you will need to go the MAIL section. Here you can add/edit domains that you host mail for, and also add/remove mail accounts, open webmail and more.

If you've used the default website as your website, you will need to click on 'Add Mail Domain' and add your domain

Then click 'Add account' to add email accounts

WEBMAIL

Providing you have followed the instructions on enabling the self-signed SSL, Webmail can be accessed at any time at https://YOURIP/webmail/ or https://YOURDOMAIN/webmail/

If you have not then you can only access at http://YOURIP/webmail/ or http://YOURDOMAIN/webmail/

DATABASE

If you are installing a CMS such as Magento, Joomla, Wordpress, Prestashop etc. you will need a database.

First click on 'DB'

Then click on 'Add Database'

Here fill out the name of your database, note that the user you are currently logged in with will be prefixed to your MySQL database and MySQL username.

FTP

You can FTP into the server using SFP or SCP as your admin user.

When you login you will see four folders. Browse into the web folder, there you will see a folder for each site under your username. Under that the public_html folder is your web root folder.

Click 'Save'

INSTALLING MAGENTO

First download the full version of Magento, and extract it on your local machine.

Then FTP into the server and upload all the files into the public_html directory.

Then delete the file index.html

Then browse to http://YOURSITE/index.php

Follow the steps to install Magento

UPDATING YOUR SERVER (Debian and Ubuntu)

You're nearly complete, but now you need to ensure your server is running the latest version of everything that's just been installed. To do that first SSH into your server, then type:

apt-get update

apt-get upgrade

Answer yes to any questions posed. 

RUNNING A LOW MEMORY VPS

If you are running on a VPS and only have 512MB of RAM, you may need to perform some tweaks, we recommend that you:

• SSH into your VPS
• Type: nano /etc/mysql/my.cnf
• Modify the file to look like this:

[mysqld_safe]
socket=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock

[mysqld]
user=mysql
pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid
socket=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
port=3306
basedir=/usr
datadir=/var/lib/mysql
tmpdir=/tmp
lc-messages-dir=/usr/share/mysql
log_error=/var/log/mysql/error.log
max_connections=200
max_user_connections=30
wait_timeout=30
interactive_timeout=50
long_query_time=5
performance_schema             = off

# CACHES AND LIMITS #

tmp-table-size                 = 32M
max-heap-table-size            = 32M
query-cache-type               = 0
query-cache-size               = 0
max-connections                = 500
thread-cache-size              = 50
open-files-limit               = 65535
table-definition-cache         = 1024
table-open-cache               = 2048

# INNODB #
innodb-flush-method            = O_DIRECT
innodb-log-files-in-group      = 2
innodb-flush-log-at-trx-commit = 1
innodb-file-per-table          = 1
innodb-buffer-pool-size        = 128M

• Also, you should create a file based swap partition, see: https://www.vpsblocks.com.au/support/Knowledgebase/Article/View/131/0/creating-a-file-based-swap-partition

Portal Login Explained

If you login to the portal website using your email address and account level password you can administer all your VPSs, change account details, place new orders etc.

If you login to the portal website using your VPS username and VPS password you will only have access to manage a single VPS, no mention of VPSBlocks is made, and no ability to modify your account or order services.

How to upgrade your disk space

If you have an existing VPS and would like to upgrade resources, you can do so by following these instructions:

1. Login to the https://portal.controlmyvps.com.au using your email address and password

2. Click on 'Virtual Machines'

3. Click on 'Manage' next to the machine you wish to modify.

4. Click on the 'Modify' tab

5. Click on 'Upgrade/Downgrade Options'

5. Here you can add extra RAM, CPU Cores, Bandwidth and Disk Space. You can also select a different operating system, however, for the new operating system to take affect you must reprovision your VPS (see: https://www.vpsblocks.com.au/support/Knowledgebase/Article/View/85/0/how-to-reprovision--reinstall--setup-your-vps-again ). If modifying your main disk space you must increase the NVME/Flash Disk (not SATA as that is for backup purposes only).

6. On the following screen you can also select to schedule the upgrade (Choose 'Now' to have it occur immediately).

Portal Login Explained

If you login to the portal website using your email address and account level password you can administer all your VPSs, change account details, place new orders etc.

If you login to the portal website using your VPS username and VPS password you will only have access to manage a single VPS, no mention of VPSBlocks is made, and no ability to modify your account or order services.

How to reprovision your VPS

If you want to reprovision your VPS you can do so through the control panel. Please note that this will DELETE all existing data on your VPS including all NVME/Flash and SATA disk:

1. Login to the https://portal.controlmyvps.com.au using your email address and password

2. Click on 'Virtual Machines'

3. Click on 'Manage' next to the VPS in question

4. Click on the 'Reinstall VPS' option for that VPS

Reinstalling takes approximately 30 minutes and you may receive a new IP address. Please do not do any further actions in the portal until the reprovision is complete, doing so is likely to interrupt the reprovision requiring manual intervention by support staff.

To change the hostname on your actual VPS, you need to login via SSH (see: https://www.vpsblocks.com.au/support/Knowledgebase/Article/View/41/0/how-do-i-use-ssh)

Ubuntu

Type: /bin/hostname mynewhostname

Type: nano /etc/hosts

Edit the file and then save it.

* Note: If you do not have nano installed, you can install it by running:
apt-get install nano

CentOS

Type: hostname mynewhostname

Type: pico /etc/sysconfig/network

Edit the file by changing the hostname entry if there is one, and then save it.

* Note: If you do not have pico installed, you can install it by running:
yum install pico

CentOS 7

Type: hostname mynewhostname

Type: pico /etc/hostname

Edit the file by changing the hostname entry and then save it.

Type: pico /etc/hosts

Edit the file by changing the hostname entry for 127.0.0.1 and then save it.

Don't know how to reset your root password from the console? Here is the excellent full guidelines to do it yourself.

Firstly, you need to access your machine via the console. For instructions on doing this please see: http://www.vpsblocks.com.au/support/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/28/0/how-can-i-get-console-access-to-my-vps

Once you have console access, follow these instructions to boot into single user mode.

At GRUB screen on startup (this flashes quite quickly) do the following:

1. Press a key to stop it booting automatically

2. Select the top kernel and press 'a' to modify it (on some linux variants you press 'e' to edit)

3. Use the arrow keys to highlight the line that begins with the word 'kernel' and press ‘e’ to edit the parameters

4. At the end of the line, add the word: single (then press Enter)

5. Press ‘b’ to boot the system

You will be dropped directly into a bash shell as root and can change the password. You can also access your file system from there.

To change your password simply type: passwd root

If you have a large MySQL database you need to import, you cannot import it via PHPMyAdmin as there is a 2MB limit.

