Which control panel(s) do you use?
Posted by Steve on Fri 27 Apr 2007 at 13:15
There are several control panels available for Debian GNU/Linux which allow you to use a web-browser to manage virtual hosting for websites and email. If you're using one I'd love to hear why you chose it, what you like about it, and what is missing.
In the commercial world the two most popular control panels appear to be cPanel and Plesk.
In the free-software world there doesn't appear to be a clear leader amongst the many available panels. Right now I count over 25 control panels which support Debian, and I'm sure there are many more.
If you're using a control panel I'd be interested to know:
- Which control panel are you using?
- Why did you choose it?
- What is great/awful about it?
Many people, including myself, are happy to maintain their sites via the command-line, configuring each service manually. But there is a big market for a successful GUI application which non-technical users can use to maintain their own servers - and I'm surprised we don't have a clear leader yet.
Most 'free' panels only cover a small part of the partion of the services which needs to be controlled which usually ends up in using multiple control panels. Software like Plesk are an all-in-one solution (almost install and forget). Plesk is mostly used by smaller 'web' hosters for a few shared hosting servers. With plesk it's very hard to spread the services over multiple servers.
But most hosters write their own control panel and store everything in a configuration database and use scripts to pull the configuration from the database and generate a valid configuration file for that service for that particulair server. As a result i guess that more than 60% of the control panels used are custom made.
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But a control panel for the customer has to be able to manage all these servers transparently. For example with Plesk you can't seperate the database and webserver. Almost every (non) commcerial suffer from this problem. Ever considered load balancing? That means copying the IIS or Apache configuration to another webserver and keep them in sync. So we, like many other hosting providers, have created a service website where a customer can control his services. We (the provider) specify on which machine(s) the service is running. Each server has a script like 'create-webserver-config.pl' which queries the database and returns the configuration blocks and generates the configuration file(s) for that service on that machine.
Using our 'custom' control panel a customer can control a very small website (like a blog website) or a very large commercial one which uses multiple (shared or dedicated) webservers. We have even created a windows desktop version of this control panel.
Because all the IP's and services are known in the database, this 'configuration' database can also be used to control the firewall on the routers.
I know a lot of hosting providers and none of them found a control panel that can manage multiple machines. All of them are using custom panels. We've even sold our solution to some hosting providers for a lot of money. The last one even paid 40.000 euro for our solution.
ps: We (like most providers) have both IIS and Apache servers, have 4 different database servers (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MSSQL and Oracle). DNS is as far i know almost done with bind. Our panel has support for qmail, Postfix, Sendmail and Exchange. As you can image, finding a control panel which supports all the different services is very hard, if not impossible.
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Seems to work very well and the latest version has support for multiple IP's on your server, which means you could actually set up SSL hosts easier, even though i still do this separately at the moment.
One slight annoyance is it tries to install proftpd for the ftp server. You can however change the deb requirements and use pureftpd instead, there are instructions on the contrib area of the site.
Ric_
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Don't blame me, I know this is "Debian Administration" but i evaluated under Ubuntu.
My need was to find a control panel that i could use for my actually working system which is mainly based on MySQL databases for FTP, mail, spamassasin, and the areas where i already have a web/sql based home made CP. But there is also PowerDNS in planning, and i wanted to store Apache config in SQL.
First i checked DTC wich seemed a clear and really useful system. Installation was a bit hard but i managed to overcome the package differences between Etch and Dapper. Anyhow i couldn't manage to add a second admin, reseller, customer. So it simply didn't worked (for me)
Second i tried ISPconfig, i knew it has a really good installation routine, the idea of separate the services and the control system with a second installation of apache+php is excellent. But apache for that purpose may be a bit overkill. And also the installation is complicated because when the installer runs into an error it simply deletes EVERYTHING in the installation folder. BUT doesn't do "cd .." so you have to "cd .." yourself, untar, and begin from the first step, and input all the answers X times. After succesfully install the whole system, i tried it but it didn't fit for me, no virtual users, heavy filebased configuration, it was far away from my setup.
SysCP was on my list the third, but it was (for me) the best. I didn't realize that it was included in Dapper, so i begun to hack on the .deb for Etch, and had to correct the package dependencies. After setting it up, and configuring a little bit around i was able to set up a customer, another admin, webservice for the user. I saw the key points where i have to modify it a bit to pull it over my existing installations.
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I fooled myself with creating the package and installed it with dpkg, and after it i easily can aptitude show syscp :)
So if anyone interested, i can give a short documentation how to recreate a useful package for Ubuntu Dapper. :)
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Ram Sambamurthy, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
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I think there is a big difference between a web host which offers Plesk and one which forces you to use it!
