Reverting to passworded SSH (root) logins

My normal ssh logins are with public keys authentication (aka passwordless), however, under certain circumstances I’d like to revert back to good old passwords logins. Like when I want to transfer a Plesk server across another server using the Plesk Migration & Transfer manager.

After scouring the Net for some inspiration, which failed, and some tinkering, I finally found a neat solution to switch between the two (passwordless and normal authentication logins) quickly, the process is relatively simple* but frankly puzzling IMHO. I shall explain why: Continue reading Reverting to passworded SSH (root) logins

File access PHP on Plesk

On certain occasions, and if you’re running Plesk on a dedicated server (like I do), there are certain problems with file access and other upload permissions which aren’t allowed unless you turn file permission to 777!

Obviously this isn’t the recommended way to operate a website, turning directories and files all open with rwx is kind of risky.

So I have found a solution that works everytime, simply change the “PHP Support” to run as “FastCGI Application” instead of the default “Apache”. This option is found under the Hosting setting of the domain.

I must point out that this hack only works if you’re running Plesk (10+) on Linux Servers.