Upload your database file (WinSCP is a great program for transferring files to a Linux server, grab it at: http://winscp.net/eng/index.php)

Login to SSH (we recommend using Putty)

Find your uploaded database file and enter the following command (entering the correct database name and sql dump file name and location):

mysql -u root -p DATABASENAME < SQLDUMPFILE.sql

If you have uploaded a ZIP of your MySQL dump, you can unzip it first with the command:

unzip FILENAME.zip

To install ImageMagick on a cPanel server:

• SSH into your server (if you don't have an SSH client we recommend Putty)
• Install it by typing: yum install pcre-devel ImageMagick ImageMagick-devel 
• The installation will take a minute or two and may install other required packages.
• After the installation check your ImageMagick version by typing: /usr/bin/convert --version

If you would like to install IMagick as well please do the steps above then go here.

The default tmp folder size for lunix operating systems is often 512mb (including cPanel installations).

To check the size of the tmp partition use
df -h 

For some VPS's this is inadequate and a full tmp directory can cause all sorts of problems.

Resizing the tmp partition is easy.

Log in via console or SSH and do the following -

Edit the file
/scripts/securetmp

Find the line
my $tmpdsksize     = 512000;

To change this to 2GB, modify this to:
my $tmpdsksize     = 2097152;

Save the file, then run the following commands:

umount -l /tmp
umount -l /var/tmp
rm -fv /usr/tmpDSK
/scripts/securetmp

Type "y" to the yes/no questions asked.

To check the new size of the tmp partition use
df -h

To find your current disk space usage

Login to SSH

Type: df -h

If you are running out of disk space

To find where your space is going run the command: du -smh /*

This will tell you how much space each directory is taking. If you find for example /home is using a lot of space you can then do the same within the /home directory to drill down further e.g.: du -smbh /home/*

You can also use this command to find which directories are using the most space:

du -mxS / | sort -n | tail

Note that these commands will both take quite a while to return results, so you will need to be patient. If you are out of disk space and need to upgrade please see: https://www.vpsblocks.com.au/support/Knowledgebase/Article/View/88/0/how-to-upgrade-your-disk-space

To use Webmin to install various servers and modules:

• Go to http://YOURIPADDRESS:10000/
• Accept the certificate warning
• Login using the username: root
• Password: your VPS password
• Click on 'Un-used Modules' on the left hand panel
• Click on the module you wish to install (for example MySQL Database Server)
• Click on the 'click here' to have it download and installed using APT.

This will download and install the package you selected.

Once this is complete you will be able to configure the server:

• Click on 'Servers' on the left hand panel
• Click on 'MySQL Database Server'

Configure the server in any way you like. For help configuring individual servers using Webmin see: http://doxfer.webmin.com/Webmin/Modules

For those who use MySQL Workbench or other MySQL managers.

By default cPanel hosts are configured to not allow the access to MySQL server remotely because is explicitely insecure.

Rather than exposing port 3306 to the world that's better and much more secure to connect via SSH tunnel.

When you create your connection in MySQL Workbench choose the connection method: Standard TCP/IP over SSH 

Connection config (here is the MySQL Workbench example):

SSH Hostname: <your_vps_ip_address>:22

SSH Username: root (or other)

SSH Password: <correct_password_for_that_user>

If you do not use key based AUTH for SSH, bypass SSH Key File option.

MySQL Hostname: localhost (or 127.0.0.1)

MySQL Server port: 3306

Username: root

Password: <mysql_root_password> \\ attention, this password might differ from SSH root password

If you have added SATA space to your VPS, the new drive will not be mounted automatically. To add your new SATA hard disk login to SSH.

Note for this example we are going to assume you are going to mount the drive at /backup

Type: fdisk -l
Look for the unused disk that matches the size you ordered (most likely /dev/sdb) - we will assume it is /dev/sdb for this example
fdisk /dev/sdb
n (new partition)
p (primary partition)
1 (partition number)
Press enter and accept the default cylinder values to allocate the entire hard drive
w (write the partition table)

You've now created your partition and need to format the drive:

/sbin/mkfs.ext4 -L /backup /dev/sdb1

mkdir /backup

chmod 000 /backup

mount /dev/sdb1 /backup

We now need to get the unique identifier for the new drive. Type: blkid

Look for the identifier with the label "/backup" and copy the UUID number to your clipboard e.g. 99e236dc-ca2c-4ee3-95cc-cf3e49e792cc

Now you need to tell the operating system that the drive with that UUID should be mounted at boot to /backup. Type:
pico /etc/fstab

Replace the line below with your UUID and then copy and paste it into the bottom of the file:
UUID=99e236dc-ca2c-4ee3-95cc-cf3e49e792cc /backup ext4 defaults,nofail 0 0

To save press: Ctrl O
Ctrl X

You can now access your SATA drive at the mount point you specified.

Webmin is automatically installed on all Linux variants at https://YOURIPADDRESS:10000/

Go there, accept the certificate warning, then login using:

• Username: root
• Password: your VPS password

Once you are logged in you can modify your system using Webmin. If you have forgotten your root password or IP Address please refer to the setup email sent to you immediately after your VPS was provisioned.

If you wish to install and manage the webserver Apache follow these instructions: http://vpsblocks.com.au/support/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/26/0/how-to-install-http-apache-and-php

For help on using Webmin see the WIKI at: http://doxfer.webmin.com/Webmin

Portal Login Explained

If you login to the portal website using your email address and account level password you can administer all your VPSs, change account details, place new orders etc.

If you login to the portal website using your VPS username and VPS password you will only have access to manage a single VPS, no mention of VPSBlocks is made, and no ability to modify your account or order services.

How to create DNS records

1. Login to the https://portal.controlmyvps.com.au using your email address and password

2. Click on 'DNS Zones'

3. Click on 'Add Zone'

4. Enter your domain name in the format domain.com or domain.com.au (not www.domain.com) and click OK. The zone will be added immediately (it may take about 30 seconds).

5. Select the new domain from the drop down box (it's most likely selected for you now) and modify your DNS records - e.g. click 'Add Record' and create an A record for your domain to point to the IP of your VPS.

7. Don't forget to hit the 'Save DNS Zone' button once you have completed adding the zones.

8. If you didn't purchase the domain with us, login to your domain registrar and update the name servers associated with the domain to: ns1.controlmyvps.com.au and ns2.controlmyvps.com.au

Portal Login Explained

If you login to the portal website using your email address and password you can administer all your VPSs, change account details, place new orders etc.

If you login to the portal website using your VPS username and password you will only have access to manage a single VPS, no mention of VPSBlocks is made, and no ability to modify your account or order services.

