Normally I prefer Ubuntu servers but I needed a CentOS Server ( info ) for some software, this guide is a quick guide that lists anything that is different to setting up an Ubuntu server.

Buying a Domain

Buy a domain name from Namecheap here.

Creating a CentOS Server

If you get stuck check out my Ubuntu Digital Ocean guide here or my Ubuntu on AWS guide here.

Login to Digital Ocean (get 2-month free by using my referral link here).

Update 2018: For the best performing VM host (UpCloud) read my guide on the awesome UpCloud VM hosts (get $25 free credit by signing up here).

Create and deploy a CentOS 7.2 64 bit Server at Digital Ocean.

Reset your root password (so we can log-in via telnet and install node-js before we connect to C9.io).

Log-in to the server with ssh

Setting the timezone is different than Ubuntu.

# Use this command to find your nearest Timezone
timedatectl list-timezones | grep Sydney
> Australia/Sydney

# Set the timezine by running this command
sudo timedatectl set-timezone Australia/Sydney

date

Setup NPT time sync daemon

sudo yum install ntp
sudo systemctl start ntpd
sudo systemctl enable ntpd

Setup a Swap file

sudo fallocate -l 4G /swapfile
sudo chmod 600 /swapfile
sudo mkswap /swapfile
Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 4194300 KiB
no label, UUID=xxxxxxx-xxxx-4axxxx63-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxx
sudo swapon /swapfile
sudo sh -c 'echo "/swapfile none swap sw 0 0" >> /etc/fstab'

Update Packages

yum update && yum upgrade

Install Common Packages

yum install gcc
gcc -version

yum install wget
yum install p7zip

yum install java
java -version

Monitor Open Ports:

yum install nmap

# List open ports
nmap 127.0.01

More info on ports and firewalls here.

Install the Links text based browser

yum install links

links www.google.com

Install Apache

yum install httpd

Install the nano text editor

yum install nano

Configure Apache to listen on port 80: Edit /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf and add LISTEN 80

listen 80

Note the location of your http docs root folder (DocumentRoot: “/var/www/html“).

Firewall configuration (more info here)

# enable the firewall 
systemctl enable firewalld
systemctl start firewalld

#firewall status
systemctl status firewalld

#Configure the firewall
firewall-cmd --add-service=http

# Start at system boot
sudo systemctl start firewalld


# firewall status 
systemctl status firewalld

Buy a domain from NameCheap then go to Digital Ocean droplet list and assign the domain name to the droplet (see the guide here).

Summary:

A @ %YOUR_DROPLET_IPV4_ADDRESS%
A www %YOUR_DROPLET_IPV4_ADDRESS%
AAAA @ A @ %YOUR_DROPLET_IPV6_ADDRESS%
CNAME * www.yournewdomainname.com
NS ns1.digitalocean.com
NS ns2.digitalocean.com.
NS ns3.digitalocean.com.

Goto Namecheap and point the domain to custom DNS ( ns1.digitalocean.com,  ns3.digitalocean.com and ns3.digitalocean.com ), remove the placeholder domain just provisioned warning,

On your server (SSH) run the following command

hostnamectl set-hostname --static www.yourdomainname.com

Configure centos Apache to redirect www.yourdomain.com to yourdomain.com (guide here).

Wait or your domain to be available (can you access it via www.yourdomainname.com and yourdomainname.com).

I did add these lines to the following files (/etc/cloud/templates/hosts.redhat.tmpl ) as my www. was not loading (I am not sure if it helped).

# ipv4 config area
127.0.0.1 www.mydomainname.com www

# ipv6 config area
::1 www.mydomainname.com www

Then restarted the network.

service network restart
sudo systemctl status network.service
sudo systemctl restart httpd

I then write an .htaccess redirect to sent all requests to www.mydomainname.com

cd /var/www/html
sudo nano .htaccess

Configure Apache Root Folder

# Redirect www to non-www
# RewriteEngine On
# RewriteBase /
# RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.*)$ [NC]
# RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1/$1 [R=301,L]

# Redirect non-www to www
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

Now I can view my website 🙂

Time to create a default page.

echo "Hello World" > /var/www/html/index.html

Installing PHP

yum install php

systemctl restart httpd

Install MariaDB

yum install mariadb-server mariadb
systemctl start mariadb.service
systemctl enable mariadb.service
firewall-cmd --add-service=mysql

Configure MariaDB

/usr/bin/mysql_secure_installation

Install an FTP Server

yum install vsftpd

Todo: Add local user…

Install nodejs

yum install -y gcc-c++ make
curl -sL https://rpm.nodesource.com/setup_6.x | sudo -E bash -
yum instal nodejs

Connect the server to c9.io

Now the server is ready to connect to c9.io.

Security

As a precaution do check your website often in https://www.shodan.io and see if it has open software or is known to hackers.

Firewall was blocking connections after reboot

firewall-cmd --add-service=http --zone=public --permanent

Install SSL

todo…

Lock down the server (remove the root account etc)

Todo: Remove root logins, secure mariadb etc

todo..

Thanks to the following guides that helped me:

http://www.tecmint.com/things-to-do-after-minimal-rhel-centos-7-installation/2/

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/initial-server-setup-with-centos-7

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/additional-recommended-steps-for-new-centos-7-servers

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