Creating the VPS

After you have created the customer account, set up the VPS as follows:

Creating the Physical VPS

1. Navigate to the user from the list of accounts on the left. Then, click on the Admin editor tab.
2. In the Add a VPS for this admin section, select the next available VPS hostname in the VPS Server hostname box. This must be a VPS on node00002.gigatux.com, not node00001.gigatux.com.

   

3. Select the product that the user has purchased. For new VPSs, this will be a product ending in ' E', e.g. Solo E as opposed to simply Solo.
4. Ensure that Setup physical VPS (LVM) is set to Yes.
5. Click Add VPS and wait a short while for the VPS to be created.

Verifying that the Physical VPS has been created

1. Log in to the relevant dom0 (e.g. node00002.gigatux.com) as your username and then su to root.
2. cd to /var/lib/dtc-xen/mnt
3. Examine the contents of XY.setuplvm.*, where XY is the VPS number you created. The contents should look something like this:

   File descriptor 12 left open

   File descriptor 51 left open

   File descriptor 52 left open

   File descriptor 53 left open

   File descriptor 54 left open

   Seleted xenXY: 20224MB HDD and 128MB RAM

   Creating disks...

     Logical volume "xen08" created

     Logical volume "xen08swap" created

4. Ensure that the first value corresponds to the correct hard drive size requested (minus swap), and the second corresponds to the correct swap size (which should be the same as the memory allocation).
5. N.B. Further information can be obtained by typing lvdisplay /dev/lvm1/xenXY[swap].

Install the Operating System

The VPS is now set up, but there is no Operating System on there at present, so it's pretty useless. We install the initial Operating System for the user as he/she requests. If there is no preference, we install Debian. If they really want something obscure like Fedora or Ubuntu, this is possible, but you will need to manually boot the VPS off a downloaded .iso and install it manually. For Debian or Centos, follow the following:

1. Navigate to the user from the list of accounts on the left. Then, click on the Client interface tab, followed by the VPS in the new tab set, and then Installation.

   

2. Select the operating system as required:

   Debian - Debian (network install with debootstrap)

   CentOS - CentOS (network install with yum)

3. Set the root password to be the same as the user's login password for the DTC control panel.
4. Click Reinstall operating system.

Verifying that the Operating System has been Installed

1. Log in to the relevant dom0 (e.g. node00002.gigatux.com) as your username and then su to root.
2. cd to /var/lib/dtc-xen/mnt
3. Examine the contents of XY.log, where XY is the VPS number you created. Because this installation process may take a while, you may want to output this log file as it is appended to. This can be done by typing tail -f <file>.
4. Upon completion, the contents of this look something like this (for debian):

   I: Configuring apt-utils...

   I: Configuring klogd...

   I: Configuring tasksel-data...

   I: Configuring sysklogd...

   I: Configuring tasksel...

   I: Base system installed successfully.

   Customizing vps...

   Making VPS devices with MAKEDEV generic

   Copying modules...

   Unmounting proc and filesystem root...

   Install script finished

5. If there are any errors before this stage, you will need to try and manually correct them and reinstall the operating system again.