Don’t know why but the other day I searched for “cheap VPS server hosting”. Didn’t know what I expected to find; if anything. However, as luck would have it I stumbled into servercheap.com. Just so were clear, this is literally what happened. I had never heard of these guys and do not have a relationship with them. They have not offered anything to be included here, nor have I asked.

Anyway, I was blown away by their pricing. If you follow, then you know that I have built Virtualmin servers at Linode/Akamai, Digital Ocean, and Name Cheap. There is no doubt that the first two provide high-quality, high-value hosting. Name Cheap is, well, cheaper. And the servers seem to reflect that.

These guys claim (I haven’t checked) to have their server farm in Dallas which is more centrally located than Name Cheap’s Phoenix.

Frankly, the pricing seems unbelievable.

It almost seemed too good to be true, but I decided to take an $8 flyer.

The server has been up and running for about a week and so far so good. But there were a few hiccups in the process; things I discovered along the way that should help your setup go more smoothly if you choose to host a VPS there.

First off: the online ordering process is a little clunky. I don’t know if this business is just brand-new or needs to hire a more experienced GUI engineer. Either way, there is no doubt about it you’re not dealing with AWS here. (But, you’re not paying AWS costs either.)

Here’s a snapshot of their server setup page.

As it turns out:

• They will only pass the first word of the “hostname” field to the actual server.
• Whatever you put in for password is irrelevant. They will send you the server’s root password via email.
• I have no idea why they ask for the NS prefixes. I don’t think they use them at all.

You see what I mean? Clunky.

Because the way the backend deals with the hostname, when you load Virtualmin, the installation script wrongfully believes the machine has a FQDM as a hostname. Therefore, the script does not ask for one.

The easiest solution is to set the hostname before installing Virtualmin.

PRO TIP: don’t forget to set up DNS for your hostname BEFORE you load Virtualmin.

Here’s the commands I ran once logged in:

apt update
apt upgrade
hostnamectl set-hostname host.imfbsbn.com
nano /etc/hosts
reboot
curl -o /home/virtualmin-install.sh https://software.virtualmin.com/gpl/scripts/virtualmin-install.sh
cd /home 
sh virtualmin-install.sh
reboot

Do I need to explain each command?

• apt update | always a good idea to update the package repository first.
• apt upgrade | then it’s always a good idea to upgrade all of the packages.
• hostnamectl set-hostname host.imfbsbn.com | this is the command that sets the system’s hostname has desired.
• nano /etc/hosts | I didn’t need to make any changes in this file. But I was looking for any remaining remnants of the old hostname. (Had I found any, I would have deleted them.)
• reboot | someone smarter than I will have to explain why this is necessary. But it was. If I didn’t reboot the system before trying to install Virtualmin, the wrong hostname was always used by the install script.
• curl -o /home… | this command downloads the install script into the /home directory without running it.
• cd /home | change directory to /home.
• sh virtualmin-install.sh | this command actually “runs” the installation script.
• reboot | the Virtualmin installation script gave a warning that the quota system would not work until the system was rebooted.

Once rebooted I was able to log into the Virtualmin web portal and everything worked fine.

Congrats on your new VPS at Server Cheap.