Cpanel Newbie Guide Guide - How To

Cpanel Newbie Guide, WHM / Cpanel

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login to your WHM as the root user

Click on Basic cPanel/WHM Setup



Main Shared Virtual Host IP:
This is your servers main IP address to be used be default with all shared hosting accounts.  This should be setup by default.

Server Contact E-Mail Address:
You will get email alerts sent to this address.

Server Contact Pager Address:
contact method for receiving special alerts if your server goes down. We recommend leaving this empty.

Default cPanel Theme:
The theme you want to be used be default with all new hosting accounts. To see what themes you have installed on the server, scroll down to the left hand size and look for the title: Themes, click on List Installed cPanel Themes. Recommended theme: x

Default Home Directory:
We recommend setting this to: /home It should already be setup.

Home Directory Prefix:
Leave this set to home

Minimum Uid:
Leave blank

Alternate Main Ethernet Device:
Don't touch this unless you've setup a custom ethernet configuration.

Hostname:
If the main site for the server was blahblah.com  I could set the hostname to server1.blahblah.com or anything.blahblah.com   Make sure to set your hostname properly by using the Change Hostname link at the top left, this should match what you set there.

Missing Hostname A record Warnings: Once you modify your Hostname you need to Add A DNZ Zone for it. This is to ensure when a mail server or systems checks to see if your server is online, it will respond. You can add an A record to your hostname in: Network Setup >> Hostname.


Primary Nameserver:
There are two options for these depending on what you're doing.
Option 1) Shared Nameservers
This is where you would use your datacentre's default name servers such as ns1.blahblah.com and ns2.blahblah.com.

Option 2 Private Nameservers HIGHLY recommended


Primary Nameserver
ns1.blahblah.com 

Secondary Nameserver
ns2.blahblah.com

Enter the correct names, click assign IP address. Then assign A entry for this nameserver. You can check what IP's are available in WHM >> IP Functions >> Show or Delete Current IP Addresses

Apache Access Log Style:
Set this to: combined


First off is updates with Cpanel: Update Config
How your software gets updated.
Login to WHM (Web Host Manager) and go to, Update Config:

Edge Release:
It has the latest fixes but isn't as well tested as other releases.

Current:
This is upgraded from the edge release so it has been tested a bit more.

Release:
has been run on more systems but it takes longer for updates to get to it. Recommended Selection

Stable:
most stable version around.

We recommend you set to manual updates, Release option. I prefer manual over automatic because I like to keep a better eye on what has been changed.

To see if new updates are available go to http://layer2.cpanel.net
You can also click on the Change Log at the top of WHM to see their latest updates and releases.

Tweak Settings:
This is one of the most important sections of the configuration for your server.

Domains: Adding domains to the system.
 Allow Creation of Parked/Addon Domains that are not registered  

Allow Creation of Parked/Addon Domains that resolve to other servers (ie domain transfers) This can be a major security problem. If you must have it enabled, be sure to not allow users to park common domains.

  Allow users to Park/Addon Domains on top of domains owned by other users. 

 Prevent users from parking/adding on common internet domains. (ie hotmail.com, gmail.com)

Mail: Email and related settings

 Add the mail. prefix for mailman urls (ie http://mail.domain.com/mailman)  

Attempt to prevent pop3 connection floods

BoxTrapper Spam Trap

 Default catch-all/default address behavior for new accounts. fail will generally save the most CPU time.
Set to FAIL.

Email users when they have reached 80% of their bandwidth .

Horde Webmail - a webmail interface that has custom skins, notes, filters and more.

 Include a list of Pop before SMTP senders in the X-PopBeforeSMTP header when relaying mail.

 Mailman Mailing list software, clients can use it through their own Cpanel. 

  Neomail Webmail

 Prevent the user 'nobody' from sending out mail to remote addresses (php and cgi scripts generally run as nobody if you are not using phpsuexec and suexec respectively.) Do NOT turn this on if you're not using PHPSuexec, since you're reading this guide then leave this option UNCHECKED or all contact form mail will BREAK!

Silently Discard all FormMail-clone requests with a bcc: header in the subject line

SpamAssassin.

 SpamAssassin Spam Box allows users to configure it through their control panel, very nice.

SquirrelMail Webmail.

 The maximum each domain can send out per hour (0 is unlimited): If you have clients on your server I suggest entering a high value such as 500. This limits the sending amount of mail for the entire domain, not per email address. If they start reporting they can't send messages out you can increase it. 

 The number of times users are allowed to check their mail using pop3 per hour:  60 is recommended.

