Thread: Control Panels

Hi folks,

So far I've built all my hosting services around a custom SQL schema, and built my own control panel which all works great and does all the basic stuff you'd need quite nicely.

But, there's some stuff I'd like to do that whilst not impossible, is going to be quite tricky, complex and time consuming to make it bullet proof, editing DNS zones, for example.

So, I've been pondering a commercial control panel solution.

I had a browse around the various sites, CPanel, Ensim, Plesk, H-Sphere and ClientExec (any more?) but none of them really grab me at all. In fact their web sites range from providing minimal info (cpanel) to some kind of marketing frenzy on steroids (plesk). As for some of the demo control panels, they just look dire! At the moment enhancing my own custom stuff looks like the most attractive option, strangely.

So, has anyone done the full review and evaulation of all that are available?

None of them really seem to explain how they actually manage all the underlying applications, I presume they all use their own MySQL/PostgreSQL data store and build configs from that?

Thoughts, comments, opinions, rants, all welcome..

Cheers!

ATM the majority of our servers run either ensim or cPanel (some others run control panels that arnt commercially available).

Ensim uses postgreSQL and MySQL and is a complete control freak on how the server is run (it likes to have a say in everything and throws a fit when it doesnt get its way). Although many people (cranky in particular) think ensim is a pile of shite, once its been tweaked (and MUST have a skin other than default unless you want your customers commiting suicide), it becomes a pretty slick cp.

A screenshot of our ensim setup is here:
http://agccworld.co.uk/img/ensim.jpg

cPanel - once you get to grips with WHM, its easy enough to use, one feature i particularly like is the fact that dark orb supply a download server for you to easily patch software / install RPM's without having to do anything, things i dont like are its weak control over ftpd / stmp (ie, you cant easily set it up to allow domains to relay through, unlike with ensim) - though these issues are easily corrected by doing it the old fashioned way with ssh.

Hi,

This post should probably be placed in the rant category.

The overall business process is handled by a set of server side scripts perl or php in most panels.

The ways in which apache control is achieved vary from panel to panel. Many just recreate the httpd.conf and signal apache. It is possible to create a module that achieves this within apache. Though I guess this has a pretty steep learning curve. It might also be better in the long term to write this sort of thing in C++ which takes some time but would give the performance required. Internal configuration caching would be required for large scale commercial use. Apache log processing is fairly easy. If you get really crafty you can provide REAL TIME live usage stats. Also writing each users config into separate file then creating the httpd.conf from that is a lot quicker than rebuilding each entry from a database.

POP server config was a pretty interesting area. It appears that pop as a protocol is pretty easy (read the RFCs I forget the numbers) so a few panels have implemented their own. I guess this is to provide decent data transfer accounting as with the standard POP daemon it can be turned on but is a bit of an ass. QPOPPER (QMAILS pop daemon) does support this though. See QMAIL.

Configuring send mail via its config files is easy. I did a module to do this in a day with a web based GUI interface. Processing the logs for this is pretty difficult (see QMAIL) to the point of being a waste of time. One you have written the file you call a supplied script and the changes go live.

QMAIL configuration I believe can be achieved via a number of methods including standard config files. Qmail has the benefit that is produces logs that can be easily used to produce customer usage stats.

Bind is fairly straight forward if you panel is simple. If you go for custom DNS then its not that hard you just have to do a lot of checking on the data a customer enters. It all depends on how much functionality you provide. The software I produced for this was very simple and just used a master template. It works. But only allows a customer to host their sites it doesn’t offer any customisation of the DNS records.

ProFTPd provides a configuration method that uses a database. Never got this working though. WU-FTPD once given a suitable configuration doesn’t require further configuration. But I guess you could mess with its config then signal it.

Most panels use MYSQL of PostgreSQL which.. aint up to much.

Windows configuration can also be done. It’s fairly straightforward. All you need to know is ….. My rates are available on request. :-)



Have fun



Gareth

PostgreSQL ain't up to much? You're kididng right?