Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : Creating users/accts on CentOS without cPanel

[n0ypi]

Hi,

Just have a quick question for you guys, i just bought a server but i did not want cPanel due to budget restrictions. So i just basically have CentOS, apache, php and all the other basic apps.

I was just wondering if anyone could tell me how to create a user that can be fully usable, by thati mean having (public_html, public_ftp, and the www folders).

I created a user by doing adduser then putting in the password. Both sucessful but nothing inside the dir, tried to login ftp nothing. Should i manually create the folders andbe on my way? Or am i missing a step somewhere?

I appreciate the help,

thanks

[MegaHosters]

I would hit up your local book store and buy some books. To be totally truthful and frank ... If you do not know how to create a user account 'manually' on a linux server I can almost put money on the fact that you probably know nothing about server security. Have you hardened this box? Firewalls? Mod_security? Disabled direct root logins? etc etc... Theses are all things that should be done before you even consider adding a user account... Your box will end up rooted within days if not hours if you don't know what you are doing.

Not to sound harsh... But I hate when people have to learn the hard way.

Read... Learn... Enjoy... and http://www.google.com is your best friend.

C

[n0ypi]

Have you hardened this box? Yes
Firewalls? Yes
Mod_security? No
Disabled direct root logins? No

Someone else installed the firewall for me but i'll configure it myself but thanks for the advice C. I would love to everything about itin time, but i do need a crash course right now

[MegaHosters]

The two last ones you listed as "no" are the most important. Look in to it.

It takes money to make money and having poorly configured servers will cost you money in the long run. What if you are hosting a mission critical site and boom you are down because you did not take the most basic of security measures... That alone could cost you big bucks from the customer taking legal action on you.... No one wants that.

Just read up on things, and learn, we all had to. As far as explaining how to create a user I just don't have time to go in to detail here at this moment but this is a good start:

http://medstat.med.utah.edu/medstat_ops/node21.html

Also some info on mod security:

http://atomicplayboy.net/blog/2005/0...-mod-security/

How to disable root logins (you do not need to add the "cpanel" user to the wheel group.:

http://www.dynamicnet.net/customer/h...root_login.htm

Install LogWatch:

http://www.dynamicnet.net/customer/h...l_logwatch.htm

Install ChkRookKit:

http://www.dynamicnet.net/customer/h...chkrootkit.htm

Recreate /tmp on it's own partition:

http://www.dynamicnet.net/customer/h..._partition.htm

Plus many many more great security hardnening details here:

http://www.dynamicnet.net/customer/h...dhat_linux.htm

These are all the most basic of things and should be taken seriously.

Thanks to Peter of DynamicNet for the majority of those tutorials....

Clint