Couple of quick questions...

[Auminer]

1) Is WHM a part of CP? ie., do they come as one or do you have to buy them seperately?
2) Does CP run sendmail? I've been running a Plesk box and it used qmail.
3) Can you run Webmin with CP?
4) What problems with the OS (Linux ES) should I be aware of ie., does CP claim group ownership of files etc.?

Thanks
Dave

[SEAL31]

Only question I can answer factually is that yes, WHM does come with cPanel. cPanel is what your sites us when you set up their accounts.

I believe it does use sendmail, but I can't be sure.

[Auminer]

...yes, WHM does come with cPanel

Ok, thanks Seal that helps

Dave

[RavenSoul_]

WHM = the part for the hosting provider/reseller (creating & managing accounts)
cPanel = the part for the customers under this provider (mailbox setting etc etc)

...

So, without WHM, you can't use cPanel

[Auminer]

Thanks RavenSouL_ Ok got the CP and WHM part, anything on the other 3?

Dave

[dezignguy]

2. No. A Cpanel system does not run sendmail by default... it uses Exim. See Exim.org

3. Yes, you can run Webmin without breaking Cpanel. Can you heavily use Webmin and modify lots of settings with it, all without breaking Cpanel? Probably not. But if you were going to do that, then why buy cpanel in the first place? I use webmin to give me an alternate way to get into my server (Ie in case SSH dies or I'm blocked from the ssh port) as it has a filemanager and java ssh program unlike WHM, Can't really do anything but reboot if you're stuck with only WHM and locked out from SSH. And sometimes view config files and such from the familiar webmin interface (since I used webmin long before I used cpanel/whm). And I like the mailboxes feature in webmin way better than anything cpanel has.

4. Problems with the os? Not sure exactly what you're looking for here... but Cpanel installs a lot of its own programs and modified versions of other programs... the only reliable way to get rid of it is to totally wipe everything out and reinstall clean. Does that answer your question?

[Auminer]

Hey dezignguy you hit it right on with the Webmin explaination, I use it the same way and didn't want to do without, thanks!

A Cpanel system does not run sendmail by default... it uses Exim.

Exim? Not familar with it, can you choose sendmail if wanted? Any problems with Exim such as forms, security issues. etc.?

4. Problems with the os?

Guess I should have said any known conflicts, I've had occassional problems with Plesk assigning itself group permissions (when FTP'ing files) over Apache. Its been awhile and this may not be exact, but it gave me fits until I noticed what was going on. Just asking about known conflicts with Apache. Darn these GUI panels are a love/hate type thing and nothings perfect. Hows support with CP? Is the Demo being down a clue?

Thanks for the input,
Dave

[dezignguy]

Hey dezignguy you hit it right on with the Webmin explaination, I use it the same way and didn't want to do without, thanks!

Yep, I have a basically default source install of webmin... and have no trouble... and there were no special workarounds or anything needed to install.

Exim? Not familar with it, can you choose sendmail if wanted? Any problems with Exim such as forms, security issues. etc.?

Yes, I came from sendmail too... and I'd just advise that you get used to exim. I suppose you could replace exim with sendmail, if you're a decent linux guru, but you're mostly going to lose integration with cpanel then.... you'll be creating mail accounts/forwarders, etc for all your users manually instead of having cpanel do it. If you really, nothing else matters, want to use sendmail, then you're probably going to have to drop cpanel. Maybe solely use webmin... it supports a couple different MTAs. As far as security issues... there was a fairly major security problem several releases ago, but it was fixed and cpanel released their patch/upgrade fairly quickly. Everything else works about the same... exim has a /usr/lib/sendmail redirect so your scripts shouldn't need changing for the mail sending binary.

Guess I should have said any known conflicts, I've had occassional problems with Plesk assigning itself group permissions (when FTP'ing files) over Apache. Its been awhile and this may not be exact, but it gave me fits until I noticed what was going on. Just asking about known conflicts with Apache. Darn these GUI panels are a love/hate type thing and nothings perfect. Hows support with CP? Is the Demo being down a clue?

Cpanel works pretty darn well for Redhat Linux... slightly less so for FreeBSD and some of the other distros. Cpanel has its annoyances and problems... but for the time-saving feature-set, it's not too bad of a trade. HOWEVER, Cpanel (like any other control panel, though perhaps more so because of cpanel's increased features) can be a security hole... So follow the usual computer security doctrine and disable anything you don't use or features you really don't need. There was a big security hole a while back related to an option in cpanel to 'allow users to reset their password by email'... and quite a number of hosts had their servers hacked because of it. So keep on top of the security announcements too (always good server admin advice). Cpanel usually works pretty well with the default Apache/php... I haven't particularly had any trouble with it. Some others may disagree and YMMV. I haven't had any personal experience with cpanel support, but most people I've heard from agree their support is quite good. The cpanel demo is a known serious security problem and no one (sane) runs it, not even Cpanel, Inc. itself.

[Auminer]

Dezignguy, I wanted to thank you for taking the time to explain in detail! I signed on to a new server today and after more research here (with your help) and on various forums have went with cp. I know there are many satisfied admin's using it, but didn't want to go into it blind.

Good to know about Webmin...thanks!! I'll be around more, maybe I can contrib. some.

Dave

[damainman]

exim has a /usr/lib/sendmail redirect so your scripts shouldn't need changing for the mail sending binary.

Currently in the CPANEL for my clients it displays this: Path to sendmail /usr/sbin/sendmail ... Would that work if clients use it in their scripts?.. Or are they suppose to use another path or something?

Thank you in advance.

[cpaneljosh]

Exim is similar in interface to sendmail. You can call sendmail as normal, and exim will actually be called.

[dezignguy]

Dezignguy, I wanted to thank you for taking the time to explain in detail! I signed on to a new server today and after more research here (with your help) and on various forums have went with cp. I know there are many satisfied admin's using it, but didn't want to go into it blind.

Good to know about Webmin...thanks!! I'll be around more, maybe I can contrib. some.

You're welcome... hope it goes well for you.