cPanel Questions

[IT_Architect]

Hi all,

We had our servers on cPanel about 3 years ago. Then we moved to DirectAdmin. We are going to change NOCs. The NOC owner wanted met to look at cPanel again because he is familiar with it and sells it. I have these questions:

1. Can I create an FTP structure like this:
owner/domains/FirstDomain.com/private_ftp/home/george/
OR
owner/FirstDomain.com/private_ftp/home/george/
(Note the domain separation under owner)

When owner logs in he can see and work with owner's and george's files.
When george logs in, he can see and work only with georges files and anything he creates above that level. (I would be creating the Private_FTP directory,

2. How up to date is SpamAssassin kept?

3. How up to date is AWStats kept?

4. Archive logs at the end of the month? One domain contributes 90 megs a day. That would a 2.7 gig Apache log.

5. Can you restore 1 file from a backup?

6. Tell me about cluster management and syncrhonizing. Are we talknig fail-over or...?

7. I can restart services, but can I stop them? There should be a Start, Stop, and Restart and be able to determine if it was successful. What happens when you want to kill the DNS? SSH?

8. What kind of Webmail does it use? It used to ship with Squirrel and another toad that would make people puke. Can you at least use Nutsmail!(Squirrel skinned) or RoundCube?

9. What does it use for an e-mail server? If Exim, can I easily add CLAMAV? etc.

10. Can people delete users and domains without following any special procedures without creating carnage and/or involving an admin or reseller?

11. We use FreeBSD and will probably do 64 bit this time. It says I can use ports to do the updates. That's terrific news. Can I upgrade to Apache 2.2.9, MySQL 5.0.51a, and PHP 5.2.6 without breaking cPanel? E.G. cPanel has been unarguably fragile in the past. Has any progress been made here?

12. Does it work well with FreeBSD 7 32 and 64 or is this a Linux product where the FreeBSD side is a hack?

Thanks!

[cPanelDavidG]

Hi all,

We had our servers on cPanel about 3 years ago. Then we moved to DirectAdmin. We are going to change NOCs. The NOC owner wanted met to look at cPanel again because he is familiar with it and sells it. I have these questions:

1. Can I create an FTP structure like this:
owner/domains/FirstDomain.com/private_ftp/home/george/
OR
owner/FirstDomain.com/private_ftp/home/george/
(Note the domain separation under owner)

When owner logs in he can see and work with owner's and george's files.
When george logs in, he can see and work only with georges files and anything he creates above that level. (I would be creating the Private_FTP directory,

We use the directory structure of /home/username/ to be the home directory of a cPanel user where username is their cPanel username. You can then create any path you desire within that via the cPanel interface and assign FTP users that only have access to specific directories (without them having sufficient access to go above that directory).

2. How up to date is SpamAssassin kept?

We are typically 1 version behind the released version to ensure the product has stabilized and ensure proper testing in a cPanel/WHM environment. If we find in testing that it causes issues in a cPanel environment, we may hold back the upgrade until our quality assurance team can make any necessary adjustments to ensure we can roll out the upgrade without breaking servers.

3. How up to date is AWStats kept?

We typically use the latest version of AWStats. Currently, we support 6.7 (the latest stable version).

4. Archive logs at the end of the month? One domain contributes 90 megs a day. That would a 2.7 gig Apache log.

Yes, logs are rotated at the end of the month to curb the possibility of a partition becoming full with logs.

5. Can you restore 1 file from a backup?

Our backups are in standard .tar.gz format. If you know how to extract a single file from a .tar.gz file you can extract a single file from backup.

6. Tell me about cluster management and syncrhonizing. Are we talknig fail-over or...?

At this time, we only natively support DNS clustering and Remote MySQL. More official clustering capabilities are coming in version 12. In the meantime, we see some customers implementing clustering, especially load balancing and fail-over, on their own.

7. I can restart services, but can I stop them? There should be a Start, Stop, and Restart and be able to determine if it was successful. What happens when you want to kill the DNS? SSH?

Via the WHM interface, you can restart services. We have a daemon (chksrvd) that monitors critical services (Exim, Apache etc.) every 8 minutes. If it detects the service as being down, it is automatically restarted and you are notified that this had to be done.

If you wish to disable a service, you can contact our technical analysts for assistance to ensure the service is stopped and not restarted by chksrvd.

8. What kind of Webmail does it use? It used to ship with Squirrel and another toad that would make people puke. Can you at least use Nutsmail!(Squirrel skinned) or RoundCube?

We bundle RoundCube, Horde and Squirrelmail.

9. What does it use for an e-mail server? If Exim, can I easily add CLAMAV? etc.

We use Exim. To add ClamAV, in the WHM interface and under the "cPanel" section click "Manage Plugins" and check the box for ClamAVConnector and click the "Save" button at the bottom of the screen. If you do not see this box, first check the box for "pro" then do this.