How to start/stop your VPS

1. Go to https://portal.controlmyvps.com.au

2. Login using your email address and password

3. Click on 'Virtual Machines' on the left hand panel

4. Click on the 'Manage' button for the server in question

5. Look for the start/stop options in the Actions window. To restart you will need to stop your VPS then start it. Alternatively use the 'Reset' button which does a hard reset.

Time drift is a major issue with Linux systems running under virtualisation platforms. Using ntpdate to update your clock regularly and then hwclock to sync it is the general method. However, this can cause sudden time changes by a few seconds which causes services such as Dovecot to restart.

To fix this issue you can change the clock source in your grub.conf. With CentOS or Redhat based Linux Operating Systems:

• Edit the files at /etc/grub.conf & /boot/grub/grub.conf
• Change the kernel lines by adding clock=pit to the end of them:
• For example:
  kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-164.el5 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 clock=pit
• Restart your VPS

Generally CentOS will then keep time. However, if you have issues please see the article below (generally for Ubuntu) section 2 (install NTPD service) with configuration.

With Ubuntu

• See: https://www.vpsblocks.com.au/support/Knowledgebase/Article/View/304/0/ubuntu-time-drift

If you are not sure how to do this, we can do this for you at a scheduled time, just contact us at support@vpsblocks.com.au

Note that all new templates have these changes integrated into them.

Portal Login Explained

If you login to the portal website using your email address and password you can administer all your VPSs, change account details, place new orders etc.

If you login to the portal website using your VPS username and password you will only have access to manage a single VPS, no mention of VPSBlocks is made, and no ability to modify your account or order services.

How to get console access to your VPS

Note: For general use we recommend using Remote Desktop for Windows and SSH for Linux Variants. At this time console access is only available when using Internet Explorer.

1. Go to https://portal.controlmyvps.com.au

2. Login using your email address and password

3. Click on 'Virtual Machines'

4. Click on Manage next to the virtual machine in question

5. Click 'Console Access'

Portal Login Explained

If you login to the portal website using your email address and password you can administer all your VPSs, change account details, place new orders etc.

If you login to the portal website using your VPS username and password you will only have access to manage a single VPS, no mention of VPSBlocks is made, and no ability to modify your account or order services.

How to mount a DVD on your VPS

1. Go to https://portal.controlmyvps.com.au

2. Login using your email address and password

3. Click on 'VPS Management'

4. Select the VPS in question from the drop down list box

5. Look for the DVD actions window. Here you can easily browse the ISO files we have available and mount them on your VPS.

Note: Depending on the size of the DVD it may take some time for it to become available on your VPS.

Portal Login Explained

If you login to the portal website using your email address and password you can administer all your VPSs, change account details, place new orders etc.

If you login to the portal website using your VPS username and password you will only have access to manage a single VPS, no mention of VPSBlocks is made, and no ability to modify your account or order services.

DNS Entries Explained

When a VPS is setup we put an entry into our DNS servers for it using a basic template which points the following to your server:

• yourdomain.com
• www.yourdomain.com
• mail.yourdomain.com

You can edit these records.

Editing DNS Records

1. Go to https://portal.controlmyvps.com.au

2. Login using your email address and password

3. Click on 'DNS Management'

4. Select the VPS in question from the drop down list box

5. Make the appropriate changes and click 'Save'

This article explain how to change the your account level password. This password is the one you use in combination with your email address to login to the portal website or My Account area.

Portal Login Explained

If you login to the portal website using your email address and account level password you can administer all your VPSs, change account details, place new orders etc.

If you login to the portal website using your VPS username and VPS password you will only have access to manage a single VPS, no mention of VPSBlocks is made, and no ability to modify your account or order services.

To change your account level password

1. Go to https://portal.controlmyvps.com.au

2. Login using your email address and password

3. Click on 'Account'

4. Click on 'Change Password'

5. Enter your new password and click 'Save Changes'

If you would like your linux based VPS to respond to ping requests you will need to allow them in iptables. To do this create an iptables rule (never use iptables -F to flush your rules or you will most likely lock yourself out of your SSH session):

SSH into the server using putty (click here for help on using SSH)

Once logged in type:

iptables -I INPUT -p icmp -m icmp --icmp-type echo-request -j ACCEPT
iptables-save

You should now be able to ping your server.

To add additional services to your existing VPS:

Login at https://portal.controlmyvps.com.au using your email address and password

Click the 'Modify' tab

Select the name of the VPS you wish to modify from the drop down list box (it may take a few seconds to load after you do this)

Click on 'Upgrade/Downgrade Options'

Here you can choose to add additional services or increase resources to your existing VPS.

* If items already have values, these are the current items already added to your VPS. Removing them or setting quantities to 0 will remove them from your VPS.

This article explain how to change the password we store for your VPS. This password is by VPSBlocks staff if they need to access your VPS for administrative or support purposes so it's best if you keep it updated if you change your root/administrator password on your VPS. This is also used by resellers clients to login to the portal website to administer the VPS only.

Portal Login Explained

If you login to the portal website using your email address and password you can administer all your VPSs, change account details, place new orders etc.

If you login to the portal website using your VPS username and password you will only have access to manage a single VPS, no mention of VPSBlocks is made, and no ability to modify your account or order services.

To view your bandwidth - regular clients

1. Go to https://portal.controlmyvps.com.au

2. Login using your email address and password

3. Click on 'Virtual Machines' on the left hand panel

4. You will see a summary of bandwidth used and can click 'Manage' next to any of your VPSs you want to view full graphs for

5. Click on the 'Bandwidth' tab

To view your bandwidth - resellers clients'

1. Go to https://portal.controlmyvps.com.au

2. Login using your vps username and password

3. You will see a summary of bandwidth used and can click 'Manage' next to any of your VPSs you want to view full graphs for

4. Click on the 'Bandwidth' tab

To open a port in Windows 2012 and Windows 2008

• On the Start menu, click Run, type WF.msc, and then click OK.
• In the Windows Firewall with Advanced Security, in the left pane, right-click Inbound Rules, and then click New Rule in the action pane (upper right corner).
• In the Rule Type dialog box, select Port, and then click Next.
• In the Protocol and Ports dialog box, select TCP. Select Specific local ports, and then type the port number you wish to open. Click Next.
• In the Action dialog box, select Allow the connection, and then click Next.
• In the Profile dialog box, select all profiles. Then click Next.
• In the Name dialog box give the rule a name. Then click Finish.

We are happy to clone a VPS for you, there is no charge for this, and it is done manually by staff to ensure that the networking within your cloned VPS is updated to a new IP address, and our billing system is updated properly.

