Now we have our virtual server and Redwood were nice enough to install Debian for us (because I've idea how). You wanna rush in a get going; I was literally bouncing around the house when I got my "your server is up and running!" email from them.

Of course, at the moment you've no idea how to connect to the server. The first thing you'll need then is PuTTY, if you're on a Windows machine like I am. So far, I've only found the need for the standard "putty.exe" so that's all I've got. It's a tiny application, and it's probably worth sticking it on a pen drive so you can take it with you everywhere, for those times when you just have to check on your baby <3

When you start it up you'll be given a huge list of daunting options. Don't worry though, if I'm completely honest, I've not looked at most of them after my quick glance when I first excitedly installed it. All you really need to do to get going is to fill in your IP address or host name (I've put in my VPS's IP address; type that in your URL and you'll get back to the homepage for Trinity). It should already be default on port 22, since that's the default for SSH.

Then click "save" so that you don't have to keep typing your IP address every time you want to log in. There's nothing wrong with leaving your IP address public (you probably know you can get to it through DNS look ups anyway). Then press open.

Then you'll be presented with a black screen. Give it a second (depending on how fast your server is, and how fast your local internet connection is) and it'll ask you to log in. At the moment you'll need to log in as root. "Root" is the administrator account of a linux server, it can do absolutely anything in the system. Next you can type your password. Nope, nothing's showing up. Trust me though, it's being typed. Instead of putting stars in place of your letters, it just won't show them up. Press enter and you'll get to see the start up/message of the day thing.

It's best never to play around as root; so far as I've learnt, not even experienced linux users do that. It's too easy to delete something that's far too important (unlike Windows, there's nothing to stop you just deleting Debian critical files). To counter that, you have to set up a new user. To do that type "adduser username", obviously replace username with the user name you want to set up.

The username has to be in ascii, and all lowercase.

Then it'll ask you some random details. Most of it you can just skip (by pressing enter). Debian was created with multiple users in mind, so having that random contact information for each user made things easier when you're trying to find out who broke something.

Play around as your new user – I called mine "shamess" – for a while. You can find a good FAQ and section for people new to unix servers, with some basic functions at LinuxHelp.net.