Center Server Administration Guide

Server control panel

For controlling technical aspects of the server (POWER ON, POWER OFF, RESET, etc.) a web-based control panel is used.

Login at https://manage.edis.at/vps, use "Login with email-address and password (new system)"

email: <edisUser>

password: <edisPassword>

Server login

The server allows secure (ssh) logins only. From a Windows machine it is recommended to use the PuTTy tool as the ssh client.

Login at blackboxframework.org on port 22 with SSH selected.

Server reboot

Use the control panel for rebooting the server in case it shows any anomaly such as out-of memory error messages.

Then login to the server and start Redmine:

cd /var/www/redmine-2.5.2

unicorn_rails -c config/unicorn.rb -E production -D

Certificate extension

Certificates should be extended every 3 months.

sudo su

export TMP="/var/www/tmp"

export TEMP="/var/www/tmp"

service nginx stop

certbot certonly --standalone -d blackboxframework.org -d forum.blackboxframework.org -d community.blackboxframework.org -d wiki.blackboxframework.org -d www.blackboxframework.org -d redmine.blackboxframework.org

service nginx start

For checking the web server status use:

service nginx status

exit

MySql Database control panel

This can be used for example for creating backups of MySql databases. The administration tool is a php-based web application.

Login at http://178.209.50.165/phpmyadmin/

user: <mysqlUser>

password: <mysqlPassword>

Backup Files

Before running the following bash command you should copy your public key to this server in order to login without password (modify it for user/serveradress you want to use):

ssh-copy-id -i .ssh/id_rsa.pub user@serveradress

bash command for backup of all files starting from /var/www (modify it for user/serveradress you want to use).

nohup tar -c /var/www 2>/dev/null | ssh user@serveradress "dd of=.../backup_of_var-www.tar" > result.out 2>&1 &

Cleaning up Disc Space

The servers running on the host produce a lot of log files, summing up to several gigabytes over time. Therefore it is required to check the available disc space periodically and to clean up old log files. The log files are located in /var/log. With the following commands it is easy to identify large log files, which are potential candidates for cleaning up.

cd /var/log

sudo du -had 1

If the result of 'df' and 'du' differ largely, check if there are deleted files that are still open in some program. Use the following command to get a list of such files.

lsof | grep deleted

Virtual Hosts

The web-based services on our Edis server use so-called virtual hosts in order to provide nice URLs such as forum.blackboxframework.org, wiki.blackboxframework.org, etc. For every distinct service, there exists a corresponding virtual host. All virtual hosts are entered in the domain name system (DNS) on name.com in addition to the root domain name blackboxframework.org.

If a new service needs to be added, a new entry in the domain name system is required and our web server (nginx) needs to be configured to serve this new virtual host in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled. In addition, the list of virtual hosts for certificate renewal needs to be extended (see Certificate extension).

After any change to the nginx configuration, a HUP signal may be sent to the nginx process in order to reload the configuration without a server restart: kill -HUP `cat /var/run/nginx.pid`

Virtual Hosts served by nginx

1. blackboxframework.org (root domain name; content management system)
2. www.blackboxframework.org (redirected to blackboxframework.org)
3. forum.blackboxframework.org
4. community.blackboxframework.org
5. wiki.blackboxframework.org
6. redmine.blackboxframework.org

All http requests are redirected to https automatically.