TruthGate Beginner’s VPS On‑Ramp (Ubuntu + PuTTY/SSH)

A friendly, hand-holding primer for absolute VPS newcomers. After this, you’ll be ready to follow the TruthGate setup guides with confidence.

If words like VPS, SSH, or IPv6 make your eyes glaze over—this is your warm-up lap. We’ll show you that renting a tiny server on the internet is easy, cheap, and surprisingly powerful.

• A Linux box on the internet: Think of it as a tiny computer you rent by the month.
• Ubuntu LTS: Choose Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (or 22.04 LTS). Stable, common, well-supported. We suggest Ubuntu—always.
• Two addresses:
  • IPv4 (the one you’re used to seeing, like 123.45.67.89).
  • IPv6 (the modern format, like 2a01:4f8:...). You don’t need to understand it—just know it’s normal.
• Root account: The master admin on the box. Your provider will email you a password or show it in their control panel. You’ll change it at first login.

Both are crazy affordable and totally fine for TruthGate.

Hetzner Cloud

• Create a project → Create server
• Image: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
• Region/Location: pick something near you or your audience
• Size: a small plan (2–4 vCPU, 4–8GB RAM) is usually plenty to start
• Networking: leave defaults; keep IPv6 enabled
• Auth: If you don’t have an SSH key yet, start with a password (we’ll fix keys later)

NetCup vServer

• Similar flow: pick a plan, choose Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, deploy
• Password usually arrives by email (or visible in the panel)
• Keep the email handy; we’ll change the password immediately after login

• Password manager: Install something like KeePass / KeePassXC (or your favorite). Create a vault entry for this server.
  • Generate a long, random password for root (we’ll set it in a moment).
• Windows users: Install PuTTY (and optionally PuTTYgen for keys later).
• macOS/Linux users: You already have the ssh command in Terminal.

• Your provider will email the IP (IPv4/IPv6) and a temporary root password, or show them in the control panel.
• Put the IP and password into your password manager entry now.

1. Open PuTTY.
2. Host Name (or IP address): paste your server’s IPv4.
3. Port: 22 • Connection type: SSH.
4. In Saved Sessions, type a friendly name (e.g., TruthGate VPS) → click Save.
5. Click Open.
6. First-time popup (“server’s host key”): click Accept.
7. Login as: root → Press Enter
8. When prompted for the password, right-click to paste (PuTTY uses right-click) → Enter.

• On first connect: type yes to trust the host key.
• Paste the password (Cmd+V on macOS Terminal usually works; otherwise use Edit → Paste) and press Enter.

Passwords are invisible while typing in Linux—this is normal.

• PuTTY (Windows)
  • Paste: Right‑click orShift+Insert
  • Copy: Select text (auto‑copies) orCtrl+Insert
  • Tweak behavior in Settings → Window → Selection/Mouse if you prefer.
• Windows Terminal / PowerShell / Cmd
  • Paste: Ctrl+V (modern terminals) orShift+Insert
  • Copy: Ctrl+C when text is selected orCtrl+Insert
  • Note: Inside SSH, Ctrl+C sends an interrupt to the remote program; select text first if you intend to copy.
• macOS Terminal / iTerm2
  • Paste: ⌘V (Command+V) (Shift+Insert may also work in some setups)
  • Copy: ⌘C
• Linux terminals (GNOME, Konsole, etc.)
  • Paste: Ctrl+Shift+V(orShift+Insertor middle‑click)
  • Copy: Ctrl+Shift+C
• Pro tip: Middle‑click often pastes the most recently selected text on Linux.

$1
1) Change the root password

• Enter the current one (from email), then paste your new long, random password from your password manager—twice.

2) Update the box

3) Optional but smart: set your timezone

We’ll keep this lightweight so nobody gets stuck.

Install and turn on UFW (firewall)

Enable automatic security updates

PuTTY (Windows)

• In the left tree, expand Connection → Data and set Auto-login username to root.
• (Optional) Later, when we add keys, you’ll go to Connection → SSH → Auth, set your private key file, and Save again.
• Return to Session, select your saved name, and Save.

Terminal (macOS/Linux)

• Create a simple alias in your shell profile (optional):

Passwords work, but SSH keys are smoother and safer. We’ll fully cover key-based logins in the TruthGate guides, but here’s the gist:

macOS/Linux

Copy that line to your clipboard; we’ll add it to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the server later.

Windows

• Either use PuTTYgen to make a keypair (ed25519), or use the built-in OpenSSH:

• We’ll walk you through attaching the key in the next guide and then disabling password SSH if you want maximum safety.

See your server’s public IPs from the box

Check connectivity

Check disk space

• Access denied / wrong password: Re-copy carefully; PuTTY right-click pastes. Providers sometimes force reset in the panel—check for a “Reset root password” option.
• Black screen / nothing happens: Your local network/firewall may block outbound port 22. Try mobile hotspot or another network.
• Host key changed warning: You rebuilt the server; PuTTY/SSH thinks it’s suspicious. In PuTTY, delete the old entry under Known Hosts. On macOS/Linux, edit ~/.ssh/known_hosts and remove the line for that IP.
• IPv6 confusion: Ignore it for now; IPv4 is enough. You can add IPv6 later.
• UFW locked you out: Always ufw allow OpenSSHbeforeufw enable.

You’re connected, updated, and lightly hardened. Perfect. From here, hop to the TruthGate setup guides:

1. Install IPFS (Docker or native) – beginner-friendly path with Docker available.
2. Install TruthGate (native on the server) – ensures the environment can run the ipfs CLI where needed.
3. Open web ports (80/443) and go live – we’ll guide UFW rules at that stage.

Keep your password manager entry up to date, and consider moving to SSH keys when you’re ready. That’s it—you’re officially “VPS fluent.” 👏

• Provider account has 2FA enabled
• Server: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (IPv4 & IPv6 ok)
• Connect via SSH (PuTTY or Terminal) as root
• passwd to set a long new root password (save in KeePass)
• apt update && apt upgrade -y
• apt install -y ufw && ufw allow OpenSSH && ufw enable
• apt install -y unattended-upgrades and enable
• Save your PuTTY session / create a terminal alias
• Ready for TruthGate install

Click here to head over to the TruthGate Setup Guide