5. Logging Into Your Server
The remote investigations are now over, and it’s time to get up close and
personal with your errant server.
First, check your server’s documentation to see whether the server has a
control panel, such as Plesk or cPanel. If you’re lucky, it will still be working
and will tell you what is wrong and offer to restart it for you (in Plesk, click
Server → Service Management).
If not, then the following commands apply to dedicated Linux servers. You
could try them in shared hosting environments, but they probably won’t
work. Windows servers are a different kettle of fish and won’t be addressed
in this article.
To l o g i n a n d r u n c o m m a n d s o n t h e s e r v e r, y o u w i l l n e e d t h e a d m i n i s t r a t i v e
user name and password and the root password, as provided by your host.
For shared hosting environments, an FTP user name and password might
work.
On Linux and Mac, the command to run is ssh, which stands for “secure
shell” and which allows you to securely connect to and run commands on
your server. You will need to add your administrative user name to the
command after -l, which stands for “login”:
paul@MyUbuntu:~$ ssh -l admin http://www.stockashop.co.ukWindows doesn’t come with ssh, but you can easily download a Windows
SSH client such as Putty. Download putty.exe, save it somewhere and run it.
Type your website as the host name and click “Open.” It will ask you who to
log in as and then ask for your password.