Difference between revisions of "Frequently asked questions"

Revision as of 20:57, 10 August 2018

Cannot connect with SSH to newly booted VM

The provisioning and booting process may take as long as five minutes in some cases, depending on the specific operating system you are selecting. You can monitor progress over VNC by hitting the VNC Connection button. Once booted, you will be able to authenticate via SSH using the username and password displayed on the virtual machine page (or SSH key if you specified one).

Note that if you selected an image marked "ISO" when provisioning the VM, you will have to install the operating system via VNC. If you simply want a ready-made VM up and running, you should select an image marked "template" instead.

I cannot ping my IP address 172.20.8.187

The IP address starting with 172 is the private IP address for your VM. Go to your VM details page and look for the "external IP address".

Do you support IPv6?

Yes! We support IPv6 in Toronto. Virtual machines are automatically assigned an IPv6 address via SLAAC. User-created virtual networks receive a /64 IPv6 allocation, and virtual machines created on such networks can use any address on the allocated subnet.

How to resize my VM?

To resize your VM, select the VM and use the Resize utility.

Note that the resize will fail if you attempt to resize a local-storage-backed instance to a plan with a smaller disk size. Follow these steps to resize a VM down:

• Take a snapshot of the VM
• Once the snapshot is ready (you can monitor the progress from the Images tab), go to the Volumes tab and create a volume from the snapshot with the old snapshot size
• Boot a new VM with "Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit" template, and attach the volume to the VM
• Assuming that the volume is attached at /dev/vdc, run resize2fs /dev/vdc1 10G (replacing 10G with desired size in gigabytes; aim for as small a size as possible, so that the partition and disk will fit)
• Then, run fdisk /dev/vdc and re-create the partition; make sure the start sector is the same, and also make sure to set the bootable flag:

# fdisk /dev/vdc

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/vdc: 37.6 GB, 37580963840 bytes
4 heads, 32 sectors/track, 573440 cylinders, total 73400320 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000d8e94

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/vdc1   *        2048    73400319    36699136   83  Linux

Command (m for help): d 1
Selected partition 1

Command (m for help): n
Partition type:
   p   primary (0 primary, 0 extended, 4 free)
   e   extended
Select (default p): 
Using default response p
Partition number (1-4, default 1): 
Using default value 1
First sector (2048-73400319, default 2048): 
Using default value 2048
Last sector, +sectors or +size{K,M,G} (2048-73400319, default 73400319): 33556479

Command (m for help): a
Partition number (1-4): 1

Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.

Above, to calculate the last sector, you can try multiplying the default last sector by the fraction that you're resizing down; e.g. if resizing from 35 GB to 15 GB, multiply (73400319 / 35 * 14) (we use 14 instead of just 15 since the partition table and other elements take up some space; do make sure that the filesystem has been resized to less than this many GB in the resize2fs command earlier).

• Create a new volume with the desired size, and attach it to the same VM
• Use fdisk /dev/vdd to create identical partitions on the new volume
• Use dd if=/dev/vdc1 of=/dev/vdd1 bs=64k to copy data from the partition on the old volume to the partition on the new volume
• Detach both volumes from the VM, and delete the volume with old size
• Select the volume with new size from the Volumes tab, and convert it to an image
• Boot the new VM from the image

Unable to attach volume to my Windows VM

Volumes are best used with Linux virtual machines using the virtio driver. If you are using another operating system or ide driver, then you likely will need to shut down the VM before attaching or detaching volumes. You may also need to specify the attachment target as /dev/hdc or /dev/hdd or etc.

What is the default username for virtual machines provisioned using the stock templates

The administrative username for template-based virtual machines are as the following:

• Ubuntu: ubuntu
• Debian: debian
• CentOS: cloud-user / centos
• Fedora: fedora
• CoreOS: core

I cannot login as root!

As stated in the "VM provisioned successfully" email, template-based virtual machines are configured to accept connections with the administrative user. The password is displayed on the virtual machine details page. For security reasons, the VM does not accept root login by default.

