disable whm for reseller?

[dory36]

Is there any way to disable whm, or put a separate password on whm than cpanel, for some of my resellers?

(They are not really resellers, but I want them to be able to access their group members' sites using their own password, and I want to be able to set up a different skeleton directory for new sites in the diferent groups.)
Thanks - Bill

[ddeans]

They would have to have WHM access in order to login to their users cPanels.

However you can edit their WHM to where there is almost nothing there.

[dory36]

Someone with reseller privs can log into a user account by going to domain/cpanel and entering the domain's userid and the reseller's password.

Bill

[dory36]

Now it's worse - the new cpanel update (9.4.0) puts whm into the cpanel for resellers. I can't see any way to delete this.

I need the reseller function to allow me to create sites using the remote key and the cpanel skeleton directory, and also to allow the designated account owner to be able to log in via cpanel to his or her users' cpanels and fix stuff -- but I don't want the account owner to be able to create accounts using whm, or do anything else via whm for that matter.

Any ideas?
Bill

[ddeans]

If you goto the reseller center you can modify their priviledges so that ther are unable to do that kinda stuff.

[dory36]

Thanks - I did eliminate almost every privilege, but it looks like I have to allow them to create accounts manually in whm in order for the remote key to work in creating accounts using my setup scripts. That's the feature I am most concerned about.

[ddeans]

Okay, let me make sure I have this right. You have a script that automaticially installs accounts for your resellers? But you don't want them to be able to manually create an account?

[dory36]

Exactly. The "resellers" are not really resellers in the business sense of the word - they are designers who will also support their customers, but I am the one who collects for hosting.

My signup script will create the hosting account for the appropriate designer automatically, notify the designer, and handle the billing. This depends on the remote key function.

The reseller feature works very well for everything I need to do -- if I can keep the designers out of whm!

Thanks - Bill

[ddeans]

What script are you using? One you wrote?

[dory36]

No, I am using the account creation script from dramsystem.com.

[ddeans]

I dunno. I was thinking that you could setup your script to where all users were created under root and then you transferred the accounts to the reseller. This way you can set it to where they can't create accounts but still have access to their user's sites.

[dory36]

I may have found a non-technical solution . . .

I create a dummy account for the designer using a bogus domain name (somedomain.local is how I am doing this).

Ownership of this dummy account is at root; ownership of all the designer's customers accounts is with the dummy account.

The designer doesn't get told his username, just his password.

This way, when the designer logs into a client cpanel using his designer password, he get access, and the dropdown list of domains (new in 9.4.0) shows all the other domains for the designer, but not his own. If he has his own real domain, it shows as just a client site under his reseller account.

The only awkward part is letting the designer create his own skeleton directory - he needs FTP access to the dummy account's skel directory. But I think I can finesse that somehow.

[ddeans]

Great Idea!

just have him send you the info for the skeleton directory. Or setup a new ftp user on his account so that he still doesn't know the real username.