 Track the origin of messages sent though the mail server by adding the X-Source headers (exim 4.34+ required)

MySQL: Database stuff

Use old style (4.0) passwords with mySQL 4.1 NOTE: Only use this if you have MySQL 4.1 installed.

Notifications:

 Disable Suspending accounts that exceed their bandwidth limit. 
 
Disk Space Usage Warnings - Email users with their account starts running out of disk space.

Email Box Usage Warnings - Email users with their mailbox starts running out of disk space.

Software: - Extra server wide software available

FormMail-clone cgi

Interchange Version to use (if you disable interchange, you must turn off the service in the service manager). I suggest disabling it, old and useless.

Loader to use for internal cPanel PHP (Use oldsourceguardian for version 1.x and 2.x)

Stats Programs: - How you can view website traffic 

Analog Stats
Awstats Reverse Dns Resolution
Awstats Stats
Webalizer Stats

Stats and Logs: How the server handles log files

Allow users to update Awstats from cPanel - Lets them update stats manually, adds to server load.
Delete each domain's access logs after stats run 
Do not include password in the raw log download link in cPanel (via ftp).  
Do not reset /usr/local/apache/domlogs/ftpxferlog after it has been seperated into each domain name's ftp log 
Exim Stats Daemon 
Keep Stats Log
Keep log files at the end of the month (default is off as you can run out of disk space)
When viewing bandwidth usage in WHM, always display in Megabytes first.

Stats and Logs: When you click on Server Status in WHM or Cpanel
The load average that will cause the server status to appear red (leave blank for default): 5 to 10 is recommended

System:
Allow Sharing Nameserver Ips  - Allows you to give resellers private nameservers without dedicated IPs
Allow cPanel users to install SSL Hosts if they have a dedicated ip.
Allow cPanel users to reset their password via email
Allow cpanel and admin binaries to be run from other applications besides the cpanel server (cpsrvd).  
 Allow perl updates from rpm based linux vendors  
Always redirect users to the ssl/tls ports when visiting /cpanel, /webmail, etc.  
 Disable Disk Quota display caching.

Disable Http Authentication for cPanel/WebMail/WHM Logins  
Disable login with root or reseller password into the users' cPanel interface.

Disable whois lookups for the nameserver ip manager.  
Display Errors in cPanel instead of logging them to /usr/local/cpanel/logs/error_log  
Do not warn about features that will be depreciated in later releases.

Do not warn users about the system backup being disabled in cPanel.



Backups
Configure Backup under WHM

cat filename.txt : view the contents of filename.txt on your screen

cd : change directory · · cd /usr/local/apache : go to /usr/local/apache/ directory
cd ~ : go to your home directory
cd - : go to the last directory you were in
cd .. : go up a directory cat : print file contents to the screen

cp : copy a file
cp filename filename.backup : copies filename to filename.backup
cp -a /home/FRED/public_html/* /home/JACK/public_html/ : copies all files and permissions form one directory to another.

last : shows who logged in and when
last -10 : shows only the last 10 logins
last -10 -a : shows last 10 logins, with the hostname

ls : list files/directories in a directory, comparable to dir in windows/dos.
ls -al : shows all files (including ones that start with a period), directories, and details attributes for each file.

mv : Move a file command
mv oldfilename newfilename : Move a file or directory from oldfilename to newfilename

ps: ps is short for process status. It's used to show currently running processes and their PID.
A process ID is a unique number that identifies a process, with that you can kill or terminate a running program on your server.
ps U username : shows processes for a certain user
ps aux : shows all system processes
ps aux --forest : shows all system processes like the above but organizes in a hierarchy that's very useful!

rm : delete a file
rm filename.txt : deletes filename.txt, will more than likely ask if you really want to delete it
rm -f filename.txt : deletes filename.txt, will not ask for confirmation before deleting.
rm -rf tmp/ : recursively deletes the directory tmp, and all files in it, including subdirectories. BE CAREFULL WITH THIS!!!

TAR: Creating and Extracting .tar.gz and .tar files
tar -zxvf file.tar.gz : Extracts the file
tar -xvf file.tar : Extracts the file
tar -cf archive.tar contents/ : Takes everything from contents/ and puts it into archive.tar
gzip -d filename.gz : Decompress the file, extract it.

VI ssh commands
vi : Text editor
vi /home/USERNAME/public_html/index.html : edit the index page for the users website.
you can use the following useful commands, you will need to hit SHIFT + : to go into command mode

:q! : quits the file without saving and exits vi
:w : This writes the file to disk, saves it
:wq : This saves the file to disk and exists vi
:$ : Takes you to the last line of the file
:0 : Takes you to the first line of the file

w : shows who is currently logged in and where they are logged in from.

ZIP Files:  Extracting .zip files shell command
unzip file.zip