If you wish to clone a VPS you should email support@vpsblocks.com.au and provide the following information:

1. Name of the VPS to be cloned

2. Name you want the new VPS to have

3. Resource/Block level you wish the new VPS to have

4. Administrator or root password for the existing VPS so once cloned we can login and set the networking properly on the cloned VPS.

If you want to host websites and are happy to do without the friendly cPanel interface, there is a great tutorial available here:

http://www.asep.us/2011/03/15/how-to-set-up-web-server-using-webmin-centos/

This shows you step by step how to setup your CentOS webserver using SSH and Webmin.

First, you need to install Engintron (not NGinxCP), to install Engintron, see: https://www.vpsblocks.com.au/support/Knowledgebase/Article/View/172/0/installing-nginx-on-cpanel-servers

Once Engintron is installed, you need to go to WHM -> Plugins -> Engintron for cPanel/WHM

Then click on 'Edit proxy_params_dynamic'

Now, you need to modify some values:

You can set the EXPIRES_FOR_DYNAMIC value to any number of minutes, this means that cache in NGinx will expire after 5 minutes and then it will grab the latest from Apache.

Scroll down for further settings:

Here you should set the proxy_cache_valid final number to the same as your expires cache (e.g. 5 minutes). Then ensure that you remove the comment character (#) from the settings on the expires line.

Then click the green Update button to complete the process.

To upload or download files through remote desktop you need to share a local drive.

To do this start the remote desktop program:

• Click on the 'Start' menu or 'Windows' icon
• In the search/cmd box enter: mstsc.exe

When the window comes up fill out the VPS address, then click on 'Options' (don't click Connect just yet)

Click on the 'Local Resources' tab

Click on the 'More' button under 'Local devices and resources'

There you can select which local drives you want to share with your remote desktop session.

Once you've done that, click 'Connect' to connect to your VPS.

Once you've logged into your VPS, on the VPS open 'My Computer' or 'File Explorer'. Under 'Computer' you'll see your local hard drives and you'll now also see a networked hard drive which leads to your local computer's drive. You can simply copy and paste or drag/drop files across between your local computer and the VPS.

Portal Login Explained

If you login to the portal website using your email address and password you can administer all your VPSs, change account details, place new orders etc.

If you login to the portal website using your VPS username and password you will only have access to manage a single VPS, no mention of VPSBlocks is made, and no ability to modify your account or order services.

How to start/stop your VPS

1. Go to https://portal.controlmyvps.com.au

2. Login using your email address and password

3. Click on 'VPS Management'

4. Select the VPS in question from the drop down list box

5. Look for the start/stop options in the Actions window.

Portal Login Explained

If you login to the portal website using your email address and account level password you can administer all your VPSs, change account details, place new orders etc.

If you login to the portal website using your VPS username and VPS password you will only have access to manage a single VPS, no mention of VPSBlocks is made, and no ability to modify your account or order services.

You MUST login using your email address and account level password to be able to manage private internal networks.

How to create a private internal network

1. Login to the VPSBlocks My Account Portal using your email address and account level password.
2. Click on 'Internal Networks' on the left hand menu
3. If you have an internal network created it will display the IP Range of your network, it will also list any virtual machines already connected to the network. If not click on 'Create Internal Network'. Provide an internal range (e.g. 192.168.2.0), note always use .0 on the end as the network will be automatically setup with a /24 subnet providing you with the ability to connect up to 254 machines.
4. You can create multiple private networks for isolating between different servers via subnets.
5. Now you have a virtual network, you need to add an internal network adapter to your virtual machines.

Adding a private internal NIC to your VMs

1. Click on 'Virtual Machines' on the left hand menu
2. Click on 'Manage' next to the virtual machine you want to add an internal NIC 
3. At this stage the virtual machine must be powered off (shutdown), you can do this through the 'Power Off VPS' button, or do it through the operating system on your virtual machine. Once it's shut down continue to step 4.
4. Click on the 'Networking' button
5. Click 'Add Internal NIC'
6. This will add an internal NIC to your virtual machine and automatically assign it an IP address from your internal range (this IP cannot be changed). The NIC will use DHCP, however, further configuration is necessary on both Windows and Linux platforms.
7. You can now start your server again (click 'Overview' and 'Power On VPS')

Final configuration within your virtual machine

1. If you are running Windows on the virtual machine you will need to set the new NIC's metric to be higher than the default, this is so your system knows which NIC to send public traffic through. Please see: https://www.vpsblocks.com.au/support/Knowledgebase/Article/View/294/0/internal-private-networking-on-windows
2. If you are running CentOS or RedHat you will need to create a configuration file at /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1 (usually it is eth1) and ensure the DEFROUTE is set to No. Please see: https://www.vpsblocks.com.au/support/Knowledgebase/Article/View/314/0/nic-configuration-on-redhat-and-centos
3. If you are running Ubuntu or Debian you will need to edit /etc/network/interfaces file and add the configuration for the new NIC, ensuring it is set to use DHCP.

If you are unsure how to configure your internal NIC properly please contact support and we would be happy to help.

Portal Login Explained

If you login to the portal website using your email address and account level password you can administer all your VPSs, change account details, place new orders etc.

If you login to the portal website using your VPS username and VPS password you will only have access to manage a single VPS, no mention of VPSBlocks is made, and no ability to modify your account or order services.

How your Exchange licenses

If you have an existing VPS and would like or have remote desktop licenses, you can adjust the quantity through the portal.

1. Login to the https://portal.controlmyvps.com.au using your email address and password

2. Click on the 'Account' tab

3. Click on 'Manage Services' on the left hand side

3. Select the product 'Remote Desktop License'

4. Click on 'Upgrade/Downgrade'

5. Set your quantity you require.

6. Our staff will login and modify your licensing within your VPS. You MUST make sure that your administrator password is stored correctly in our system so we can access your VPS to adjust the licensing, see: https://www.vpsblocks.com.au/support/Knowledgebase/Article/View/105/0/how-do-i-change-my-stored-vps-password

Portal Login Explained

If you login to the portal website using your email address and password you can administer all your VPSs, change account details, place new orders etc.

If you login to the portal website using your VPS username and password you will only have access to manage a single VPS, no mention of VPSBlocks is made, and no ability to modify your account or order services.

How to pause your VPS

1. Go to https://portal.controlmyvps.com.au

2. Login using your email address and password

3. Click on 'VPS Management'

4. Select the VPS in question from the drop down list box

5. Look for the pause option in the Actions window.

This article explain how to change the password we store for your VPS. This password is by VPSBlocks staff if they need to access your VPS for administrative or support purposes so it's best if you keep it updated if you change your root/administrator password on your VPS. This is also used by resellers clients to login to the portal website to administer the VPS only.

