In the world of CentOs

In the next postings I will highlight a few findings (nothing original, be assured) in configuring a CentOS box. Why CentOs ? My (future) hosting provider has a very sensible offer for a dedicated server and the cheapest option is a CentOs based box.

So, as I don't think I am some kind of Linux guru, I started by questioning myself about the best (I mean easiest) course of action. Obviously, I need something local to explore and learn, before messing with the production server.

As I hate digging for a long time on new things without seeing anything working, I decided to take the vmware approach, aka downloading a pre-configured centos virtual machine and working with it on my development machine.

I found one here. Thank you c_g-hills !
Of course, before you can do anything with it you must download and install the free vmware player (from here), if it doesn't happen to own the full vmware workstation.

The things are straightforward, and you find yourself running a CentOs server in no-time.

But, you need to configure the pretty boy, install tomcat and mysql and so on.

The first thing I made was to partially deactivate the firewall, in order to access the box trough SSH (with putty). At a later time I will reactivate all the security I need.
For this, you need to enter the following at the linux command prompt :

system-config-securitylevel-tui

In the (pseudo) gui that appear, click the "Customize" button, then check

Trusted Devices: [*] eth0"

Then two OKs, and you're done, for now.

Fire-up putty, enter the server address (ifconfig in the server console if you don't know the server IP) and port (23), and voila, you have remote access to your linux box.

By the way, to cleanly end your putty session, type

exit

But enough for this post ...