Sorressean's blog

Many people would like to have something that compares to a dedicated server, at a cheap price; this is where Linode comes in. While their servers are virtualized, they are managed so that you will be able to use your resources, without worrying about what your neighbor on the same server might be doing. On the other hand, most hosting companies load their servers up with more customers than it should be able to handle, which affects the customers in performance.

Linode is the balance between shared hosting and a dedicated server for many. While you get the resources of a dedicated server, you also pay the affordable prices that most have come to expect from shared hosting.

For those in the VI community, Linode offers many features that most companies do not. While they have a custom control panel, they have worked to make it fully accessible to someone using Voiceover, Jaws, Window Eyes, or any other screen reader. They also provide many more key features, which I will be discussing in this article.

Lish is one of Linode’s key features. Using the Lish either over a SSH connection, or through their website, you are able to log in to your server and easily manage it, whether or not it has a network connection. This is extremely useful in situations where you are configuring networking or tweaking it, and you lock yourself out of SSH, or disable the network card entirely.

In this article, I will be going over the installation of a Linode via the Linode control panel using jaws. Starting from http://members.linode.com, I have already logged in and am currently on the front page, the title of which is “Linode – Linode Manager.” Arrowing down from the top of the page, you see a link called “Linode Manager,” which is just a link back to where you’re at, and then a greeting which tells you which account you’re logged in under. After the greeting, you will see a link to take you to your profile, and a link that allows you to log out of the current account. Beyond that, is a list which contains general links, a link to your Linodes, your DNS manager, account information and support. After the list comes a link to add a Linode to the account, and a table if you already have a Linode.

Each account can hold multiple servers, which allows you to create clusters if you wish, or use each server standalone. Within this table is a list of servers belonging to the account. As you enter the table, the heading looks something like, “Linode, status, plan, IP Address, Location, Host, Remove, and Edit.” Using your table navigation functions, you can easily navigate by column. Starting from the left, you see a rename and then a set of numbers which tells you which Linode you have. The rename function allows you to give it a better name, such as mail server, IRC server, etc, for easier identification. The status basically tells you if it’s running, powered off, or rebooting. Arrowing over, the plan tells you what Linode plan your running, the specifics of which can be found on Linode’s home page. Next comes the IP address, which you get when you sign up. Unlike some VPS systems, you get your own IP address, which allows you to open any ports you choose. To the right of that is location, which is basically which data center your located in, and the host which shows what server your running on. After that comes the two self-explanatory options, edit and remove. Edit allows you to edit your server, while remove will cancel that server, and add funds back to your account for the time you haven’t used.

After you have an understanding of the layout of the website, it is time to continue on to deploying your Linode server. From the table discussed previously, you can either click the link with the name of your server, or the edit link to the right of that. Doing so brings up a page that shows the statistics for that server. If you don’t already have a server created, arrow down to the deploy link and hit enter.

From within the deploy page, you have several options to set. To get to the section we want, we can use h key to jump to the headers, or just the number 2 will take you to the first heading of level 2, which is the one you want. Arrowing down you see distribution, and then a combo box with a list of Linux distributions that you can deploy. Hitting enter to jump to forms mode if Jaws didn’t do it automatically and then alt+down arrow to open the combo box will let you arrow through your choices. You will want to go up to the top, as you are placed in the middle by default. After you have chosen your distribution (Debian is recommended), you can tab over to set your disk size. The panel by default gives you the full disk-usage possible, minus a 256 MB swap disk, both of which you can change. Tabbing over lets you set the afore mentioned swap size, which is 256 MB. Tabbing again allows you to set the root password, and once more requires that you confirm. Tabbing over once more is a button which allows you to deploy your distribution. That’s it, your deploy is a pretty simple process. You can SSH to your IP address using root and the password provided by you on deploy in order to get access to your system.

After you have successfully deployed your distribution, you should look at securing your system. The documentation on the Linode’s library page (http://library.linode.com), has distribution-specific documentation on getting started. The main things you will want to concentrate on are, Creating yourself a user account, disabling root logins via SSH, installing something like Denyhosts or switching to public-key authentication, installing a firewall, disabling unwanted services and updating to the latest version of packages, if your distribution uses a packaging system.

If you liked this article, telling people about this service would be appreciated. If you would like to get a Linode of your own, using my referral code on signing up would be greatly appreciated; the code is: 7bb9ad2d4d5dd2bdb77593f6fc17b0e498b3970e and the direct link using the code is:
http://www.linode.com/?r=7bb9ad2d4d5dd2bdb77593f6fc17b0e498b3970e