Portal Login Explained

If you login to the portal website using your email address and password you can administer all your VPSs, change account details, place new orders etc.

If you login to the portal website using your VPS username and password you will only have access to manage a single VPS, no mention of VPSBlocks is made, and no ability to modify your account or order services.

To change your stored VPS password

1. Go to https://portal.controlmyvps.com.au

2. Login using your email address and password

2. Click on the 'Modify' tab

4. Select the VPS in question from the drop down list box

5. Click on 'Change Password'

6. Enter your new password and click 'Save Changes'

To change your account level password

1. Go to https://portal.controlmyvps.com.au

2. Login using your email address and password

3. Click on 'Account'

4. Click on 'Change Password'

5. Enter your new password and click 'Save Changes'

If you want to see where an email originated from, you need to view the mail headers and interpret the information correctly. This is helpful in debugging where SPAM came from, or why messages are not being delivered properly.

There is a great article at: http://www.arclab.com/en/amlc/how-to-read-and-analyze-the-email-header-fields-spf-dkim.html

In case the article is removed we have duplicated the content here:

How to access the Message Header

Most mail clients allow access to the message header. The following list contains a few popular mail and web mail clients. 
Please refer to the manual of your mail client if your mail client is not included in this list.

• View the Message Header in Google Mail (GMail) Webmail:

  Login to your account on the webpage and open the message (click on it). Click on the "down-arrow" on the top-right of the message and select "Show Original". Now you will see the complete message source.
  
  

• View the Message Header in Yahoo! Mail Webmail:

  Login to your account on the webpage and open the message (click on it). 
  Click on "Actions" and select "View Full Header".
  
  

• View the Message Header in Hotmail Webmail:

  Login to your account on the webpage and go to the message list. 
  Right-click on the message and select "View Message Source". 
  
  

• View the Message Header in MS Outlook:

  Open the message in MS Outlook. Now go to "View" and select "Message Options" - or "File" -> "Info" -> "Properties".
  Look at "Intenet Headers".
  
  

• View the Message Header in Thunderbird:

  Open the message, then click on "View" and select "Message Source".
  
  

• View the Message Header in MS Windows Mail (and MS Outlook Express):

  Select the message in the list, right-click on it and select "Properties" and go to "Details.

Standard Message Header Fields

Sample Message Header:

Return-path: <sender@senderdomain.tld>
Delivery-date: Wed, 13 Apr 2011 00:31:13 +0200
(3)Received: from mailexchanger.recipientdomain.tld([ccc.ccc.ccc.ccc])
by mailserver.recipientdomain.tld running ExIM with esmtp
id xxxxxx-xxxxxx-xxx; Wed, 13 Apr 2011 01:39:23 +0200
(2)Received: from mailserver.senderdomain.tld ([bbb.bbb.bbb.bbb] helo=mailserver.senderdomain.tld)
by mailexchanger.recipientdomain.tld with esmtp id xxxxxx-xxxxxx-xx
for recipient@recipientdomain.tld; Wed, 13 Apr 2011 01:39:23 +0200
(1)Received: from senderhostname [aaa.aaa.aaa.aaa] (helo=[senderhostname])
by mailserver.senderdomain.tld with esmtpa (Exim x.xx)
(envelope-from <sender@senderdomain.tld) id xxxxx-xxxxxx-xxxx
for recipient@recipientdomain.tld; Tue, 12 Apr 2011 20:36:08 -0100
Message-ID: <xxxxxxxx.xxxxxxxx@senderdomain.tld>
Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2011 20:36:01 -0100
X-Mailer: Mail Client
From: Sender Name <sender@senderdomain.tld>
To: Recipient Name <recipient@recipientdomain.tld>
Subject: Message Subject

• Return Path: The email address which should be used for bounces. The mailserver will send a message to the specified email address if the message cannot be delivered
• Delivery-date: The data the message was delivered
• Date: The date the message was sent
• Message-ID: The ID of the message
• X-Mailer: The mail client (mail program) used to send the message
• From: The message sender in the format: "Friendly Name" <email@address.tld>
• To: The message recipient in the format: "Friendly Name" <email@address.tld>
• Subject: The message subject

The From: line, which contains the sender of the message could be faked easily, so you should not rely on this information.

The lines in green contain the routing information, from the senders computer to the recipients mailserver.

Lets take a closer look at these lines:

(3) Received: from senderhostname [aaa.aaa.aaa.aaa] (helo=[ senderhostname])
by mailserver.senderdomain.tld with esmtpa (Exim x.xx)
(envelope-from <sender@senderdomain.tld) id xxxxx-xxxxxx-xxxx
for recipient@recipientdomain.tld; Tue, 12 Apr 2011 20:36:08 -0100

(3) The message was sent from the senders computer with the IP address aaa.aaa.aaa.aaa to the mailserver of the sender. In many cases the sender IP aaa.aaa.aaa.aaa is a dynamic IP address, e.g. DSL. The IP address gives many informations about the sender, the location of the sender and the provider.

(2) Received: from mailserver.senderdomain.tld ([bbb.bbb.bbb.bbb] helo=mailserver.senderdomain.tld)
by mailexchanger.recipientdomain.tld with esmtp
id xxxxxx-xxxxxx-xx 

(2) The message was transfered from the senders mailserver with the IP address bbb.bbb.bbb.bbb to the recipients mailexchanger. The mailexchanger is the mailserver, which accepts incoming messages for a domain.

(1) Received: from mailexchanger.recipientdomain.tld([ccc.ccc.ccc.ccc])
by mailserver.recipientdomain.tld running ExIM with esmtp
id xxxxxx-xxxxxx-xxx; Wed, 13 Apr 2011 01:39:23 +0200 

(1) The message was finally received by the recipients mailserver from the the recipients mailexchanger ccc.ccc.ccc.ccc.

This is only a sample, which should show the principles. The message routing can contain much more steps, depending on the used mailprovider. It should always be possible to see the sender computer IP address aaa.aaa.aaa.aaa and the sender mailserver bbb.bbb.bbb.bbb if the message was sent from a mail client and a client computer. If the message was sent from a webmail client, then the real IP address of the sender is not included - in this case aaa.aaa.aaa.aaa (if any) will be the IP address of the webmail.

Some might try to fake the routing information, but your mailserver should give you a warning that something is not correct during the transfer from the sender mailserver bbb.bbb.bbb.bbb to the recipient mailexchanger ccc.ccc.ccc.ccc.

Sender Policy Framework (SPF)

The Sender Policy Framework SPF is a complex framework. In easy words (simplified): 
"SPF is used to describe what mailserver is allowed to send messages for a domain". 

