Category — Quirks and Solutions

If you have the simple control panel on your gd VPS, then dont kill the java process, as I mistakenly did after looking at it and thinking, hmmm thats taking rather a lot of memory for something I am not using.

If you kill the java process, you cant get back into your control panel, and have to request a power cycle, which is quick and easy, but not something people should do unless absolutely required, as if it really is a power cycle that will bring down all accounts on that VPS for a short while until it reboots. At least thats my assumption…

Mind you, I suppose I could have shutdown the server from the command line, but Im reluctant to try that, Im not sure if it restarts automatically, or not (anyone know?)

Adding domains to your VPS in the godaddy ’simple’ control panel is a quick and painless procedure (as long as you have not manualy edited the turbopanel.conf files!) - but when you do add a domain, dont add the www prefix at the start, as your site wont resolve when you try to go to it without the www in the url.

I tried adding a domain with www at the start, and it setup the turbopanel.conf file with the server at www.my–whatever–domain.com and the serveralias became

www.www.my–whatever–domain.com

So, miss off the www when you add the domains, but double check anyways that you can access both the www and the non www version of your site.

I had a few manual, hand edited customisations to my turbopanel.conf file in the /etc/httpd/conf.d directory.

The modifications (things like gzip enabling etc) were working fine, until I managed to fix the ’system user not found’ message I wrote about in the last post.

As soon as I added a domain through the control panel,  it re-created the file from scratch and lost all my modifications - so the moral is, have a backup of that file before you add a domain, and redo any mods to it after you have added the domain.

Better yet, find the correct place to make those mods, so they do not get overwritten - its nearly 1 AM now, and I am too tired to find where that is at the moment, but I guess thats another thing to do when I get some time

Recently, after my attempts at server hardening, I tried to add a new domain in the Simple Control Panel that godaddy supplied with the VPS.

All went well, until the final stage, when it reported ‘System User not found’ and refused to go any further.

I really needed the URL setting up at that time, so I didnt have time to investigate what was going on at that point, so I had to manually edit the configuration files to get it working.

However, it was bugging me that I could not use the control panel to add new domains or system users, so I decided to investigate the problem.

After much experimentation, I discovered that the problem was with the passwd and group files in the /etc directory (may have also been the shadow file too, Im a little tired and cant recall!) .

I had set the immutable bit on these files, so no other user or group could alter them, this stopped the control panel from adding any users.

So, if you find you have ‘over’ hardened your server, check your immutable bit on those files and remove it for long enough to use the control panel to add your domains, before setting it back if you want to.