ISPConfig Webhosting Appliance

[VMTN_Admin]

http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/342

Full featured and secure web- and mail hosting appliance with ISPConfig management interface.

[grazman]

VMWARE tools is not installed, which always seems to cause issues with time. Are you using NTP? If not, try it. If you are, set time manually and have it get time from hardware clock.

[grazman]

It is, I agree. We had to stop using it though, there was no spec file left behind so upgrades always failed and SSL certificates could not manually be reissues because it was far to difficult to find the directories the author used, as both the cert and app paths are "non standard" for this package. Reading is one thing, using is another.

[jonwatson]

Great appliance. I built one from scratch last week and am now using this prebuilt one for another site.

I wonder, though, is there some way to regenerate the certificates in this appliance so that they belong to my domain rather than snakeoil.dom?

Thanks!

[kingneutron]

--Login as root using the password from here:

http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/342

' dhclient eth0 ' == Obtain DHCP IP address for networking

' apt-get update '

--Since 2.6.8 headers aren't supported anymore, I did a quick apt-cache search and grep for headers and 686, and ended up installing 2.6.16-1-686:

' apt-get install build-essential linux-image-2.6.16-1-686 linux-headers-2.6.16-1-686 grub '

--When this is done, you need to REBOOT into the new kernel:

' reboot '

--After this, select "Install Vmware Tools" from the Workstation/Server menu.

' cd /usr/local/src '

' mount /media/cdrom0 '

' tar xzf /media/cdrom0/VMwareTools*.gz '

' cd vmware-tools-distrib '

' ./vmware-install.pl '

--Please Let me know if this doesn't work.

[jonwatson]

Anyone? Anyway to generate new certs?

[kingneutron]

I haven't had to do this myself, but you should be able to replace the file

" /root/ispconfig/httpd/conf/ssl.crt/server.crt " with your own file and then issue

' /etc/init.d/ispconfig_server restart '.

If the init.d restart doesn't work, reboot the VM.

See:

http://www.cacert.org

http://www.registerfly.com/ssl/

http://www.instantssl.com/

[roteri]

No matter what I do, I cannot change the hostname of this VM. I've changed the /etc/hosts/ file, updated the /etc/network/interfaces file too. It takes the change, then reverts back after reboot. And yes, I've run it using su. Any ideas?

[kingneutron]

You have to modify /etc/hostname -- put in a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) such as blah.serverseries.org

[smc1981]

Hi !

I'm triying to connect to mail server by the Outlook Express client but the username and password is always wrong...

I try all the possibilities, with security encription, with username@domain.com, username only, username@domain, web1_username@domain.com, web1_username only, etc...

Note: the webmail works fine and send messages correctly

[tracom]

you have to reinstall ispconfig to redo the certs. this isnt as bad as it seems as it sees that it is already installed and just redoes the 8 or 9 questions at the beginning.

[kingneutron]

Could you elaborate, please? Step by step...

I thought you were saying to reinstall the ispconfig package, and there is none.

How do you "reinstall ispconfig"?

[SamTzu]

Heres how I do it... (Your milage may vary - YMMV.)

(You may mark this reply as a Helpful Answer

Change root & admin passswords

passwd root

passwd admin

Change server name & address

vi /etc/hosts

vi /etc/hostname

vi /etc/network/interfaces

reboot

Login as admin with SSH client (I use Putty)

su

Change MySql password & access rights (replace with your servername and password)

mysqladmin -h server1.example.com -u root password ispconfig

Download ISPConfig and unzip it (You may have to change the version number!)

wget http://mesh.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/ispconfig/ISPConfig-2.2.12.tar.gz

tar xvfz ISPConfig-2.2.12.tar.gz

Rerun ISPConfig setup as root and remake certificates during setup NOTICE!!! Do not encrypt your keys or you will have to login to the server each time you reboot.

su

/home/admin/install_ispconfig/setup

I also remade the Certs manually before this to avoid cert error messages (If you want to clone the VM's.)

openssl genrsa -des3 -passout pass:ReplaceWithYourPassword -out /root/ispconfig/httpd/conf/ssl.key/server.key2 1024

openssl req -new -passin pass:ReplaceWithYourPassword -passout pass:ReplaceWithYourPassword -key /root/ispconfig/httpd/conf/ssl.key/server.key2 -out /root/ispconfig/httpd/conf/ssl.csr/server.csr -days 999

openssl req -x509 -passin pass:ReplaceWithYourPassword -passout pass:ReplaceWithYourPassword -key /root/ispconfig/httpd/conf/ssl.key/server.key2 -in /root/ispconfig/httpd/conf/ssl.csr/server.csr -out /root/ispconfig/httpd/conf/ssl.crt/server.crt -days 999

openssl rsa -passin pass:ReplaceWithYourPassword -in /root/ispconfig/httpd/conf/ssl.key/server.key2 -out /root/ispconfig/httpd/conf/ssl.key/server.key

chmod 400 /root/ispconfig/httpd/conf/ssl.key/server.key

Login to ISPConfig as admin and change server settings.

https://YourServerAddress:81

Things that still need to be done.

\- How to change monit & munin passwords and certificates?

http://www.ispconfig.com/index.htm

http://www.howtoforge.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=14

Lots more info about ISPConfig on their forums.