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I've tried out a couple, but I don't like Postfix!
With minimal effort I added some files to the stock Debian Exim config to work with the stock install of ISPConfig. It can't be that hard for the control panels to write out some flat files with can then be used with any CP.
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Maybe you could post your ISPconfig's for exim and a README somewhere it would help other people.
Ric_
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http://www.howtoforge.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8573
I believe that ISPConfig were already planning on supporting Exim in a future version though.
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I think that the expectation is that if you use a control panel you're already surrendering the configuration of the services. So from that point of view providing they do the job then the actual choice of Exim/Postfix/Qmail matters little.
For what it is worth though I agree. When I looked at control panels last year to find something to toy with I was disappointed I couldn't find many to test which allowed me to use Apache2 + Exim.
Similar issues probably occur with choosing an FTP server, where there are several alternatives. Still if I were running a control panel I'd probably not setup FTP at all - instead mandating scp/winscp.
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My main grumble about the mailer restriction though is that the control panels, in general, will only implement delivery options, not scanning options.
I find it especially poor that there isn't a solid control panel for Debian that uses Exim, especially as its the default MTA.
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We have also used Hostflow from starflow in the past (commercial app) which was very complicated to use but included everything from Domain name regsitratons/renewal, billing, quota's and seperate servers for Management and services. All config's are stored in a SQL db so it's easy to replicate servers if you need to due to failure or hardware upgrades.
Wayne
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This is a control panel created by a french team some years ago (in php/fi aka php2...) know written in php4 and also working with Etch with little tweaking. The purpose of AlternC is to be a easy to install web interface to handle web vhosts, imap/pop email accounts, mailing lists, web stats etc.
I guess it's where the power of 'Open-minded' Free Software projecs come : when you help a free software project, you quickly knows it enough that any problem become easy to answer, even if the software itself is not perfect ...
Hope you'll find something good in this gpl Web Control Panel :)
Benjamin
d-a.org fan :)
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Possible reason is typical way for small "web hoster" is that from hosting friends' websites you get to their friends (I know several). They host on your server because you can do something special for them, something what comercial providers won't, or just because you are friend of firend. At some moment you ask money for the service. And they refer you and you get to friends of their firends and you suddenly find yourself in position of a web hoster.
Having 10 websites is pretty easy - handling requests weekly or monthly is easy, You're geek logged in on server every day anyway. But having 50, or 150 webs is time consuming task and you need to automate things. You have made so many special exceptions, so many different things for different friends, so many custom scripts, that no "standard" control panel wins. You need your own.
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If you're hosting a few friends' sites, you probably don't have a T-1, or anything fancy, it's out of your price range, so you can't even THINK of growing to 150 sites. So, you need funding BEFORE you can host sites that numerous. Meaning, you need to plan the systems, take a loan out with a bank, start the business, market, and pray you get enough clients to pay the $500/month and up internet connection bill.
Starting with a few friends and building doesn't pay the bills ;-) It might have been the way things started in the early '90s when 28.8 dial-up was acceptable, but things are different when clients demand speed.
Just my opinion :)
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Now, I am adding new step: imagine you want to merge two "custom" control panels. For a CTO^H^H^Hgeek, there are lot of chalenging tasks. For businessman, it's a simple merger ...rebrand & raise price for anything you can - under the mark: make your plan, pick ONLY what you need... dont pay more... :) [we're getting off topic now]
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The possibilities are seeminglessly(is this a word?) endless. Even the usermin side is nice and easy to use
My only complaint is creating and setting up sql users and databases... would like to see the CPanel style where it is all in one, but maybe i am just missing that part of it... I am still new to Linux (Debian specifically).
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I know only the Webmin, and what I work, that if calls BRMA (BR Multi-Access) is commercial but efficient, it have a practical administration, make to control the Internet access of employes in his work (I guess this is not the purpose of this forum topic, but..). It have mailServer, Firewall, Cluster, IDS, VNP, Antispam, Antivirus, SmartWeb (blocks sites by category or word-key in url), Fundetect (blocks P2P, streaming, chat (like msn)), reports, graphs, backups (configurations, home, reportsââ†4;¬Â¦ and easy restoration, its quick up a new server), , AutoUpdateâââ€& #154;¬Â¦ All controlled for group or user. And other functions... Works on a Linux distribution developed by them. You can see it, and get a trial in www.brc.com.br
Ps.: I not a partner of them... :)
I am looking to one that makes the same thing, but is under GNU. To manage easily a ISP!
regards!!!
David - underback@hotmail.com
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I've used cPanel, Plesk, and trying to test out ISPConfig 3 ... hope there will be no issues... but what do you guys use now a days? [c'mon it's been a year since the last post!]
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