Using Putty

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#1 Mon, 12/15/2008 - 01:34
Anonymous

Using Putty

Hi I have downloaded putty.exe and have tried the commands that interogate php.

eg

[img size=355]http://www.virtualmin.com/components/com_fireboard/uploaded/images/putty...

Where can I find the list of commands that work on my server ?

Is it Webmin commands I heed or CentOS Linux 5 commands ?

Thanks

Mon, 12/15/2008 - 06:42
ronald
ronald's picture

you would use linux commands.
for centos remember to use yum if you want to update the system.
then you would type in: yum update

google around, there are millions of pages with tuts and basic commands
also centos.org has many pages with interesting stuff.

Mon, 12/15/2008 - 08:49 (Reply to #2)
Davvit

Thanks for that.

I will take look sometime :)

Mon, 12/15/2008 - 12:12 (Reply to #3)
ronald
ronald's picture

<a href='http://www.pixelbeat.org/cmdline.html' target='_blank'>Here</a> is a practical cheat list with cmds

Mon, 12/15/2008 - 22:58 (Reply to #4)
Davvit

That's a great linux cheat sheet :)

I already had a look at a couple of tutorials last night and played with some commands via putty.

I just checked and the server is still running !!!

Anyway, I will have a go at those dotted cmds and get used to the layout and set up of the server. Gradually I should get to know how it all works :) Oh - I finished the documentation ! ;)

Thanks for your help.

Tue, 12/16/2008 - 02:43 (Reply to #5)
Davvit

I have an XAMP server running on my pc under windows XP pro.

I don't know what my ip is ( I think is dynamic so it changes from week to week).

Does that mean I can use putty to transfer to my pc ( if I find out what the ip is ) ?

OR do I have to have a UNIX OS using linux to do that ?

Tue, 12/16/2008 - 04:27 (Reply to #6)
andreychek

Putty is just a client that allows you to connect to a system running SSH.

If you want to transfer files, you can either log into a system, and use the scp command to copy files -- or, you can install something like WinSCP onto your desktop, which might be a little easier. It's a GUI tool that can transfer files from the remote server down to your PC:

http://winscp.net

Tue, 12/16/2008 - 05:34 (Reply to #7)
ronald
ronald's picture

to find out your IP: http://whatismyip.com/

Tue, 12/16/2008 - 05:35 (Reply to #8)
Davvit

I usually use Smartftp for my website uploads.

I suppose I could use that as it uses the SSL
but I thought that using SSH was somehow &quot;better&quot; ?

Tue, 12/16/2008 - 12:19 (Reply to #9)
Joe
Joe's picture

You can use whatever protocol and process you like for transferring your backups from your server to your home machine. SSH (and the related tool scp) are more secure than FTP, even when encrypted with SSL.

--

Check out the forum guidelines!

Tue, 12/16/2008 - 06:16 (Reply to #10)
ronald
ronald's picture

if you have ssh then you can run a deamon. this is handy if your backups are large and/or you want to make backups at night.
running a deamon (sshd) on your home pc and your pc is always on will allow you to make backups automatically on a scheduled time (at nights for example)

ssh and ssl are <a href='http://www.snailbook.com/faq/ssl.auto.html' target='_blank'>two different things</a> though

Thu, 12/18/2008 - 11:55 (Reply to #11)
Davvit

Thanks for the information, I really appreciate the help.

I have downloaded and used WinSCP, It seems to be a stripped down version of SmartFTP which I use for my uploads.

It seem to work faster though, if it does it will be better tto use for downloading the backup files.

I haven't down a backup yet. Should I set up a &quot;backup&quot; directory of the root I mean &quot;/backup&quot; to put the backup files into ?

Thu, 12/18/2008 - 12:37 (Reply to #12)
ronald
ronald's picture

you can get a SSH server for windows <a href='http://www.bitvise.com/download-area' target='_blank'>here</a>
then you can use virtualmin backup schedule module to push the backups to your PC ...

Fri, 12/19/2008 - 05:45 (Reply to #13)
Davvit

Great - getting there !

so...
<div class='quote'>In order to get that &quot;yellow padlock&quot;, you'll need to enable SSL for this domain, and use either a self-signed or commercial certificate.
</div>

How do I &quot;enable SSL for this domain&quot; is it on one of the VM menus ?