Sam

Message was edited by:

SamTzu

Message was edited by:

SamTzu

Message was edited by:

SamTzu

Message was edited by:

SamTzu

Message was edited by:

SamTzu

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SamTzu

[greg256]

Hi

Can someone please seed this, looks great but i'm stuck at 90.4%, also i am unable to connect to the vmware tracker.

Thanks

Greg

Message was edited by:

greg256

[SamTzu]

Changing MySql credentials is easier to do from webmin.

Also the Postfix config files need to be changed.

Do this command in /etc and /etc/postfix dirs.

You may also want to do it in /var/log dir.

find ./ -type f -exec sed -i 's/example.com/yourdomain.com/' \{} \;

Sam

[SamTzu]

Here too...

/var/lib/named/etc/bind

Sam

[dotcom]

If you are on a NAT translated address, Bit Torrent will be incredibly slow, and may never finish.

To make bit torrent work well, the outside servers need to be able to initiate connections to you. If you are on NAT, thay can't do that, so you may need a couple weeks to finish the download.

To configure a natting router to speed up bit torrent, you need to map ports 6881-6889 to your local machine. An example of how to do this:

http://p2p.weblogsinc.com/2005/04/24/how-to-configure-your-router-to-allow-fast-bittorrent-downloads...

Enter the above link (one line, no spaces, mind the wordwrap).

Or you can google "making bit torrent go faster".

Be mindful of the fact that you may want to undo this when you are finished, as it will increase the traffic coming from your machine as

you serve your file collection to the net.

[dotcom]

Somewhere in your helpful post, you should probably tell people to run kbdconfig to configure their keyboard.

They should also run "apt-get update" and "apt-get dselect-upgrade".

For some reason I'm having to run these several times, this package is pretty old and full of security flaws that are all easy to fix.

Someone should update it, and put a complete "hot to set up" guide in /etc/motd...

Ok, on my third apt-get run, proftp is telling me it can't convert my config... How does one get through major changes like this? Is there a config guide somewhere that tells how to handle updates to packages that have been configured in a specific way in ISPConfig?

[dotcom]

I have built an Ubuntu 6.06 LTS appliance based on HowtoForge.com's "The Perfect Setup - Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Server" combined with the current ISPconfig.

I don't have any howto documentation yet, I assume the documentation here might work...

But if someone wants a more up to date appliance, drop me a line... appliance at dot.com

I built it as a 15gig filesystem. I want to run these for customers, to isolate their php scripts so that one customer's security problem doesn't become all customer's security problem. So it is intended to be small enough to fit 6 to 10 of them on a server, with some room for backups.

I could build you a custom version if you prefer. I can pre-build it with your IP addresses, or I can built it directly on your server (though this might take longer if your net connection is slow or far away).

I've spent 15 years building custom unix servers for customers, large and small. Let me build one for you! I can host it for you too... I've got my own server room with redundant fiber connections built in a telephone company central office...

George

[kingneutron]

--You rock, man.

--Can we get a DL link for the non-customized ver? TIA

// I've been using Megaupload.com for my appliances

[rhl2000]

Somewhere in your helpful post, you should probably

tell people to run kbdconfig to configure their

keyboard.

Yep, that one threw me off for while, since the German kb layout is completely foreign to me....

They should also run "apt-get update" and "apt-get

dselect-upgrade".

For some reason I'm having to run these several

times, this package is pretty old and full of

security flaws that are all easy to fix.

Warning: this VM was built on Debian 3.1 (aka "sarge") over a year ago.. The /etc/apt/sources.list file is referencing "stable" and "testing", which at the time was the same as "sarge" and "etch". But now that "etch" is the new "stable", this configuration of apt sources will cause "apt-get upgrade" or "apt-get dselect-upgrade" to want to replace many "sarge" packages with their "etch" counterparts.

I edited /etc/apt/sources.list, replacing all occurences of "stable" with "sarge", as well as all occurences of "testing" with "etch" (and commenting out the references to "etc"). I then did one pass only of "apt-get update" and "apt-get dselect-upgrade", and all was stable and seemed operational, as far as I could tell from the console messages at boot-time.

I also installed a 686 kernel (2.6.8-4-686) to override the 386 one, installed the VMware tools, added "clock=pit" at the end of the "kernel=" line in /boot/grub/menu.lst (a clock sync trick found in these forums), set tools.syncTime = "TRUE" in the vmx file, and am now just poised for testing this updated appliance.

Someone should update it, and put a complete "hot to

set up" guide in /etc/motd...

True. Well, at least /etc/motd gives us a clue about running "network_setup" to adapt the IP settings to our network... But it should REALLY mention kbdconfig, as well as tzconfig, unless you have a German keyboard and live in Berlin's time zone.

Ok, on my third apt-get run, proftp is telling me it

can't convert my config...

I bet that has to do with this "stable=sarge" -vs- "stable=etch" issue. In fact, I got similar error messages, one from ProFTP and a couple more from other services, when I tried to "apt-get dist-upgrade" the appliance to "etch". Lucky for me I had kept a backup of the appliance in its fully updated "sarge" mode...

How does one get through

major changes like this? Is there a config guide

somewhere that tells how to handle updates to

packages that have been configured in a specific way

in ISPConfig?

I have not found anwers to these yet. First I need to investigate my fully up to date sarge-based ISPConfig VM for its suitability to my needs and those of my clients. Later I'll see about either upgrading it to "etc", or building one like yours, based on a recent Ubuntu server. Or maybe you will let me try yours...