Once authenticated as the administrative user, you can execute sudo su to login as root.

If you wish, you can of course set a root password. First, login as root by authenticating with the administrative user and running sudo su. Then, run passwd to set a root user password. Finally, edit the SSH configuration:

sed -i 's/.*PermitRootLogin.*/PermitRootLogin yes/' /etc/ssh/sshd_config
service ssh restart; service sshd restart

Then logout and you should be able to authenicate via SSH directly as the root user with your newly set password.

Alternatively, you can use a startup script so that the root password is set when the VM boots.

Note: use an SSH client like Putty to authenticate.

Please note that our services are unmanaged and you are responsible or the security of your VM; if your VM is taken over and used in denial of service attacks, spam, or other activities that violate our terms of service, your account may be suspended depending on the circumstances.

Is additional bandwidth usage billed hourly?

Bandwidth is billed as a consumable resource, i.e., you are charged for the amount that you use; it is not per-hour or per-month since there is no timespan. Bandwidth allocations from VM plans are allocated on a per-calendar-month basis. So, if you have an s.half VM and use 1500 GB bandwidth in a month (500 GB over the plan allocation), then you will be billed $0.003 for each additional GB ($1.50 total), and it does not matter how many hours it took you to use that 500 GB.

My disk space is smaller than the plan disk

Almost all of the templates will automatically resize the partition and filesystem the first time that the virtual machine boots. If you install from ISO, you can also choose the partitioning scheme.

So, if you are having this problem where filesystem doesn't actually get resized, it likely means you are using the CentOS 6 template, which does not support automatic filesystem resizing. You can instead run the following commands to manually resize the partition/filesystem:

fdisk /dev/vda
> u
(this will switch units to sector; it is important that you use sectors and not cylinders!)
> p
(this will print all of the partitions, we will refer to the data later)
> d 1
(this will display "Selected partition 1" and delete the first partition)
> n
(select "p" for primary partition)
(partition number should be 1, but make sure it matches the number displayed in print command)
(first sector should be 2048, but make sure it matches the "Start" column displayed in print command)
(and set last sector to the default value)
> a
(type "1" to make new first partition bootable)
> w
(this will write the new partitions and exit fdisk)
shutdown -r 0
(connect to VM after it reboots, if it has resized partition but not filesystem then run resize2fs)

Warning: when creating the new partition, make sure that the first sector matches the sector displayed in print command (typically 2048). The default option that fdisk will provide is incorrect.

The VNC connection doesn't work for me

This is usually caused by a firewall on your computer, router, or at your ISP; or because of outdated browser software. If you are using the noVNC client, first try switching to another browser and see if it works there.

If it still doesn't connect (e.g. you get "Connection Timeout" error), then you can try to use the VNC tunnel connection method so that you can use your own desktop VNC client instead of noVNC. To do this, go to the Account tab in the top right, scroll down to VNC Connection Method, and change to tunnel. Then, when you click the VNC button, you will be given VNC login details that you can plug into your desktop VNC client to connect to your virtual machine instance.

Note: you may have to subtract 5900 from the port provided by the tunnel in some cases. So for example, if the panel says to connect to 167.114.159.49:6105, and that doesn't work, then also try connecting to 167.114.159.49:205.

Can I shutdown my VMs to avoid being billed?

You can use the Shelve functionality to deactivate your virtual machine. Once a VM is shelved, you will only be billed for the storage space, at $0.03/GB/mo, and assigned IP addresses, at $1/mo (both fees are charged hourly); the pricing change will be reflected in the billing section of the panel dashboard. You can reactivate the VM at any time by pressing Unshelve from the VM details.

Why is my geo-location database showing the IP address in an incorrect location?

We set standard Referral Whois (RWhois) records that indicate the exact location of all IP addresses that we operate. If your geo-location database does not show the correct location for our IP addresses, that means that the database provider is not checking our RWhois records. You would need to direct questions regarding the inaccuracy of their database to them. Please do not contact us with any questions about IP geo-location as we do not maintain these databases.