When I access WHM of a server, I got the following error message
HTTP error 401 You do not have permission to access this page.
This is because WHM access is disabled using Host Access Control.
To access WHM, I edit filed
vi /etc/hosts.allow
Added my IP address to whostmgrd entries.
whostmgrd : 12.38.22.16 : allow whostmgrd : 51.38.246.115 : allow whostmgrd : ALL : deny
Back to Cpanel Server
On a Cpanel server, WebSocket server was running on port 8080. It worked fine with HTTP. After enabling HTTPS, it stopped working.
The website code had the following entry
var websocket_server = new WebSocket("ws://domain.com:8080");
This Cpanel server had ea-nginx (Nginx provided by Cpanel) installed.
To fix the error, I created a file
vi /etc/nginx/conf.d/ws-domain.com.conf
In the above, replace domain.com with the actual domain name.
Add following content
map $http_upgrade $connection_upgrade {
default upgrade;
'' close;
}
upstream websocket {
server 127.0.0.1:8080;
}
Create file
vi /etc/nginx/conf.d/users/CPANEL_USER/domain.com/wss.conf
Replace CPANEL_USER with the actual Cpanel user name for the website. domain.com with real domain name,
Add following
location /wsapp/ {
proxy_pass http://websocket;
proxy_http_version 1.1;
proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
proxy_set_header Connection $connection_upgrade;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
}
Restart nginx
systemctl restart nginx
In your application code, find
var websocket_server = new WebSocket("ws://domain.com:8080");
Replace with
var websocket_server = new WebSocket("wss://domain.com/wsapp/NNN");
See Cpanel Server
Cpanel control panel recently started supporting Ubuntu Operating System. Ubuntu support was announced after RedHat stopped supporting RHEL-based CentOS. When I install Cpanel on Ubuntu 20.04 server, I got the following error message
Can't locate FindBin.pm in @INC (you may need to install the FindBin module) (@INC contains: /etc/perl /usr/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl/5.30.0 /usr/local/share/perl/5.30.0 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl5/5.30 /usr/share/perl5 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl/5.30 /usr/share/perl/5.30 /usr/local/lib/site_perl /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl-base) at /home/cPanelInstall/selfgz1202/install line 12.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /home/cPanelInstall/selfgz1202/install line 12.
To fix the error install package “libfindbin-libs-perl” with apt
sudo apt install libfindbin-libs-perlBack to Cpanel Server
To increase the size of /tmp folder, first, stop monitoring services, so it won’t get auto started while we resize /tmp folder
whmapi1 configureservice service=cpsrvd enabled=1 monitored=0 whmapi1 configureservice service=mysql enabled=1 monitored=0 whmapi1 configureservice service=httpd enabled=1 monitored=0
Now stop Cpanel, MySQL and Apache services
/scripts/restartsrv_cpsrvd --stop /scripts/restartsrv_mysql --stop /scripts/restartsrv_httpd --stop
Unmout current /tmp folder
umount /tmp
Rename tmp file
mv /usr/tmpDSK /usr/tmpDSK.old
Create a new file
dd if=/dev/zero of=/usr/tmpDSK bs=1024 count=10000000 mkfs.ext3 /usr/tmpDSK
This will create a 10 GB /tmp folder. If you need to change the size, adjust “count=10000000”.
Now you can mount the /tmp folder with the command
mount -a
Or
mount -o loop,noexec,nosuid,rw /usr/tmpDSK /tmp
Start the services
/scripts/restartsrv_cpsrvd --start /scripts/restartsrv_mysql --start /scripts/restartsrv_httpd --start
Enable monitoring
whmapi1 configureservice service=cpsrvd enabled=1 monitored=1 whmapi1 configureservice service=mysql enabled=1 monitored=1 whmapi1 configureservice service=httpd enabled=1 monitored=1
Your /etc/fstab will have the following entry for /tmp folder
/usr/tmpDSK /tmp ext3 defaults,noauto 0 0
If you want the default size, that works for most, you can use Cpanel provided script.
/scripts/securetmp
Running this script will auto-create /tmp folder with 4 GB size.
Back to Cpanel Server
PHP ssh2 module allows you to connect to SSH servers. On Cpanel servers, this module is not available under EasyApache. You need to install using PECL. The PECL module installer in WHM does not list this module. The module is available to download from
https://pecl.php.net/package/ssh2
To install it, log in to the Cpanel server as SSH user root or login to WHM as user root, go to Terminal.
Run the command
/opt/cpanel/ea-php74/root/bin/pecl install ssh2-1.3.1
This will install ssh2 module for PHP 7.4.
For PHP 8.0, you can run
/opt/cpanel/ea-php80/root/bin/pecl install ssh2-1.3.1You can also specify the full download URL for the SSH2 module like
/opt/cpanel/ea-php74/root/bin/pecl install https://pecl.php.net/get/ssh2-1.3.1.tgzIf you need to install SSH module for another PHP version, change ea-php74 to whatever PHP version you are using. Make sure you select the appropriate ssh2 module version that works with the PHP version you are using.
After installing, restart Apache with
systemctl restart httpdTo verify the ssh2 module is installed, create a PHP file with phpinfo() function, you will see.
Back to Cpanel Server
To install the Cpanel/WHM control panel, run the following command as user root.
cd /home && curl -o latest -L https://securedownloads.cpanel.net/latest && sh latest
If you are installing on Ubuntu 20.04 and get the following error
Can't locate FindBin.pm in @INC (you may need to install the FindBin module) (@INC contains: /etc/perl /usr/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl/5.30.0 /usr/local/share/perl/5.30.0 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl5/5.30 /usr/share/perl5 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl/5.30 /usr/share/perl/5.30 /usr/local/lib/site_perl /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl-base) at /home/cPanelInstall/selfgz1630/install line 12. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /home/cPanelInstall/selfgz1630/install line 12.
Install package “libfindbin-libs-perl”.
apt install -y libfindbin-libs-perl
In Cpanel Server, you can set Time Zone in WHM once you logged in as user root. If you have WHM reseller access you won’t be able to set server time. You need to contact the server administrator with root access to set the time.
Go to
Home > Server Configuration > Server Time
You can also use the search box on the top-left corner of WHM. Search for “time”.
On the Server Time page, you can change the server time zone.
From the Dropdown menu, select the desired time zone you want.
Click the button “Change TimeZone” to change the time zone.
If you have customers from different countries, it is better to select time zone UTC (GMT + 0) as it is universal time Most PHP applications have the option to offset time from UTC and display the local time for users.
Once the time zone is set, click on the button “Sync Time with Time Server”. This will update server time.
Back to Cpanel Server Setup
To see the currently running process on Cpanel/WHM server, log in to WHM.
Search for “process” on the left-top corner search box.
Under System health, click on “Process Manager”
WHM > System Health > Process Manager
This page list all running process. On the left of each process, you have the option to kill a process and trace.
The “trace” option allows you to see what the process is doing. It uses strace command to attach a process and show the result.
kill option allows you to kill a process. There is an option to kill all processes owned by a specific user.
On the left menu, there is another link “Show Current Running Processes”, this just shows a read-only process list. You won’t be able to interact with it.
Another option is to search for “terminal” in WHM, click on Terminal Link. This will open the Terminal connection to the server, here you can run Linux commands. You can use the following Linux commands to see the running process.
ps aux top
Back to Cpanel Server
To disable catch-all email address for all sites hosted on Cpanel Server, run
sed -i 's/^\*: [^ ]*$/*: :fail: ADDRESS DOES NOT EXIST/g' /etc/valiases/*
Back to Cpanel Server
On a Cpanel Server, when you visit a shared IP address used by multiple websites, you will see the website of the first VirtualHost entry. This is not good when you have multiple customer websites as your other customers may visit the IP and see the site associated with the first VirtualHost entry and complain about this. I had customers reporting that their site is hacked when this happened to them.
The solution is to add a VirtualHost entry for the IP address. So when visitors use IP address, that VirtualHost shows up.
On Cpanel Server, you can do this by editing
vi /etc/apache2/conf.d/includes/pre_virtualhost_global.conf
Add content
DocumentRoot /var/www/html DocumentRoot /var/www/html suPHP_UserGroup nobody nobody AllowOverride All SSLEngine on SSLCertificateFile /var/cpanel/ssl/cpanel/cpanel.pem SSLCertificateKeyFile /var/cpanel/ssl/cpanel/cpanel.pem SSLCertificateChainFile /var/cpanel/ssl/cpanel/cpanel.pem SSLUseStapling Off SecRuleEngine On
In the above code, replace YOUR_SERVER_IP_HERE with your actual server IP address. If you have multiple IP addresses, repeat the code above for each of your IP addresses.
Now restart Apache
systemctl restart httpd
See Cpanel Server
Cpanel servers allow you to add multiple IP addresses. Additional IP addresses are useful for running name servers, hosting sites on different IP addresses (many use dedicated IP for SEO), and mail servers. Before you can add additional IP addresses to a server, you need it purchased from your server provider.
To add an IP address, log in to WHM of your server by going to
http://your-server-ip/whm
After login, click on
IP Functions > Add a New IP Address
On the next page, you will get a form, where you can add the IP address.
Enter your IP address in the text box “New IP or IP range to add:”. Then select the netmask from the select box below. Netmask and IP address will be provided by your server hosting provider. Generally, netmask will be 255.255.255.0, some providers recommend you to use 255.255.255.255.
Click on Submit button to add IP address.
To verify IP address working properly, you can ping to the IP or visit the IP address in a web browser, you should see the default Cpanel page.
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We have a site where we host demo websites that we do for our customers. We don’t want search engines to index these sites or strangers to see them. So it is password protected. The problem is Cpanel Auto SSL needs to access URI like /.well-known/ for SSL domain validation. With password protection, SSL domain verification fails and you won’t be able to renew the SSL certificate.
In this post, I am doing it for domain demo.hostonnet.com with Cpanel username hostond.
I want to force all buy SSL verification requests to get redirected to HTTPS. For this, i created a folder
mkdir -p /etc/apache2/conf.d/userdata/std/2_4/hostond/demo.hostonnet.com/
Now create a file
vi /etc/apache2/conf.d/userdata/std/2_4/hostond/demo.hostonnet.com/force-ssl.conf
Add following content to it.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/\.well-known/
RewriteRule ^/?(.*) https://%{SERVER_NAME}/$1 [R,L]
This will redirect all requests that do not start with URI .well-known to HTTPS.
Since HTTP only allows domain validation (pages inside folder .well-known) and redirects all other requests to HTTPS, we only need to password protect the HTTPS side of the website.
First, create a directory
mkdir -p /etc/apache2/conf.d/userdata/ssl/2_4/hostond/demo.hostonnet.com/
Create file
vi /etc/apache2/conf.d/userdata/ssl/2_4/hostond/demo.hostonnet.com/password.conf
Add following content
AuthType Basic AuthName "Restricted Content" AuthUserFile /etc/apache2/demo-hon-htpaswd Require valid-user
HTTP Basic authentication password is stored in file /etc/apache2/demo-hon-htpaswd. To set password, use htpasswd command.
To create a user, use
htpasswd -c /etc/apache2/demo-hon-htpaswd admin
This will create a user with the username “admin”. You will be asked to enter a password.
Now restart apache
systemctl restart httpd
See Cpanel Server