Slackware-15.0 qcow2 images howto

  1. Upload your chosen qcow2 image to your VPS/VDS/DS provider as a custom image.

  2. VNC to the server with the VNC address given to you by your provider. I use TigerVNC for my VNC client.

  3. Login to the server with user: "root" and password: "slacker".

  4. Change the password to something more secure with the "passwd" command.

  5. Run "netconfig" to setup your proper hostname and domain. Choose Networkmanager to handle network connections.

  6. Run "timeconfig" to set your timezone.

  7. Create a user to login with "useradd -m username", then create a password for that user with "passwd username".
    Once logged in as this user you can become root by "su - root", and entering root's password. If you're a daredevil
    and want to login as root, then edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config to allow root login.

  8. Next resize the 20gb partition to the max of the drive it is on by: 
    /usr/local/sbin/auto_resize.sh
    The above command is safe, and you should now be using the full capacity of the hard drive.

  9. If your vps provider is Contabo, before you can ssh to your server with PuTTY you'll have to do some special configuring to
    get your networking to work. Up until about 1 year ago at Contabo, if you got a new vps from them you could just choose
    NetworkManager to handle the network connections for Slackware, and every thing was automatically set for your network,
    and you where up and running. Now that will not work, and you'll need to setup NetworkManager to work in manual mode
    instead of auto mode. 

    1. You'll need to know the 2 Contabo forwarding nameservers to use for your Contabo ip. On Contabo's old control panel go to 
     IP Management, and up towards the top of the page you'll see 2 sets of forwarding nameservers you can use, 79.143.183.251 
     and 79.143.183.252 or 213.136.95.10 and 213.136.95.11.
    
2. You'll need the ip of your server with the prefix, and you'll need the gateway. You can get this info by going to the IP Management
     section of your old Contabo control panel. Hover over the i caption of your server's ip, and get the gateway and ip prefix.
     
3. VNC to your server and run the following commands:

     nmcli con mod "Wired connection 1" ipv4.addresses "put your ip here with the prefix at the end eg. 111.222.33.44/20"
     nmcli con mod "Wired connection 1" ipv4.gateway "put your gateway here"
     nmcli con mod "Wired connection 1" ipv4.dns 213.136.95.10,213.136.95.11
     nmcli con mod "Wired connection 1" ipv4.method manual
     nmcli con up "Wired connection 1"

4. Contabo's recent nameservers have too much traffic, so Spamhaus will not check for spam with their dns nameservers. We'll have to
     use our own dns resolver with unbound. The latest version of SlackerMail 0.60.0 will set this up on install, and the latest SlackerMail 
     qcow2 images dated 03172026 are setup for this. You still need to enter the nmcli commands above, but the /etc/resolv.conf will
     now have "nameserver 127.0.0.1". The file /etc/resolv.conf is set with "chattr +i /etc/resolv.conf", so it can't be changed. If you 
     ever need to change /etc/resolv.conf just run "chattr -i /etc/resolv.conf".
     
Hopefully you're up and running now, and you can ssh to your server. You can have support to setup NetworkManager for you, but
believe me it's much easier to do it yourself.

  10. Then reboot and login to your remote server with the SSH client PuTTY.

  11. Do a Slackware system upgrade: 
    slackpkg update
slackpkg upgrade-all
    If the full system upgrade included a kernel upgrade then run:

    "lilo" at the command prompt if lilo is your bootloader.
    "grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg" if grub is your bootloader.

    Then reboot

  12. Install SlackerMail with the install script.

    You should be set with a Slackware-15.0 system using the full disk, and ready to install SlackerMail if you want. You can
    also use these qcow2 images for a fully upgraded and ready to run Slackware system for any purpose you want. It's way
    easier and faster than doing the DVD iso install. I always use one of these images when setting up a SlackerMail mail server.

    You could also do a manual install of the SlackerMail mailserver if you want, but it will take 10-20 hours to complete, where
    the SlackerMail install script will take 5-6 minutes. Go here if you want to do the manual install.

  13. After Install: 
    1. Run "mc" at the command prompt, and go to /root/SlackerMail/SlackerMail.setup to get the Webmin password. To copy
    the Webmin password in "mc" hold shift + left click the mouse button and drag it over what you want to copy, then release
    and paste that into the Webmin login box. 

2. Copy the DKIM key in /root/SlackerMail/the-slacker.org.pub.txt, and enter it in the DNS Zone for your server at your provider. 
    I've formated the long DKIM key to be entered at contabo.com, but you may need to enter it differently at a different provider.
    
3. You'll probably want to change from self signed certs to Let's Encrypt certs. Go to Let's Encrypt Setup.






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