Messing with CentOS6 on MiniVPS

So, the clock ticked on and we arrived at renewal time for the Real Private Server [RPS] which I’ve had for a couple of years with OVH.  The RPS hadn’t been performing well recently which was starting annoy me.  It also didn’t help that the Release 2 operating system by OVH is based on Gentoo which fairly well excluded any possibility of me being able to tinker with it successfully.

So, after a visit to LowEndBox I decided to take out a Virtual Private Server [VPS] with MiniVPS as it seemed like an inexpensive way of keeping a web-based server box that I could tinker with and break as much as I wanted because I’d already moved all the important stuff (websites, DNS, mail, etc) elsewhere.

After picking a new domain name that I could break repeatedly I signed up with MiniVPS.  Within minutes the VPS was up and running with 64-bit CentOS6.  It was time to begin my introduction to CentOS6 the hard way!

First port of call, install remote administration software that would make my life easier on a day-to-day basis (everybody loves a web interface).  I’d encountered Webmin before because it was installed on the OVH RPS so it seemed like a logical place to start.  After some reading it seemed that I needed to install the YUM repository to accomplish my goal.  Well, that was easier said than done.  Not because installing the repository was difficult but because my favourite command line editor GNU Nano wasn’t installed. After a few minutes searching I hit upon

yum install nano

which after using putty to SSH into the box worked like a charm. For a follow-up the necessary repo content was added using

nano /etc/yum.repos.d/webmin.repo

and after following the remaining instructions on the Webmin site. After about 10 minutes I was able to hit

yum install webmin

and voilĂ , job done. So far so good!