CentOS7/ClearOS7 only ssh?

Linode's default images do not come with any sort of web panel by default, if that's what you mean.

Do all stackscript installs require major configuration?

What stackscript did you use? What specific problems are you encountering? Provide more information.

Centos7/clearos7 stack. I can access via ssh no problem. However, when I try to load the browser at https://ip:81, as per instructions, site is unreachable. I figure I missed something, but I'm not sure what. This is the first time I've had this kind of problem with a cloud vps. Just because I was curious, I also tried webuzzoLEMPstack, and a Wordpress stack, rebuit, replaced, etc, ad infinitum. Nothing is reachable via http, https.

Please provide links to the stackscript(s) used, as well as the instructions you're working from.

I'm going to assume you're using this:

https://www.linode.com/stackscripts/view/13940-clearos-ClearOS+7

Linode doesn't maintain that stackscript, it looks like ClearOS does.

Nonetheless, the issue here is that it looks like Linode started enabling firewalld on their CentOS images, which is bad. You can fix your problem by running systemctl stop firewalld && systemctl disable firewalld.

Linode shouldn't randomly start enabling firewalls on certain images, though.

Thanks for the prompt replies. Apparently that script doesn't work, since it keeps short circuiting when run manually. On the bright side, I'm now getting connection refused, instead of server unreachable. I reckon I'll just have to do it the hard way.

That's better, that means the connection is at least reaching and being acknowledged by your Linode instance. Connection refused usually means either 1) nothing is listening on the port or 2) your firewall is still enabled. Do you see the "webconfig" process listening on port 81 with this command?:

sudo ss -plntu