OK to create accounts in WHM as root, or should I create a reseller?

[Metro2]

While I'm not new to cPanel at all, this is a rather noob question:

Should I create a reseller account in WHM and use that to create new accounts for customers?

The reason I ask is - I recently moved the accounts from an old server to a new one, and on the new box I did away with the old un-used reseller accounts. I went into reseller and changed the ownership of all accounts to root.

This has created a bit of odd behavior. For example - if I suspend an account now and someone goes to that domain in their browser, it displays the suspended.page/index.html of one of the resellers I deleted. (IE: http://resellerxxxxxxxxabc.com/suspended.page/ )

When I delete resellerxxxxxxxxabc.com/suspended.page/ folder, suspended accounts merely get a page not found error because it's still trying to send them to http://resellerxxxxxxxxabc.com/suspe...age/index.html instead of /usr/local/cpanel/etc/suspended.page/index.html or /usr/local/apache/htdocs/suspended.page/index.html


This is all leading me to believe that I should not be logging in to WHM as root and creating accounts or making root the account owner, and that I should create a reseller to put all accounts under.

Can someone confirm my suspicion / help me with this noob question?
Thank you muchly!

[cPanelDavidG]

From the standpoint of the software functioning properly, it shouldn't be needed. If you are still experiencing those issues, I'd recommend seeking support from your cPanel Licensing provider.

Many clients do set up a root-level reseller for the purpose of creating accounts. Though, the justification for this is almost unanimously for security reasons. The theory is: the less your actual root password gets transmitted, the less likely it is to be sniffed then used inappropriately by a third party.

[Metro2]

Thanks for the reply, makes sense.

I'm still troubleshooting the ownership / suspension issue. My data center would be a last resort on that because they have stated on more than one occasion that they only support "Stable" and I run Release, and that sort of issue isn't something they will typically know how to address. I'm guessing it has something to do with the fact that the accounts were transferred from a box that had reseller owners on it, and when I moved them to this new box I assigned all accounts the ownership of root. Just one of those things that's going to take some research to track down...

[cPanelDavidG]

... that sort of issue isn't something they will typically know how to address. ...

Our resellers are always welcome to contact us directly for assistance for issues they cannot resolve themselves on their customers' servers.

[BraveX]

any clients do set up a root-level reseller for the purpose of creating accounts. Though, the justification for this is almost unanimously for security reasons. The theory is: the less your actual root password gets transmitted, the less likely it is to be sniffed then used inappropriately by a third party.

Hmmmm. That's an interesting idea. Never thought to do that. Can you offer some tips on this?

Thanks!

[cPanelDavidG]

Hmmmm. That's an interesting idea. Never thought to do that. Can you offer some tips on this?

Thanks!

It works much like managing a server as if you were root, except you just create yourself a reseller account with root privileges (if you don't have a spare domain, use a non-existent one like reseller.fake). Then login to WHM using that login instead of root and do everything the same way. Nothing excessively fancy to it other than not using user "root" frequently.