For technical reasons, Gandi AI solution does not allow you to have total access to the management of your server. If you need to have root access, you can activate root access at any time by permanently disabling Gandi AI.

This section explains how to activate root access when you are leaving Gandi AI, and will show you the first few stems that you may wish to perform when you first take over your server.

Activation of root access is done from your server's management interface.

To proceed, simply click on "Disable Gandi AI" in the "System Administration" section:

Define a password for root access and validate:

Once you have activated root access to your server, you can only access your server in expert mode. As you had previously used Gandi AI, here is a summary of how you can access your server as root.

The tool that you need to use to access your server as root is the SSH console. Note, however that the default configuration of the SSH service is such that you cannot directly log in as root, you need to first log in as an intermediary system user.

The account name that was created under Gandi AI is 'admin". This is the account that you must use to connect to your server via SSH. The 'admin' user uses the password that you specified when you activated root access, and you can connect with this user now.

Once you have connected to your server, you can use a command to open a root shell connection to your server.

Here is a video example (in French) of how you can connect to your server as root:

Definitely not the best way to do, if you want an updated version of your server you should create a new vm (few minutes) and transfer your data on the new vm and migrate (update dns to point the right vm) when you want/are ready, less risky than the method below

Since our Gandi AI hosting solution is based on the Ubuntu 7.10, you may want to update your distribution to use one that is still supported by the Ubuntu community.

By default, the servers used to obtain software packets for Gandi AI are Gandi mirror servers that you can see on this page.

• To update your distribution, it is necessary to modify the /etc/apt/sources.list file so that it uses the repositories of your new distribution and then you will need to launch the appropriate update command for the distribution you are updating to.

Gandi AI uses version 7.10 of Ubuntu, and so the repositories are in the ones called "ubuntu-old". It is therefore necessary to use the repositories of the new version (which is currently Ubuntu 8.04, known as "Hardy").

To modify the list of sources used for your server, you need to launch the following:

cd /etc/apt && sudo sed -i "s/ubuntu-old/ubuntu/" sources.list && sudo sed -i "s/gutsy/hardy/" sources.list && sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude dist-upgrade

This command will modify the "sources" file so that it uses the new repositories of the Hardy distribution.

Once your distribution has been updated, you can reboot your server and continue with the upgrade:

cd /etc/apt && sudo sed -i "s/hardy/jaunty/" sources.list && sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude dist-upgrade

Likewise, to update the system to Ubuntu 9.04 ("Karmic"), once the upgrade has been completed, you need to reboot your system and launch the following command:

cd /etc/apt && sudo sed -i "s/jaunty/karmic/" sources.list && sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude dist-upgrade

• At this time in your upgrade, it is necessary to perform the kernel upgrade in order to use the Ubuntu 10.04 distribution ("Lucid Lynx"). This distribution requires some special precautions in order to be correctly installed on your Gandi VPS.

• First, you need to update the sources list so that it matches your new distribution:

 cd /etc/apt && sudo sed -i "s/karmic/lucid/" sources.list && sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude dist-upgrade

• Then, and before you reboot, you need to add the following line to the /etc/fstab file in order to mound the peripherals:

sudo echo "dev /dev tmpfs rw 0 0" >> /etc/fstab

• Other modifications are suggested as well:

• Deactivate the processor frequency manager:

 update-rc.d -f ondemand remove

• Comment out the entry that corresponds to "xconsole" in /etc/rsyslog.d/50-default.conf

• Delete (or move) the following files:

- /etc/init/hwclock*conf

- /etc/init/plymouth*conf

- /etc/init/console-setup*conf

- /etc/init/ureadahead*conf

Note: If you move the files, do not leave them in a subdirectory of /etc/init/ otherwise they will be run

• Finally, you may change the version of your kernel, so that you are using 2.6.27 and install the modules that are required for it after rebooting.

coming soon…