I have a freebsd server 4.8 with cpanel. Since i got it, ive been having one problem after another, im only hosting about 6 sites on it. Everyday i get emails stating that users cannot load pages, the sites are slow, "Socket timeout after 10 seconds" ip cannot connect, whm says apache failed, when it hasnt. I cannot afford to have support work on it for 3 or 4 hours as im not even making half the cost of the server. Im checking our cpanel forums, finding out theres alot of problems with bsd and cpanel. Ive updated apache only to find out theres bugs when you do this or that. Is there any place i can go to get a bit cheaper support or have someoen look into these problems? I'll need to just cancell it if i cant get it fixed.


I did have someoen look into it, i think they just made it worse, the did fix alot of things, but now when i try to create a subdomain with cpanel, it wont load with www. along with i cannot view dns anymore in whm it only shows empty dropdown menus. Maybe i need cpanel reinstall i dont know. Anyone know how much it would cost to have that reinstalled? or even if that can be done? Im really frustrated as i don't know a whole lot about bsd or even linux.

FreeBSD support for Cpanel was only made quite recently. They did encounter several integration issues with both FreeBSD and Cpanel. It seems that although both worked nicely separately, they just do not get together well. I am sure that the teething problems have been resolved as of late. You could upgrade the Cpanel to probably the latest stable and if that does not resolve your issue, upgrade to the latest release version. You can do that in WHM.

It seems that now, the problem-free integration would be with Redhat 9 and Cpanel.

Ive done that i think. Im thinking about going with redhat, i only went with bsd because i was told it was more stable and more secure. Since im only hosting 6 small sites, and the os reinstall is only 75$ what would be recomended to go with? redhat and cpanel? Ive heard good things, i just want somthign that will let a n00b do some things with, without having to fix things much. Anyoen know if the os reinstall allows you to change the os from bsd to redhat?

Yes, you should be able to opt for an OS change for the OS Restore since they will be wiping your harddisk clean for that. Make sure you make the backups before you request for the change.

There seems to be some problems with Redhat Enterprise with Cpanel. The most stable OS with Cpanel is probably Redhat 9.

Thanks for the info.

Remember that you'll have to reinstall everything again in April when Redhat 9 reaches its end-of-life and patches are no longer available if you go with RH 9 though.

Dam lol ok, so what should i go with then? I see that they recomend redhat enterprise 3.0 now. What sort of issues have people been having with it? Got one more question, when i got my bsd server, apache and everythign was installed and working. I only has to enter the dns information etc and set an account up in whm. Is this also the case with RHE? I see in the forums it says apache(not configured) and that apache2 does not work with cpanel, not that i car if its apache 2 , but will the installed software work with RHE, cpanel etc? I just want to make sure this time before i go ahead and do this.

Actually the official support directly from Redhat may be gone but they are still going to support RH 9 through the Fedora legacy updates. If you prefer a more commercial update, you could opt for Progeny which goes for $5/mth. I will be taking the Progeny route.

You could also learn how to admin your server without Cpanel and have uptimes off 300-400 days and hundereds of vhosts like my servers do. You get MUCH better performance and security when you do not use any control panel software. There is also a freeware control panel software located in the ports tree called 'webmin' I do not use it myself but many people do.

Thanks

Jeremy Suo-Anttila
Unix Systems Admin
Layeredtech.com
BSDnews.org

Actually it depends.. If you know how to do the server administration then the option without control panel and doing your own customization and security it will be great. But if you know next to nothing about it, the server would probably be easily compromised. The control panel does help though in such circumstances. It does introduce some several which is better than none.

I think this is what happened with my server. A got a friend of mine to fix a couple of things, he didnt liek the cpanel too much and didnt know anything about it, he then went on to show me how to do things *manually* its just a bit much for me to learn right now. I also like offering cpanel to clients as it makes thngs a whole lot easier. Im thinking the redhat enterprise and cpanel might be the way to go, from what im reading in the forums.

Have you thought of maybe trying 'webmin' from the ports tree? Its a free Cpanel like application that has great FreeBSD support.

You can install it from the ports tree or as a package with pkg_add. Let me know if you need a hand and I can walk you through it.


The crummy thing about Control Panels is like you said. You either have to rely on it 100% to do everything and not touch a config file yourself with an editor or you have to not use one at all and do it all manually. I prefer to do it all manually myself since that is how I learned to do it from the start.

-delo

Actually i did try webmin, thats how i ended up destroying my ftpd, i ended up getting support to fix it for me.

Which ftpd daemon are you running on that server? The base ftpd or a replacement like pure-ftpd or something else?

proftp, i couldnt get pure to work with cpanel.