Chapter 23. FAQ

Q: My new website shows only the "Bytemark Unconfigured Host" page.
Q: I want http://my-brilliant-site.com/ and http://www.my-brilliant-site.com/ to show different content.
Q: What is the password for the admin user?
Q: How do I redirect one domain to another?
Q: Help! My browser issues a big warning when I try to connect to my Webmail.
Q: I’ve set up the ftp-password as instructed, but I can’t log in
Q: How do I modify the firewall, where is it located?
Q: How do I enable remote access to MySQL?
Q: I have a PHP script that sends emails or tries to make an external connection via http and it is not responding.

Q:

My new website shows only the "Bytemark Unconfigured Host" page.

A:

Simply upload a file to the root of your website directory, i.e. /srv/my-brilliant-site.com/public/htdocs/, with the name of index.html, or index.php.

Your new index will override our default one.

Q:

I want http://my-brilliant-site.com/ and http://www.my-brilliant-site.com/ to show different content.

A:

When we’ve created websites so far we’ve created directories without the www prefix, for example /srv/my-brilliant-site.com. These directories are served when clients request both http://www.my-brilliant-site.com and http://my-brilliant-site.com. If you’d like different content simply create a new directory with the www prefix .

Q:

What is the password for the admin user?

A:

When the packages are installed a new local admin user is created. The password for that account will be same as for your existing root account. For all work with Symbiosis we recommend you connect and login as user admin.

Q:

How do I redirect one domain to another?

A:

We’ll use a redirection of my-brilliant-site.com to example.com, so that when users go to www.my-brilliant-site.com, they are redirected to www.example.com.

  1. Firstly, create the my-brilliant-site.com htdocs directory as usual, i.e. /srv/my-brilliant-site.com/public/htdocs/.

  2. Now inside that directory, create a file .htaccess with the following line inside:

    Redirect 301 / http://www.example.com/

    and the redirection should start working.

See the Apache documentation for a full description of the Redirect directive.

Q:

Help! My browser issues a big warning when I try to connect to my Webmail.

A:

This is because the SSL certificate is self-signed. We’ve provided the following step-by-step guides to accepting this certificate permanently in some of the more popular browsers.

  • Apple Safari
  • Mozilla Firefox (version 2)
  • Mozilla Firefox (version 3)
  • MS Internet Explorer (version 6)
  • MS Internet Explorer (version 7)

Q:

I’ve set up the ftp-password as instructed, but I can’t log in

A:

The first thing to check is permissions. These need only be checked if you’ve created domains with the root user.

By default the Bytemark Symbiosis package installs a new user admin which owns the /srv directory, and can create domains inside that directory. If you’ve set up the /srv directory by hand, it is probably owned by root, and any domains inside that directory will also be owned by root. This will prevent both the email services and FTP services from running correctly.

To fix this, you need to create a user to own all the /srv/ directories. It is suggested that you create a user called admin, as this will fit into the Bytemark scheme.

  adduser --home /srv --no-create-home admin

This command will prompt you for all sorts of information, including a password, and it will create a group called admin too. Once you’ve created this user, you will need to change the ownership of the /srv directory.

  chown -R admin.admin /srv

Q:

How do I modify the firewall, where is it located?

A:

Please see Chapter 16, Firewall Reference.

Q:

How do I enable remote access to MySQL?

A:

Please see Section 19.1, “Enabling remote MySQL access”.

Q:

I have a PHP script that sends emails or tries to make an external connection via http and it is not responding.

A:

This has fallen foul of the firewall which says that web servers cannot make outbound connections. Please see Section 16.4, “Allowing web applications to make remote connections”.