Operating System

Initially the server will be installed with chosen operating system.

Credentials

In order to gain access to your system, an SSH Public Key must be provided and will be assigned to an initial user. This initial user is permitted to use sudo to get superuser permissions on your system.

The name of this user depends on the operating system chosen.

When connecting via SSH, keep in mind which source addresses you have configured to be allowed.

If your local IP stack uses IPv4 and IPv6 but you only provided IPv4 source addresses, you may have to explicitly tell your SSH client to use IPv4: ssh -4 <USERNAME>@bmcXXXXXX.bmc.psmanaged.com

Reinstall

Via CloudHub

The operating system can be reinstalled in CloudHub at any time.

The blockdevice of the currently installed operating system is discovered and being fully overwritten, while the underlying storage layer stays as is - therefore Hardware- or Software-RAID is unaffected.

With operating systems installed by our systems we discover the blockdevice by EFI boot entry.

Custom installed operating systems are supported in a best effort manner - hence we advise to keep a current backup of your data.

Custom

The storage layer can be individually configured in advance through the Rescue System. For example for Hardware-/Software-RAID or other scenarios.

There are two possible ways to perform a custom installation:

1. Inserting an ISO file in the virtual console of the server’s Remote Management Systems.
2. Starting the Rescue System and working directly with blockdevices and EFI boot entries. Only recommended for experienced technicians.

See also: Boot order

OS specifics

Proxmox

By default root is not available to be used for SSH, but instead the user proxmox with sudo privileges.

Please account for that when following official documentation, e.g. by adding a sudo in front of the commands.

This user is also an admin user proxmox@pam in the respective Proxmox application.

We recommend to add a password to the user proxmox via passwd to be able to login to the Web UI and have a fallback console login via Remote Management System.

PVE / Virtual Environment

Official documentation: https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/pve-admin-guide.html

CLI

• Create a cluster: sudo pvecm create <CLUSTER_NAME> --link0 <IP_ADDRESS_OF_CLUSTER_INTERFACE>
• Join a node: sudo pvecm add <CLUSTER_IP_ADDRESS_OF_OTHER_NODE> --use_ssh true

Web UI

• To perform certain main administrative tasks one has to use root@pam in the Web UI as the UI does not know the concept of sudo, therefore a password is required: sudo passwd root
  • E.g. creating a cluster or installing updates requires root@pam, but not joining a node to a cluster
  • We recommend to not use root@pam in the UI but proxmox@pam and perform these tasks directly via SSH & CLI