VMCentre is a GUI for your VM Console. It provides an easy to use interface to help users administer the LogonBox virtual machine more effectively. In this article, we'll go over the functions and menus available.
Initial Configuration
When you boot a LogonBox VM for the first time, you will be prompted to set an initial password for the root user.
Log in to VMCentre
In order to log in to VM Centre, you will need to provide the root user password. Here you can also see the address/host of the LogonBox server which is required to log into the web interface.
Overview
Once logged in, you are taken to the overview section. Here, the system details are displayed including: Disk, Memory and Network information. You can also view the status of the various services required by LogonBox.
Menus
There are two menus in VMCentre, one across the top and the other down the left-hand side.
Top Menu
Open New Console - This button opens an interactive terminal to allow you direct access to the underlying Debian OS
Exit VMCentre - Log off the VMCentre app and go back to the login screen
Reboot this machine - Reboots the VM
Shutdown this machine - Turns the VM off
VMCentre Settings - Contains optional settings if you need to configure connections via an outbound proxy server
Side Menu
The side menu settings will be described in separate sections below. We've already shown the Overview menu above, so we will start with the second menu option, Settings.
Services
This menu allows you to control the main services used by the LogonBox system.
For each service, you can Start and Stop the service as well as click on the settings icon next to a service to configure the service to start on boot.
Here is a list of the services you may see:
- Support Callback - The support callback function allows a support operative to access your server if required for a support ticket. From here, you can enable a secure SSH connection which will connect to our support servers and allow an engineer to connect into your VM and gather any required data. The tunnel is completely secure and initiated and controlled by you on demand.
To start a Support Callback, enter some unique text into the Memo field (usually provided by a support engineer - this is so we can identify your tunnel on our server) and Start the service. - VNC Server - Allows remote access to the VMCentre UI using a standard VNC client.
- SSH Server - Allows secure text only access using a standard SSH client (This service is disabled on boot by default).
- MariaDB Database Service - Allows you to stop or restart the MySQL service (which is where the LogonBox configuration is held).
- LogonBox - The main LogonBox service.
- Network Time Synchronizer - Used for accurate system clock using NTP.
Networking
This menu allows you to configure the network settings, including:
- Change the hostname
- Configure DHCP or a Static IP address
- DNS Servers and search domain
Each interface will be shown in its own tab if you have more than one NIC.
Updates
New updates will be displayed here. These are updates for VM Centre as well as LogonBox and OS updates.
This page will let you know if updates are available for the OS and if so, what they are (this is running the equivalent of apt update/upgrade on the OS).
Click Check to force a new check for updates, click Update All to update all packages, which is safe to do in most cases.
You can also opt to select and update individual packages from this list.
Whilst updating, you can tick Show Progress to see exactly what is happening. NOTE: there may be some occasions where the updates may appear to hang. This could be because one of the updates may be prompting for input from the user. In this case, you would have to open a shell and run apt update/apt upgrade manually.
When the system is up to date, you will see the following.
Users
Allows you to manage the Debian root user of the LogonBox system. Here you can change the password for the root user.
Note that this is not your LogonBox web GUI admin account, this is the account from the OS which is used to log on to VMCentre.
Logs
Here you can directly view the server logs. You can select the service from the dropdown (i.e LogonBox) to see what log files exist.
You can may then click on a log file and scroll through it or search for terms.
Firewall
The LogonBox VM ships with UFW firewall, which can be Enabled if you wish.
Note that the default firewall rules will only allow you to set rules for ports 22, 80 and 443. If you want to add any other specific rules, this will need to be done from a shell.
For a guide to ufw firewall rules, see here.
Time
Here you can enable NTP, or manually configure the time/date and the timezone you are in.
Backup & Restore
This page allows you to backup and restore the LogonBox configuration.
You can click Backup Now to dump the database and configuration files immediately. This will create a tar.gz file in /var/lib/<productname>/backups that you can then choose to copy off the system (where <productname> is either hyprsocket-idm for the SSPR or logonbox-wireguard for the VPN).
If you have any backups already stored on the system, these will show in the list below. To restore one of these configurations, select it and click Restore.
Backups can also be deleted from this page.
This page can also be used to create backups automatically on a schedule, click Configure Schedule for this, which will take you to the Scheduled Tasks section noted below.
If you want this schedule to run tick the option for 'Backup Weekly' (or whatever the schedule was that you chose).
Scheduled Tasks
By default, this page will show you any VMCentre specific tasks, which will be just appbackup. This is the backup task as mentioned in the last section.
Here you can set the schedule to Hourly, Daily, Weekly, Monthly or Custom (which will then accept a Cron schedule you can enter).
You may also tick the option for 'Show all scheduled jobs including system jobs' to show some other important scheduled tasks. You may not alter any of these other tasks other than enabling/disabling.
It is recommend to leave these as per the defaults.
