DirectAdmin Installation Guide

Step 1: Do you meet the system requirements?

– Clean OS install: check install.php to ensure you’ve got a supported OS
– At least one external IP address (IP Requirements)
– SSH installed, gcc, g++, openssl-devel installed.
– Run the pre-install commands before starting the install

Step 2: Make sure your license information is correct.

Sign into your client account at https://www.directadmin.com/clients and click the “view” link next to your license.

Verify that the server IP address and operating system is correct. Also make sure that the license is Active and Verified (if it isn’t, then our billing system hasn’t processed your order yet).

Step 3: Begin the installation!

**** SPECIAL NOTICE for non-root ssh logins ****
If logging in as a user other than admin or root (using su to gain root access):

You *must* add “AllowUsers username” to /etc/ssh/sshd_config before you log out from root or you’ll lose root on the server forever, and you’ll have to format.

  1. Login as root and download the setup.sh filewget -O setup.sh https://www.directadmin.com/setup.sh
    Hint: Use “fetch” instead of “wget” on FreeBSD systems.
  2. Change permissions on the setup.sh filechmod 755 setup.sh
  3. Run the script./setup.sh auto
    The auto method will be best for most people. It automatically installs everything for you, including the CSF firewall.It can also be called as ‘./setup.sh’ without options, which requires input but allows for customization.

    Important: The hostname should not be the same as the primary domain name. e.g. gary.com is not a good hostname, where server.gary.com is. Having the same host/main domain name will cause e-mail and FTP problems. Also, please make sure the hostname resolves once you setup DNS.

That’s it! Please see below if you are installing on a VPS, or wanting to setup DirectAdmin for secure (https://) control panel access.

Special notice for VPS/VDS installs:

After the install, add the following to /usr/local/directadmin/conf/directadmin.conf:
ethernet_dev=devicename
For example, on many vps systems it will be:
ethernet_dev=venet0:0
Other systems where the IP is not the base IP on the device, you’d need to simply set the correct number:
ethernet_dev=eth0:1
Or other systems with the IP on a different device, it might be:
ethernet_dev=eth1
Type:/sbin/ifconfig
to see which device your IP is in.

Replace devicename with the FULL devicename reported by ifconfig. If your VDS/VPS system emulates eth0, then you may skip this step.

Setup SSL Certificates:

This step is only required if you wish to use DirectAdmin through SSL. You will also have to change set SSL=1 in the directadmin.conf file: http://help.directadmin.com/item.php?id=15

Accessing the Control Panel

DirectAdmin can be accessed at http://server.ip.address:2222 — use the Admin username/password specified in the setup.txt file in your scripts directory.

Dealing with RPM errors

When installing RPMs, errors can sometimes occur. Don’t panic, solving them is usually easy. If you didn’t know what to install during your RedHat installation, you might have installed a few services, such as apache and sendmail. These services must be removed before the rpm will be able to be installed.
For example, lets say you are trying to install exim and you get the following:
# rpm -ivh exim-3.36-2.i386.rpm
Preparing… ########################################### [100%]
file /somefile from install of exim-3.36-2 conflicts with file from package sendmail-8.1

This would mean that sendmail is already installed on your server and you must remove it. This can easily be accomplished by running the following:
rpm -e –nodeps sendmail
Then you will be able to install your rpm. This follows for other services such as apache, apache-devel, wu-ftp, php, MySQL and so forth. If you need to figure out if you already have a service installed, you can run
rpm -q servicename
or
rpm -qa | grep substring
Where substring is just a word. For example, using “apache” might return:
# rpm -qa | grep apache
apache-fp-1.3.27-2
apache-fp-devel-1.3.27-2
apache-fp-manual-1.3.27-2

Troubleshooting

If you are having trouble with RPMs hanging, please look at: http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=73097

Need More Information?

You can e-mail questions to sales@directadmin.com or send an inquiry by visiting the contacts page. We are available Monday through Friday, 9 AM – 5 PM Mountain Standard Time. You may also visit the forum to see if your question has been answered there.

Installation Guide – Installation

To install cPanel & WHM on your server, run the following command:

cd /home && curl -o latest -L https://securedownloads.cpanel.net/latest && sh latest

Note:

We recommend that you run the installation command within a Linux screen session. The Linux screen command allows you to create a shell session that will stay active through a network disruption.

This command changes your session to the home directory, downloads the latest version of cPanel & WHM, and runs the installation script.
  1. To determine whether your operating system contains screen and it exists in your path, run the which screen command. The system will return /usr/bin/screen if screen exists on your system and whether it exists in your path.
    • If your system does not contain screen, you can install it with the yum install screen command.
    • To run a screen session, enter the screen command. Then, run the installation command.
  2. If your session disconnects for some reason, log back in to your server and run the screen -r command. This will reconnect you to your screen session.

Important:

  • cPanel, L.L.C. designs software for commercial hosting. Therefore, we only license publicly visiblestatic IP addresses. We do not license dynamic, reserved, sticky, or internal IP addresses.
  • We do not provide an uninstaller. If you wish to remove our software, you must reformat the server.
  • Only install cPanel & WHM on a freshly-installed operating system.
  • You must log in to the server as the root user in order to install cPanel & WHM. If you do not possess root-level access, contact your system administrator or hosting provider for assistance.
  • We recommend that you use the cPanel & WHM installer, which installs all of the services that it requires. If you install services before you install cPanel & WHM, you will encounter compatibility issues.
  • New installations of cPanel & WHM default to the fast installation mode. To disable the fast installation mode, use the steps in our Customize Your Installation documentation.