Customizing your VPS
The nature of your FreeBSD VPS makes customizing the way your server behaves a relatively simple task. The extent to which you can
customize your server includes the ability to replace many of the standard services with your own preferred programs.
There are a number of important considerations to take into account before customizing anything on
your FreeBSD VPS.
- AlpineWeb is not responsible for and can not provide support for custom or third-party
programs running on your server. Technical Support representatives are not obligated to help
you with any problems regarding custom software installations or functionality.
- Replacing any of the standard programs or system libraries will cause those files to stop
being updated by AlpineWeb. You will be responsible for updating, patching, and maintaining the
security of your server for any customization you do.
- The disk space, available memory, and other system resources are limited on a FreeBSD VPS. It
is important to take this into consideration when building or installing custom programs. Most
software is designed to run on a free-standing system, and may require significant modification
to run effectively in the VPS2 environment.
Many system files on your FreeBSD VPS are provided as read-only or virtual symbolic links.
This is done in order to limit the disk usage requirements by system files.
Virtual Symbolic Links
Virtual Symbolic Links are special files on your VPS2 that exist to help conserve disk space
usage. By default, a virtual symbolic link is a small file that points to a larger file usually
located in the /skel area of your server. If you modify a file that is a virtual symbolic
link, the link will be replaced with a real file, and will have an effect on your disk space usage.
To know which files are virtual symbolic links, use ls -alv to see what files are virtual
symbolic links.
Read-only Files
Many of the core system files required for your VPS2 to function are provided in a read-only
format to avoid accidentally changing something that would cause your server to stop functioning.
Because most of these files are related to the system kernel or physical devices, it is unlikely
that you will encounter a situation where modifying one of these files would be desirable.
The /skel directory is a read-only file system that contains the original source files from
which your VPS2 was generated. In order to conserve disk usage on your VPS2, many of the system
files exist as virtual symbolic links to files in the /skel directory.
The FreeBSD Ports Collection is also provided
in read-only format to save disk space. The default settings for using the ports have been configured
so that this does not impair your ability to install or use the ports on your server. The ports
collection on your FreeBSD VPS is updated from the FreeBSD master ports collection on a frequent basis.
We are very proud of the unequalled extent of flexibility available to our FreeBSD VPS customers, and we
hope you take advantage of and enjoy the advantages of this system. Unfortunately, along with this
flexibility comes the added responsibility on the system administrator(s) to manage a complex system.
Our technical support representatives are highly trained and will be happy to help you learn to
administer your system. Please be aware, however, that our represntatives are not trained to
assist you with dealing with custom programs or settings.
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