1-Click CentOS

Tutorial for running latest CentOS version on HostJane cloud servers.

In this section

1. Production-ready requirements
2. 1. Get server IP and root password
   1. A. Login to the Hosting Portal
   2. B. Click the Manage option
   3. C. Click Statistics in the side menu
3. 2. Login with SSH
4. 3. Create a new user
5. 4. Add super-user privileges
6. 5. Set up public SSH keys
7. 6. Disable root user login
8. 7. Reload SSH
9. 8. Set the server time zone

Production-ready requirements

We recommend several steps before you install any software layer onto the new environment.

This is an important security step if you are intending on using your server for production projects.

1. Get server IP and root password

After successful payment is approved, your server will be set up within 2 minutes.

A. Login to the Hosting Portal

Bookmark login: https://console.hostjane.com/client/login

In your Dashboard under Services, find your CentOS server.

We offer 24×7×365 support

If you cannot see your CentOS service, open a support case.

B. Click the Manage option

This is the button in the last column under Services.

Here is the next screen that will display:

C. Click Statistics in the side menu

The Main IP is your virtual machine’s IP address.

The Default Password is the root password.

For security, HostJane does not send this to you by email.

You must login to your hosting account to review these credentials.

2. Login with SSH

Login to your server with PuTTY on Windows or an OpenSSH client in linux and MacOS devices:

ssh -l root [Your_Server's_IP]

Replace Your_Server’s_IP with the server IP address given in Statistics.

3. Create a new user

For security reasons it’s best not to use the root user for everyday administrative tasks.

The solution is to create a new user.

Enter the following:

adduser janedoe

Replace janedoe with the unique name of your new user.**

Set a new password for janedoe

passwd janedoe

At the prompt, reenter the new password and confirm by pressing Enter

4. Add super-user privileges

Add janedoe to the wheel group to assign super-user privileges to the user.

gpasswd -a janedoe wheel

Your new user can now have root privileges using sudo commands.

5. Set up public SSH keys

We recommend you set up an SSH key pair to secure your server.

SSH key setup is easy and free, but if you’re not comfortable doing this we recommend hiring a system administrator on HostJane Marketplace.

After you’ve set up your SSH keys, open another terminal on your local machine.

Add your SSH key to janedoe‘s home directory via the new terminal.

ssh-copy-id janedoe@Your_Server's_IP

With the SSH key now installed, log back into your cloud server using your new janedoe user.

ssh -1 janedoe Your_Server's_IP

Login should be successful.

Close all other open terminals.

6. Disable root user login

Edit the SSH daemon configuration to prevent anyone logging into your server using the root or password authentication.

Use nano, the command-line text editor, to open the SSH daemon file (after logging in with your SSH new super user) by typing:

sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Find PermitRootLogin, it will look like this:

PermitRootLogin yes

Set it to no using your cursor

PermitRootLogin no

Check that PasswordAuthentication in the same SSH daemon file is also set to no

PasswordAuthentication no

Press ctrl + O then Enter to write the changes to SSH daemon

Now close the file with ctrl + x

7. Reload SSH

To save the changes, restart the SSH service:

sudo systemctl reload sshd

8. Set the server time zone

Edit the /usr/share/zoneinfo directory

Pull up a list of your server’s timezones by running:

ls -R /usr/share/zoneinfo

You’ll see an output, such as:

Use sudo command to change your timezone:

sudo ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Time/Zone /etc/localtime

Replace /Time/Zone with your actual location’s timezone, e.g. /US/Arizona

sudo ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/US/Arizona /etc/localtime

Now run the date command to test that your janeCloud’s timezone is updated.

date

If successful, the output will give you Arizona (GMT -7) time:

Day Month Day 00:00:00 MST Year

Your CentOS server is now reasdy to use!