3. First Time using your Server Console

Step 3.1. Log in as root. The command line will be shown in the console, the username must be: root. You will be prompted for your password*. Enter the one sent in your email and press ENTER to connect to your server.

When you write a password it won’t show any characters , but it has been recorded.

it , but it has been recorded. As a useful tip, you can copy your password to the clipboard and then paste it in your Putty session. Simply right click and it will paste the data you have in your clipboard.

Step 3.2. Change the root password (only the first time). As a security feature, many providers have a mandatory change of the password the first time you log in with your root user. In this case, you will be asked to input your current password (from the email), and enter a new one (it is strongly recommended a 16+ char password with a mix of letters, numbers, special characters).

If you are not asked to change your password on the first connection, you can initiate this yourself (it is highly recommended that you change the default password with a new one) by entering the command passwd followed by ENTER .

You will be prompted to enter a new password and then retype the same password to confirm.

Save your root password as you can get locked out of your own server if you forget it.

You are now logged in as root. The root user is the administrative user in a Linux environment that has very broad privileges. Because of the heightened privileges of the root account, you are discouraged from using it on a regular basis. This is because part of the power inherent with the root account is the ability to make very destructive changes, even by accident.

The next step is to set up an alternative user account with a reduced scope of influence for day-to-day work.

Step 3.3. Create a new user. Use the following command to add a new user account that we will use to log in from now on. Our user is called michael, you can replace it with any username that you like:

adduser michael

You will be asked a few questions, starting with the account password. Enter a strong password. Optionally, fill in any of the additional information if you want or ignore it. This is not required and you can just hit ENTER in any field you wish to skip.

Step 3.4. Grant the user administrative privileges. Now, we have a new user account with regular account privileges. However, we may sometimes need to do administrative tasks from our normal account.

To add these privileges to our new user, we need to add the new user to the sudo group. This will allow our normal user to run commands with administrative privileges by putting the word sudo before each command.

As root, run this command to add your new user to the sudo group (substitute the highlighted word with your new user):

usermod -aG sudo michael

Now, when logged in as your regular user, you can type sudo before commands to perform actions with superuser privileges.

Step 3.5. You can switch to the new user by typing: