How Install ISPConfig Hosting Control Panel

ISPConfig is a free open source hosting control panel for linux supporting various distributions. ISPConfig bundles with a complete pack of server applications and tools necessary to run a reseller hosting like..

* Apache Server httpd (with SSL)
* FTP Server
* Bind DNS Server
* POP3 Mail Server
* MySQL database
* Webalizer statistics
* Quotas
* Mailscanner (Antivirus)
* Firewall

More information can be found on the ISPConfig site.

In this tutorial, i am using a fresh VPS server running Centos 5 linux with atleast 256MB of RAM. We will be installing and configuring ISPConfig hosting control panel in our server.

Initial Preparation

Before we proceed to installing the ISPConfig control panel, please make sure that following tools and libraries are installed in your server. Remember the installation of ISPConfig runs for about 30+ mins and if there is any missing libraries or tools, it would crash and you have to install from the start. Please refer to requirements of ISPConfig hosting control panel. You will need apache, php, mysql, proftpd, quota and other developer libraries along with C++ compilers and developer libraries

yum install httpd httpd-devel
// Apache server

yum install flex which flex nano gcc gcc-c++ zlib autoconf automake glibc glibc-devel libtool pcre pcre-devel
// Necessary C compiler tools and libraries

yum install php php-devel php-common php-mbstring php-gd php-mcrypt
// PHP5 scripting language with developer libraries

yum install mysql mysql-server mysql-devel
//MySQL Database Server

yum install proftpd postfix dovecot
// if you have sendmail installed by default remove it by using yum remove sendmail
// ProFTPd is an FTP server.

yum install named*
// DNS Server

yum install quota webalizer
// Quota and webalizer (for statistics)

Install PERL Dependency Modules

METHOD1

You will need to pre-install these necessary PERL modules which will be needed by installer process. First install them using yum and

yum -y install perl-HTML-Parser perl-DBI perl-Net-DNS perl-Digest-SHA1

If this doesnt work, try method 2

METHOD 2:

> perl -MCPAN -e shell
OR
>cpan


cpan> install HTML::Parser
cpan> install DB_File
cpan> install Net::DNS (choose "no" for tests)
cpan> install Digest::SHA1

Installing ISPConfig

To setup the control panel, you will need to download the tar.gz package in the download page using wget.

wget <path_to_the_ispconfig>
tar zxf ISPConfig-2.2.23.tar.gz
cd install_ispconfig
./setup

Follow the installation steps and you should be able to run ISPConfig in your server. Once the installation is complete, you can point your browser to http://ip.addresss:81/ to access the ISPConfig control panel.

Common Errors

1. ERROR: The PHP binary coming with ISPConfig does not work properly on your system!

If you get this error in the middle of the installation, then it means you have missed to install certain libraries or tools in your server. Follow the error closely and should be able to find the missing component. Make sure you have met the minimum requirements of ISPconfig.

2. PERL Dependency Errors

***************************************************************************
ERROR: the required Digest::SHA1 module is not installed. at lib/Mail/SpamAssassin/Util/DependencyInfo.pm line 294, <STDIN> line 1.
***************************************************************************
ERROR: the required HTML::Parser (version 3.43) module is not installed. at lib/Mail/SpamAssassin/Util/DependencyInfo.pm line 294, <STDIN> line 1.
***************************************************************************
ERROR: the required Net::DNS (version 0.34) module is not installed. at lib/Mail/SpamAssassin/Util/DependencyInfo.pm line 294, <STDIN> line 1.
**************************************************************

If you get the above missing PERL module dependencies, then most probably you have continued the ISPConfig installation which might break while compiling spamassin. To fix this just install those missing perl modules using CPAN or yum (see above)

3. CPAN Memory Allocation Error

Going to read /root/.cpan/sources/authors/01mailrc.txt.gz
Could not pipe[/bin/gzip --decompress --stdout /root/.cpan/sources/authors/01mailrc.txt.gz |]: Cannot allocate memory at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/CPAN.pm line 5726, <FIN> line 3.

If you get this error, then this means your system is low on memory. Just free those memory by stopping services like mysql, apache.

Disclaimer: Make sure you do proper backup of your server files before following the tutorial. Use of the above tutorial is at your own risk.

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