Its used to avoid fake email addresses (as sender email address). The system can detect if the mailserver, which want to send a message to the recipients mailexchanger is valid for the senders email address.

The result can be:
Received-SPF: neutral
Received-SPF: pass

If it fails,
Received-SPF: fail
You should normally not receive the message at all, because the message should be rejected by the mailexchanger.

DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM)

"Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM) is a method for associating a domain name to an email, thereby allowing an organization to take responsibility for a message in a way that can be validated by a recipient." ... from Wikipedia.org

In other words (simplified): 
"Some organization (domain) has signed the message and is responsible for it".

Its a good indicator, that the message is NOT a spam message. No spammer would "sign" a message.

SpamAssassin's Header Lines

SpamAssassin is a anti-spam software, which is installed on many mailservers. Its a great tool, which gives a detailed report for each message by adding lines and a summary to the message header.

Sample for a clean message:
X-Spam-Level: ---
X-Spam-Score: -3.5
X-Spam-Report: Content analysis details: (-3.5 points) 
pts rule name description 
---- ---------------------- --------------------------------------------------
-1.0 RCVD_IN_DNSWL_LOW RBL: Sender listed at http://www.dnswl.org/, 
  low trust [xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx listed in list.dnswl.org]
-2.5 SPF_PASS SPF:  sender matches SPF record
-0.0 DKIM_VERIFIED  Domain Keys Identified Mail: signature passes verification
 0.0 DKIM_SIGNED  Domain Keys Identified Mail: message has a signature
 0.0 RDNS_NONE  Delivered to trusted network by a host with no rDNS

A X-Spam-Score <5 means (on most systems) no spam, >5 probably spam and >15 spam. Spam might get deleted immediatly or moved to the junk mail folder. Some systems add [SPAM] to the subject, so that these messages could be moved to the junk folder in the mail client using a rule.

This sample shows a clean message, with a negative spam rating! It includes a SPF-pass and the message is DKIM signed.

SpamAssasin does not only check the message sender, it also checks the format and the content of the message.

Here is a sample of a spam-message, which should illustrate it:
X-Spam-Level: ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
X-Spam-Score: 34.7
X-Spam-Report: Content analysis details: (34.7 points) 
 pts rule name description
---- ---------------------- --------------------------------------------------
2.9 RCVD_IN_XBL RBL:  Received via a relay in Spamhaus XBL
0.5 RCVD_IN_PBL RBL:  Received via a relay in Spamhaus PBL 
...
1.6 URIBL_AB_SURBL  Contains an URL listed in the AB SURBL blocklist
2.1 URIBL_WS_SURBL  Contains an URL listed in the WS SURBL blocklist 
2.9 URIBL_JP_SURBL  Contains an URL listed in the JP SURBL blocklist 
2.5 URIBL_SC_SURBL  Contains an URL listed in the SC SURBL blocklist 
0.9 URIBL_RHS_DOB  Contains an URI of a new domain (Day Old Bread) 
...
0.0 MISSING_DATE  Missing Date: header 
0.1 HTML_MESSAGE  BODY: HTML included in message 
2.4 HTML_IMAGE_ONLY_08  BODY: HTML: images with 400-800 bytes of words 
0.7 MIME_HTML_ONLY  BODY: Message only has text/html MIME parts 
1.1 HTML_SHORT_LINK_IMG_1  HTML is very short with a linked image 
1.3 SUBJECT_NEEDS_ENCODING  SUBJECT_NEEDS_ENCODING 
...

This message has a horrible spam-rating of 34.7. Its definitly a spam message.

• It was received via a relay (mailserver), which is listed on a blacklist.
• It contains a URL in the message-body, which is listed in several blocklists
• The message format has errors

As you can see, the rules have different scores (spam rating), e.g. HTML_MESSAGE has only 0.1, because any rich-text (html) message would match this rule. HTML_IMAGE_ONLY_08 has a higher score of 2.4, because it indicates an "image message", where the sender tries to avoid the content filter by using an image instead of text.

If you need to scan particular location(s) on your VPS using ClamAV, please use following:

1. logon to the VPS via SSH as root

2. run the command:

clamscan -r /your/directory

where -r means Recursive scan and /your/directory is the location you need to  check

3. check the output of scanning

Please note, that depending on files amount and their size the scanning process may take significantly long time.

Portal Login Explained

If you login to the portal website using your email address and account level password you can administer all your VPSs, change account details, place new orders etc.

If you login to the portal website using your VPS username and VPS password you will only have access to manage a single VPS, no mention of VPSBlocks is made, and no ability to modify your account or order services.

How your Exchange licenses

If you have an existing VPS and have Exchange installed, it's important to keep your licensing up to date in our system. Any time you add or remove a mailbox you must report your usage within the portal.

1. Login to the https://portal.controlmyvps.com.au using your email address and password

2. Click on the 'Account' tab

3. Click on 'Manage Services' on the left hand side

3. Select the product 'Microsoft Exchange SAL'

4. Click on 'Upgrade/Downgrade'

5. Set your quantity based on the number of mailboxes you have in your Exchange Server. This MUST be kept up to date as Microsoft occasionally audits licenses.

Portal Login Explained

If you login to the portal website using your email address and account level password you can administer all your VPSs, change account details, place new orders etc.

If you login to the portal website using your VPS username and VPS password you will only have access to manage a single VPS, no mention of VPSBlocks is made, and no ability to modify your account or order services.

How to add SATA space to your VPS

If you have an existing VPS and would like to or add SATA space, you can do so by following these instructions (note SATA space will be added as a separate drive and cannot be used to expand your existing NVME/Flash disk). SATA space is for backup use only, and is not backed up within our infrastructure:

1. Login to the https://portal.controlmyvps.com.au using your email address and password

2. Click on 'Virtual Machines'

3. Click on 'Manage' next to the machine you wish to modify.

4. Click on the 'Modify' tab

5. Click on 'Upgrade/Downgrade Options'

5. Here you can add SATA disk space, extra RAM, CPU Cores, Bandwidth and Disk Space. You can also select a different operating system, however, for the new operating system to take affect you must reprovision your VPS (see: https://www.vpsblocks.com.au/support/Knowledgebase/Article/View/85/0/how-to-reprovision--reinstall--setup-your-vps-again )

Portal Login Explained

If you login to the portal website using your email address and account level password you can administer all your VPSs, change account details, place new orders etc.

If you login to the portal website using your VPS username and VPS password you will only have access to manage a single VPS, no mention of VPSBlocks is made, and no ability to modify your account or order services.

