cPanel is a convenient application that allows users to administer multi-tenant web servers through a GUI interface instead of the traditional command line. WHM provides you root level access to your server whereas cPanel provides user level access interface to manage their own web hosting account on the server.
Although the installation for cPanel is relatively simple, the script does take quite a while to run.
Notes:
- Once cPanel is installed, it cannot be removed from the server without a complete server restore. cPanel does not offer an uninstaller.
- Intergrid provides a $40 per month (ex GST) for a cPanel/WHM (Dedicated server) license. Alternatively, you can purchase the license directly from cPanel or another authorised reseller.
Installation Prerequisites:
- A fresh and minimal installation of CentOS 6.5 server.
- A minimum of 1 GB RAM.
- A Minimum of 20GB free disk space required for cPanel installation.
Installation Procedure:
We must first ensure that CentOS is updated. We'll check first for any available operating system updates using the following command:
# yum update
Once you have completed all of the updates (if any), we'll setup the hostname for the server. The server must have a standard hostname/FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name) as this is required for cPanel. If it is not yet set, enter the following command. Replace 'test.intergrid.com.au' with your hostname/FQDN:
# hostname 'test.intergrid.com.au'
Once you have updated CentOS and setup a proper hostname, we can now begin to install cPanel. Fortunately, cPanel provides an auto-install script that we can use. We'll download the script to the /home directory.
# cd /home && curl -o latest -L https://securedownloads.cpanel.net/latest && sh latest
This above command changes your session to the home directory, downloads the most recent version of cPanel & WHM, and runs the installation script.
Note: I highly suggest to run the cPanel auto install in screen mode if you are doing it over SSH. Depending on your server resources and bandwidth speed, it can take around 20~40 minutes.
Once that script completes the installation, it will show that the cPanel installation is complete. You may be asked to reboot the server after installation.
Post-installation procedure
After that you need to complete the installation wizard from the web based interface and you can access WHM using the following URL:
OR
cPanel will open up the web interface like similar to below.
Login with user “root” and your password. There are some more clicks remaining to complete the cPanel installation. Agree to the End User License Agreement by clicking “I Agree/Go to Step 2” button.
Provide a valid e-mail address in the Contact information panel because cPanel sends important alerts to this email address. It is recommended that you have a separate email address for this purpose.
You must provide a valid FQDN hostname and Resolver IPs for your server in the Networking section, you can use Google DNS servers in this section if you don’t have your own resolvers.
If you have more than one IP address attached to your NIC card and you want to set up a specific IP address other than your server’s main IP address.
Here you can select DNS server you want to use. There's a comparison table in the section as well citing each server's advantages and disadvantages so you can compare and choose which one suits your needs.
Below the DNS server selection panel, you need to specify which Name Servers you want to use in format of ns1/ns2.example.com. Also, Add an A entry for your hostname and name server by selecting the check box.
You can select and set up different services like FTP, Mail and Cphulk in Step 5 of thistheweb based wizard.
You can select the FTP server of your choice from this wizard. You can choose which best fits your requirements.
Below the FTP server selection panel is a panel for Cphulk configuration. Cphulk brute force protection detects and blocks false password attacks and blocks their IP address from your server. You can enable/disable and configure it from this step.
Lastly, Step 6 allows you to enable quotas which helps you to track down disk space usage. Select “Use file system quotas” and click on “Finish setup wizard” to complete the installation process. Once done, the WHM home page will appear.
This is the WHM dashboard. Feel free to explore and configure your new setup.
