Imperial College Union SysAdmin

Email: union.sysadmin

Contents

• Introduction
• Getting access to edit a website
• Logging in to the server
• Setting up a society webspace
• MySQL databases
• Errors
• Mailing lists
• Wordpress

Introduction

If you need anything to do with a society website, then you've come to the right place. My name is Paul, and I'm the Union SysAdmin. I'm responsible for the maintenance and daily running of two of the Union's servers: Dougal & Heeps. The union.ic.ac.uk address, on which is hosted all Club & Society websites, the Union Voting system and many other support and satellite sites sit on Dougal. Heeps is a backup server. I also help to write software that the Union uses.

Please follow all the advice on this webpage to try and cut down the workload for both me and you (confirmation)!

Getting access to edit a website

• Your society already has a website
• You want to be able to make changes to it

A member of the committee should login here and add you to the server.

Logging in to the server

• You have been granted access to the server (see above)
• You want to make changes to your site's files

Once your account has been activated for use on the server you will be able to log in. When logged in, you will only have write access to the areas of the server you have been granted (ie, your society folder). You may have access to multiple societies at any one time, depending on what permissions you have requested using the above system. To connect to the server it is recommended that you use WinSCP (if using a Windows PC), or Cyberduck.ch (if using a Mac). There are many other alternatives however. Please note that there have been reported issues with iWeb. Any software that supports the SFTP protocol should suffice.

The connection details for the server are:

• Protocol: SFTP
• Address/Hostname: dougal.union.ic.ac.uk
• Port: (not normally necessary) 22
• Username: Your college login
• Password: Your college password

Once connected to the server, you will find all of your society files in /website/csc/society, where csc is your umbrella society committee (ACC, SCC, RCC, RCSU etc) and society is the name of your society as it appear on the website. For instance, if you were editing the website at union.ic.ac.uk/acc/swimming you would navigate to /website/acc/swimming. You will not have the ability to alter any files other than those you have been granted access to on the server.

Advanced Users
The SSH shell is an SCP only shell. You cannot get an interactive prompt from it. Shell access may be provided if you have a good reason.

The SSH RSA key fingerprint for Dougal is: 2048 c9:fb:82:6d:ab:c2:7b:b8:96:c4:78:09:a7:aa:ef:74

Setting up a society webspace

• You currently dont have a website on the union server
• You have club, society or project status

All clubs, societies and projects are required to host their websites on the union or college servers. Hosting on the union servers is free and highly compatible. Please send an email from the club account including the following information:

• The club's full name
• The club's CSC (ACC, RCC, etc)
• Your preferred domain address (ie union.ic.ac.uk/csc/clubname)

You will then (after confirmation) be able to log in to the system here to add your users. If you also know that you will require a database or mod_security to be turned off for your website, please also include this information. Mod_security should be disabled for websites such as Wordpress. It can be turned on/off at any time by me if you need it to be.

MySQL Databases

• You have a society website on the server
• You want to install something/write something requiring a database
• Optional: You have access to the club role account

If you need a database setting up, please email from your club account including the name and CSC of your society. If you do not have access to your club account's email address, you may request that databases are setup from your personal address if you have access to the server to edit your society's website.

Only one database will be set up per society. If your society already has a database you will be asked if you wish to reset the password on the database.

All databases can be managed via phpMyAdmin, at https://dougal.union.ic.ac.uk/phpmyadmin.

Errors

If you receive any errors at all that you dont understand, have anything to report, or have any other queries please email.

Mailing Lists

ICT manage the Union's mailing lists via Mailman. We do not manage these. Please refer to mailman.ic.ac.uk for more information.

Wordpress

Wordpress is one of the most commonly installed applications on the server. It is imperative that you maintain your installation and keep it up to date at all times. "The Sysadmin has the authority under the Union Web Policy to disable any website that is unsafe or presents a security threat to the server." When installing Wordpress please ask me to turn off mod_security. Similarly, if you are concerned for the security of your site, please ask to ensure that mod_security is turned on for your society. Mod_security must be disabled for Wordpress to work properly, and if you receive an Internal Server error when using Wordpress, chances are it's mod_security. No amount of .htaccess will disable any security rules set by the root user.

There is a known issue with the FTP/FTPS upload of plugins and themes in the Wordpress admin. The workaround for this is to upload your plugins to /wp-content/plugins and themes /wp-content/themes via SFTP using WinSCP/Cyberduck/equivalent and then 'install' them using the admin interface (they will appear after uploading their folders).

If you wish to upload items using the media gallery, the wp-content/uploads folder needs to have write permissions, and be owned by the web-server.

Paul Beaumont 2012