How to download your virtual hard disk

Important notes:

• You can only download the VHD if your VPS is stopped. During the download you cannot start the VPS (as the virtual hard disk is in use).
• You can only download your primary NVME/Flash disk, you cannot download your SATA disk (SATA disks are meant solely for backup purposes).

1. Login to the https://portal.controlmyvps.com.au using your email address and password

2. Click on 'Virtual Machines'

3. Shutdown the virtual machine in question. This is best done from within the VPS operating system itself. When it is shut down you will see the Status of the virtual machine as 'Stopped'. A download link will appear in the 'SSD(GB)' column.

4. Click the download link and the download will begin. Note this download is not resumeable as it a direct stream download.

Once that is done, you can greatly increase the speed your site is served, and reduce the load on your server by utilising the CloudFlare CDN and incorporating specific page rules for Wordpress you can dramatically speed up delivery and protect your site from hackers.

We recommend you read the article by Erick Valois on exactly how to do this: https://ttfb.io/blog/how-to-set-up-cloudflare-to-cache-wordpress-pages/

Portal Login Explained

If you login to the portal website using your email address and password you can administer all your VPSs, change account details, place new orders etc.

If you login to the portal website using your VPS username and password you will only have access to manage a single VPS, no mention of VPSBlocks is made, and no ability to modify your account or order services.

Renaming a VPS

1. Go to https://portal.controlmyvps.com.au

2. Login using your email address and password

3. Click on 'Virtual Machines' on the left hand side

4. Double click on the VPS name you wish to change

5. Type in the new VPS name and then press the 'Enter' key

Note: The VPS name must still be in the same format e.g. xxx.domain.com

To fix that you need to modify the file wp-config.php and add following lines:

if($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO'] == 'https'){

$_SERVER['HTTPS'] = 'on';

$_SERVER['SERVER_PORT'] = 443; }

If you run Wordpress and get a timeout error uploading large themes, you can always upload them manually via FTP.

In this training video the presenter uses two additional pieces of software (if you have other FTP clients or ZIP clients you can use them instead):

Filezilla: the free FTP solution, that allows you to transfer files from your computer to your web hosting account.

7-zip: is a file archiver with a high compression ratio. You can use it to combine multiple files under 1 file archive, with compression.

Follow the steps in the video below, and you should be able to unzip, upload, and activate your wordpress theme, and install it manually.

The complete article can be found at: http://getyourblogready.com/install-wordpress-theme-manually-ftp/

Portal Login Explained

If you login to the portal website using your email address and password you can administer all your VPSs, change account details, place new orders etc.

If you login to the portal website using your VPS username and password you will only have access to manage a single VPS, no mention of VPSBlocks is made, and no ability to modify your account or order services. You will not have access to setup Wordpress monitors unless you login using your email address.

How to start/stop your VPS

1. Go to https://portal.controlmyvps.com.au

2. Login using your email address and password

3. Click on 'Security' on the left hand panel

4. Click on the plus next to 'Add a New Website Vulnerability Monitor'

5. Enter the URL for your wordpress website and hit 'OK'

The scan will enter a pending state, you can set the email notification address to anything like and hit the 'Save' icon. Once the scan is complete you will be notified via email if there are vulnerabilities, to refresh the page to get the report links and see the current status of all sites just click the 'Security' tab on the left hand panel again.

Plesk Nameserver Setup

Note: This is for setting up Plesk to accept child name servers, it does NOT create the child name servers, you need to do that at your domain registrar.

1. Login to the Plesk control panel and navigate to your domain name.

2. Navigate to the “DNS Settings” area for your domain (the domain you want to create name servers for e.g. ns1.yourdomain.com / ns2.yourdomain.com).

3. Click “Add Record” and add the following records:

Record type: A
Enter domain name: ns1
Enter IP address: Your VPS IP (e.g. 203.143.x.x)
Record type: A
Enter domain name: ns2
Enter IP address: Your VPS IP (e.g. 203.143.x.x)

4. You should now be able to use the following nameservers for all new domains on your account/server:

ns1.yourdomain.com
ns2.yourdomain.com

To order an SSL Certificate for your website, you first need to generate a CSR (certificate signing request). See below for instructions for cPanel.

cPanel Instructions

1. Login to your cPanel control panel.

2. Find and click on SSL/TLS Manager.

3. Click on Generate, view, upload, or delete SSL certificate signing requests.

   

4. Click on Generate, view, or delete SSL certificate signing requests.

5. In the Generate a New Certificate Signing Request section, enter the following information:

   Key - Generate a new 2048 bit key 
   
   Domains - The exact domain that you want to secure (including www e.g. www.yourdomain.com)

   Country - If needed, you can find your two-digit country code in our list.

   State - The state in which your organization is located. Do not use an abbreviation.

   City - The city in which your organization is located.

   Company - The legally registered name of your organization/company.

   Company Division - The name of your department within the organization (frequently this entry will be listed as "IT," "Web Security," or is simply left blank).

   Email - Your email address where the CSR will be sent.

   Pass Phrase - Make up a password to be associated with the certificate. You will need to remember this password later.

   

6. Click the Generate button. The CSR will display in the window.

Once you have your CSR, you can now place an order in our control panel to purchase an SSL certificate. To do this:

1. Go to https://portal.controlmyvps.com.au

2. Login using your account email address and password

3. Click on 'New Orders'

4. Click on 'SSL Certificates'

5. Select whether you are creating a wildcard or individual domain certificate (most likely Comodo SSL to secure one domain - this includes yourdomain.com and www.yourdomain.com).

6. Cut and paste the CSR when requested and make sure you enter the details as they were in the CSR.

7. Follow the instructions you receive after placing the order.

8. Once you have been issued your certificate and are ready to install it, go to: https://www.vpsblocks.com.au/support/Knowledgebase/Article/View/140/0/install-a-comodo-ssl-certificate

This article explains how to add management services such as managed or offsite backups to your existing VPS.

Portal Login Explained

If you login to the portal website using your email address and account level password you can administer all your VPSs, change account details, place new orders etc.

If you login to the portal website using your VPS username and VPS password you will only have access to manage a single VPS, no mention of VPSBlocks is made, and no ability to modify your account or order services.

To add the backup service to your VPS

1. Go to https://portal.controlmyvps.com.au

2. Login using your email address and password

3. Click on Virtual Machines on the left hand side

4. Click on the 'Manage' button next to the virtual machine you want to order backups for

5. Click on the 'Modify' tab

6. Click on 'Upgrade/Downgrade' -> 'Order Management Products'

7. Find the 'Managed Backup Service' or the 'Offsite Backup Service' and put a checkbox beside it.

8. Click on 'Click to Continue >>' and follow the checkout instructions

If you have a Magento site and have moved or updated the base URL and it's not serving correctly, you may need to clear the cache. However, you may have lost access to the admin area of Magento.