Thanks

Fri, 12/19/2008 - 06:31 (Reply to #14)
andreychek

Joe wrote up some cool docs on how to do exactly that!

You'll find lots of Virtualmin documentation here:

http://www.virtualmin.com/documentation/

And in particular, you'll be interested in this one:

http://www.virtualmin.com/component/option,com_openwiki/Itemid,48/id,ssl...

Thu, 12/18/2008 - 05:15
Davvit

As I said before, I have putty up and running on my home pc.

To transfer the backup files from the server which I rent to my home pc, do I need to be running a server on my pc - or can I just download them to a windows directory?

Given that the files might be unix files, maybe I have to have a unix os running on my pc rather than windows ?

???

Thu, 12/18/2008 - 05:32 (Reply to #16)
andreychek

Putty is a good tool to use in order to access the command line on a remote server.

If your plan is to manually download the backups periodically, you might find it simpler to use a different tool in order to transfer those files down to your local machine.

For that, I would recommend WinSCP:

http://winscp.net/eng/download.php

You do not need to be running Linux/UNIX locally in that case. The backup files generated by Virtualmin are archive files similar to how zip files work.

On the other hand, if you wish to be able to automate that process -- having the Virtualmin server push out the backups to your home PC without you needing to get involved, then yes, you would need to be running some kind of SSH server on a PC at home.

Further, if you have a router setup at your house, you're going to need to port forward SSH traffic from the router to the PC running the SSH server.

While it's possible to setup an SSH server on Windows, you might find it simpler in the long run to use Linux to do that. You could setup a dedicated PC at home to act as a file server, or you could use something like VMWare to run Linux and Windows on the same machine.

There's lots of options ;-)
-Eric

Fri, 12/19/2008 - 02:28
Davvit

I have downloaded Putty and WinSCP and am playing about with them.

What is the connection that I use when I log on to my server through?
That must be secure because it is this format:
https://65.xx.xx.xxx:10000/

(i.e. it is httpS )

Is this an SSL connection ?
But I don't have an SSL certificate ?
Or is port 10000 using SSH or scp ?

I hope that I will understand this one day !

Fri, 12/19/2008 - 02:36 (Reply to #18)
Joe
Joe's picture

https is an SSL HTTP connection. It uses what is known as a &quot;self-signed certificate&quot;. It does not validate, and so you'll have to confirm it in your browser before it will allow a connection.

You can, of course, buy a certificate and configure Webmin to use it, if you like.

--

Check out the forum guidelines!

Fri, 12/19/2008 - 05:02
Davvit

Certificates from my server supplier cost $99 per year.
This seems a bit steep for what is probably a bit of code and tiny bit of server space/bandwidth ... isn't it ?

I am developing a website that needs to have secure data transmission, can I do that by allowing clients to use the 10000 port or can I asign another port as &quot;self certified - secure&quot; ?

I am not sure how this will work but the domain and website that I wish to make secure is www.intaccs.com which is currently a &quot;normal&quot; virtualmin server on my leased physical server.

What would I need to do to make it work with a secure connection (so that the user gets that little yellow padlock sign in his browser) I guess I can use https for this ?

thanks

Fri, 12/19/2008 - 05:18 (Reply to #20)
andreychek

Okay, a couple of things.

First, SSH/SFTP does not use port 10000 -- and to connect to it with Putty or WinSCP, you would just enter the hostname or IP address, not a full URL (for example, just the 65.xx.xx.xx address, no &quot;http://&quot; in front of it).

SSH and SFTP are encrypted connections, they will be secure and don't require any form of commercial SSL certificate.

Now, in regards to commercial SSL certificates for use in Web access -- there's a lot of SSL providers out there -- some of which are more expensive, others are cheaper.

For example, GoDaddy provides an SSL cert for $25 a year.

Apache's default SSL port is 443 (port 443 is also what is implied by using the &quot;https&quot; protocol) -- you can set it up to use either a self-signed cert (free, but creates an annoying popup message), or a commercial cert (non-free, but no-popup).

In order to get that &quot;yellow padlock&quot;, you'll need to enable SSL for this domain, and use either a self-signed or commercial certificate.
-Eric

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