10. Can people delete users and domains without following any special procedures without creating carnage and/or involving an admin or reseller?

Users and domains should be able to be created, deleted, re-created etc. without issue. If you encounter any issues with this, please let us know so we can investigate.

11. We use FreeBSD and will probably do 64 bit this time. It says I can use ports to do the updates. That's terrific news. Can I upgrade to Apache 2.2.9, MySQL 5.0.51a, and PHP 5.2.6 without breaking cPanel? E.G. cPanel has been unarguably fragile in the past. Has any progress been made here?

cPanel 10 was relatively fragile on FreeBSD. cPanel 11 is very solid on FreeBSD as reliable FreeBSD support was a goal of the re-coding process that was cPanel 11. However, we recommend using EasyApache as your means to run Apache 2.2.9 and PHP 5.2.6 (as well as upgrading in the future). MySQL 5.0.51a with some backported fixes from upcoming versions of MySQL (hence the version you'll see is 5.0.51a-2cp) is the default for all cPanel/WHM installations.

12. Does it work well with FreeBSD 7 32 and 64 or is this a Linux product where the FreeBSD side is a hack?

Thanks!

People have been using cPanel/WHM in FreeBSD 7 since before we supported this version of FreeBSD with minimal issue. Since we've officially supported FreeBSD 7, I haven't seen any issues crop up here on the forums that are FreeBSD-specific.

Of course, I encourage you to make use of our no cost 15-day test license that we offer via the cPanel Store. Simply go to www.cPanel.net/store and proceed as if you were purchasing a license. When prompted for which license you wish to acquire, select the 15-day test license. Note, this becomes active the moment you request it.

I apologize for the delayed response. These forums are not our official means for handling pre-sales or technical inquiries. You will receive faster responses if you continue this discussion via email at sales@cpanel.net

[IT_Architect]

We use the directory structure of /home/username/

- What is the path to the VMs then if they are not above the user?
- Can I then make an ftp user named myadmin whose root directory subdirectory under /home/mydomain.com/private_html/, and make another ftp user named george whose root directory subdirectory under /home/mydomain.com/private_html/george? E.G. myadmin would have full rights from his home directory on up, and not be able to go down, and the same for george?

People have been using cPanel/WHM in FreeBSD 7 since before we supported this version of FreeBSD with minimal issue. Since we've officially supported FreeBSD 7, I haven't seen any issues crop up here on the forums that are FreeBSD-specific.

That's good news.

Thank you for answering my questions.

[cPanelDavidG]

- What is the path to the VMs then if they are not above the user?
- Can I then make an ftp user named myadmin whose root directory subdirectory under /home/mydomain.com/private_html/, and make another ftp user named george whose root directory subdirectory under /home/mydomain.com/private_html/george? E.G. myadmin would have full rights from his home directory on up, and not be able to go down, and the same for george?

cPanel is not VPS management software. It will work within a virtual machine - but it does not itself create virtual machines.

Well, you are using some non-standard uses of "up" and "down" so let me clarify. In your example, george will not be able to access /home/mydomain.com/private_html (one level up). But george could access any directories down/below that directory, e.g. /home/mydomain.com/private_html/george/images.

[IT_Architect]

cPanel is not VPS management software. It will work within a virtual machine - but it does not itself create virtual machines.

I meant Apache virtual host.

Well, you are using some non-standard uses of "up" and "down" so let me clarify. In your example, george will not be able to access /home/mydomain.com/private_html (one level up). But george could access any directories down/below that directory, e.g. /home/mydomain.com/private_html/george/images.

You answered these questions despite my best efforts to confuse you. I'll have to try something more difficult.

From the home directory of the user, where are the domains located. E.G.
home/user/domains/mydomain.com/public_html
or
home/user/mydomain.com/public_html

Thanks!

[cPanelDavidG]

From the home directory of the user, where are the domains located. E.G.
home/user/domains/mydomain.com/public_html
or
home/user/mydomain.com/public_html

Thanks!

The primary domain will have its files stored in /home/user/public_html

When creating an add-on or sub domain, users dictate where they want to create the directory/serve files from (this is asked during the sub/addon domain creation process). For example, for an addon domain, I may want to have my files in /home/user/downloads outside of the public_html directory so users cannot simply go to example.com/downloads to get there.

Parked domains simply provide the content of the domain they are pointing to, so they do not have their own directories on the file system.

[IT_Architect]

The primary domain will have its files stored in /home/user/public_html. When creating an add-on or sub domain, users dictate where they want to create the directory/serve files from (this is asked during the sub/addon domain creation process). For example, for an addon domain, I may want to have my files in /home/user/downloads outside of the public_html directory so users cannot simply go to example.com/downloads to get there.

That's still odd. You've answered my questions.

Thanks!