To fix this create a file called 'cache.php' in the root of your Magento website.

Place the following code in this file:

<?php
require_once 'app/Mage.php'; 
$app = Mage::app(); 
if($app != null) { 
$cache = $app->getCache(); 
if($cache != null) { 
$cache->clean(); 
} 
}
?>

Then access it through your browser e.g. http://www.yourdomain.com/cache.php

If you need to transfer a domain away from VPSBlocks you need to unlock your domain and get your EPP Transfer code.

To do this:

• Login to https://portal.controlmyvps.com.au using your email address and password
• Click on the 'Domains' tab, then on 'Manage Domains'.
• Click on the 'Manage Domain' button next to the domain you wish to transfer.
• Then click on 'Registrar Lock' and disable it.
• Then click on 'Management Tools -> Get EPP Code to get your transfer code.

If you are running a MySQL database back end for your site, or using products such as Magento or Joomla, you can optimise MySQL to use query caching. This can speed up the site quite substantially.

To do this:

SSH into your server (for help see: https://www.vpsblocks.com.au/support/Knowledgebase/Article/View/41/0/how-do-i-use-ssh)

Type:

nano /etc/my.cnf

Find and modify (or add) the lines:

query_cache_limit=8M
query_cache_size=64M
query_cache_type=1

Save and exit (ctrl-x)

A cache size value of between 64mb and 256mb is recommended. If you have only 1GB of RAM we don't recommend setting this above 64mb.

You will need to restart MySQL after making this change, to do this type: /etc/init.d/mysqld restart

If you have managed or offsite backups you can view the current backups in our system through the control panel.

Portal Login Explained

If you login to the portal website using your email address and account level password you can administer all your VPSs, change account details, place new orders etc.

If you login to the portal website using your VPS username and VPS password you will only have access to manage a single VPS, no mention of VPSBlocks is made, and no ability to modify your account or order services.

To add the backup service to your VPS

1. Go to https://portal.controlmyvps.com.au

2. Login using your email address and password

3. Click on 'Virtual Machines'

4. Click on 'Manage' next to the VPS in question

5. Click on the 'Backups' tab

6. Your current backups and the files sizes will be displayed

If you have only just added the backup service or only recently setup the VPS it may display a message telling you that you do not have managed backups. Please wait for up to three days for the first backup to occur. Once it has been taken the control panel will display your backups correctly.

PERMISSIONS FOR WORDPRESS

After a migration of uploading a wordpress website if you are getting errors with regards to file permissions, or if you think the previous settings may be insecure (e.g. you get hacked regularly), you should make sure you reset the permissions appropriately.

To do that first SSH into your server. 

Then change directory into the users public_html folder by typing (replace username with the correct username for the site):

cd /home/username/public_html

Ensure you ARE in the correct folder or you risk breaking all permissions on your VPS making it unusable. You can see in SSH it will show you something like this:

root@vps [/home/username/public_html]#

If it doesn't show you are in the public_html folder for your user then do NOT run the below commands.

To reset permissions type

sudo find . -type f -exec chmod 664 {} +
sudo find . -type d -exec chmod 775 {} +
sudo chmod 660 wp-config.php

This works well for servers setup with the default and cPanel recommended PHP configuration of DSO, suexec and mod_ruid2.

Plesk requires you to create a user to view statistics, please follow these instructions:

a. Log into your Plesk hosting control panel

b. Select the desired domain from the "Subscription" drop down box at the top right corner (only if you have multiple domains).

c. Click on the "Websites & Domains" tab.

d. Click on the "Show Advanced Operations" link.

e. Click on the "Password-protected Directories" icon.

f. Click on the "/plesk-stat" directory.

g. Click on your own username "npxxxxx".

h. Enter your new password for your web statistics report and click "OK".

Symptoms:

1. Most likely there was cold restart on VPS prior the issue appeared
2. MySQL not starting

3. MySQL log

   /var/lib/mysql/hostname.err

   is full of errors related to InnoDB and even pieces of core dump code

Solution:

1. Ensure MySQL stopped, if not then stop it.

2. Backup ENTIRE /var/lib/mysql directory to somewhere

3. Enable InnoDB forcing recovery placing the line 

   innodb_force_recovery = 4 to /etc/my.cnf

4. Start MySQL (if not starting you can play with numbers from 1 to 6 in above line)
5. Do initial checks via

   mysqlcheck -A --auto-repair

   , (don't panic if it cannot finish full checks)
6. Do the full dump of DBs:

   mysqldump -A > dump.sql

7. Stop MySQL
8. Comment out the

   innodb_force_recovery in /etc/my.cnf

9. Remove

   /var/lib/mysql/ib*

10. VERY DANGEROUS! Remove all *.idb files inside of mysql directory:

    find /var/lib/mysql -type f -name "*.ibd" -delete

11. Start MySQL
12. Fill the MySQL with dump created in step 6:

    mysql < dump.sql

13. If the dump will stop with error "cannot create database" then drop that database in mysql and repeat filling the dump.
14. If the dump has errors regarding 'duplicate entry for key' you will need to run the restore with --force

In ideal conditions it will fix problems.

By default, PHP will send e-mail from the account you are running the script from. Usually this is in the format of:

username@server.hostname

To ensure the From: address displays correctly to your users, please ensure you are sending the return-path, reply-to and from headers with the mail() function. Please be advised we do NOT support this code, it was obtained from the PHP documentation. The code shown here is an illustration of correct header configuration:

$to = "recipient@somedomain.com";

$subject = "Testing From Address";

$message = "This is a test, please disregard.";

$headers .= 'From: Your Name <test@yourdomain.com>' . "\r\n";

$headers .= 'Reply-To: test@yourdomain.com' ."\r\n";

mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);

1. Install the Panel.ini Editor from the Extensions menu in Plesk.
2. Open Panel.ini Editor at Extensions > My Extensions.
3. In Panel.ini Editor, switch to the Editor tab. If the editor is empty, do the following:
4. 3.1.Download the panel_ini.txt file.
5. 3.2. Open the downloaded file and copy its content.
6. 3.3. Paste the content into the editor.
7. Edit the content and click Save.

By default, this is not activated on all Plesk servers but it is gradually being rolled out. If you do not see an "Upgrade Now" button as widely documented on the internet, you can manually enable this function by adding the following lines to the panel.ini file:

[databaseManagement]
features.canBeUpgraded = 1

1. Login to Plesk UI as admin.
2. Go to Tools & Settings > Database Servers page
3. Click "Upgrade now" button.