Notices by Allen Stenhaus (allenstenhaus@mastodon.xyz)

@silverwizard Not intentionally. Apache is pre-installed with the OS. If I nuke & pave, I'm going to do everything I can to scrub everything apache from the system before I install nginx. Perhaps that will help. The remaining issues feel like a port conflict, but I can't find it.

@silverwizard If I can figure this out properly, I'm going to spin up a VM and build a mastodon instance on it to serve as a guide for other newbies trying to set up. If I can cover some of the issues I've run into, maybe it'll help others. Plus, if I do the job well enough, I may get a little ad revenue from the video or something. :)

@silverwizard As for problems, I've run into issues with Apache, with my defaults of my old web host's OS image, and then the biggest problem has been nginx, though it's likely apache is the root cause of that issue.

Time will tell.

@silverwizard I genuinely appreciate the offer. Though, I'm not set up on any of those platforms, so that's a bit more to keep in my brain.

I may just start over, but I've got a couple more ideas in me.

Do I wish to keep troubleshooting this issue, or do I wish to rebuild the VPS from scratch, kill apache immediately, go through the entire setup process, and see if that works? That's 1-2 hours of work. Troubleshooting could be much longer, and neither guarantees a positive outcome.

A wise man would take a break. I am not that man.

Kirby doesn't know I'm mocking him. ?

@silverwizard Manually adding it to the accepted keys file per the instructions in the knowledge base.

You may be right. It's possible a step is blocking root login. That would certainly explain a great deal. I think with this next install I'll set up a user with sudo privileges that I'll use for logging in and not touch the root user if I don't have to. It's worth a shot.

Is something corrupting my public key? Why won't it connect me? I can't even attempt a password, as I disabled that per recommendations of the install guide.

I understand why I want to use keys instead of passwords, but I'm wondering if perhaps something is going wrong there, I'm not aware of it, and it's only burning me later when I have to log out then back in and find out I no longer have access.

Could I do the entire instance setup, verify everything is working, then upload my public key?

@silverwizard @linuxfiend No doubt that's part of it. I'm sure another is I don't know half of what most think I do. What I do know I'm fully confident in, but it tends to take a lot for some things to fully stick.

Ultimately, I seem more knowledgeable than I am because I have phenomenal troubleshooting and problem-solving skills, which tends to hide my weaknesses.

I've learned to use my gifts to hide my liabilities. Were the this 80's, I'd be the guy with a bookshelf full of tech manuals.

@silverwizard @linuxfiend Because I am frankly brand-new to ssh... at least in this sense. The Solarwinds software I used professionally did everything in the background for me, so all I had to do was click to open the command line or click to establish a full remote connection. This aspect of it is very much foreign to me, but I'm learning! :)

I dislike networking as a rule, both socially and with computers. I much prefer being able to hear, see, and feel the machine I'm working on. *shrug*

I must absolutely give #Solarwinds credit here. #SolarPutty has a clean intuitive UI. Took me less than 30 seconds to set up a brand new connection, compared to the 20 minutes I was fighting with OG PuTTY, which I have very little experience with.

A great reminder that an intuitive UI is one of the most important aspects of most software.

@linuxfiend

I think Twitter finally died. I've seen no new updates in two hours. I hope everyone is ready for the next user influx.