Does anyone with Alabanza servers have problems getting them to enable SSH?? We have been trying to do that for the past 4 weeks and they have essentially taken us full course around circles. Starting to be suspicious, does anyone have any ideas why they will do stuff like this???

-T-

You need to enable SSH for each customer on an as needed basis. At the domain level, you can enable SSH for the customer specified.

I know that, but if you need to do stuff such as update MX Records or turn Magic quotes on, then does'nt Alabanza have to give you access to the server. Enabling SSH on a per customer basis does not give you access to the entire server....and we need access to the machines themselves!

Based on my conversations with one Alabanza host, it seems pretty straighforward.

(ICQ snip)
Set up a domain on the server. If it is your first server, then this will likely be your own domain. Set yourself on a plan and give yourself the SSH option. Enable SSH for your domain, just as you would for any other domain. Input your key and the IP addresses from which you will be connecting. Contact Alabanza, tell them you need the root password for hostname.domain.com, and tell them which account is yours. They put the root password in a file in that account's directory. You retrieve the password, and voila - you can now su, put in the the password they've supplied, and change the password for root. You can also now move around in the system and do those necessary administrivia type things that need to be done. For subsequent servers, set up a dummy account (we use just a subdomain of our domain) with SSH on the control panel. Upload the key, input the IPs, notify Alabanza, grab the root password, and so on. You get the idea. They do require that you fax them an id and a simple written request to get the root password. Simple, and our turnaround was less than 24 hours.
(End ICQ snip)

What are they giving you the runaround on, precisely? I would be careful about magic_quotes as well. Again, based on my understanding, Alabanza compile apache with php, so any changes to php would necessitate recompiling everything. This might very well interfere with something they've set up, and I'm sure they charge to fix those types of user-induced problems just like any other provider.