HOWTO (In Developing): DA Installing on FreeBSD 7.0 64-bit (Using ports tree)

Me and 2-3 other person that i had chats in the past are using da from ports (100% DA's services independent) for almost 1.5-2 years now.

I do understand that DA wont come to a build system that uses ports because that has to be done for every linux dist that uses some package system (to tell the truth i expect from DA staff to work with DA's features development and not packaging system).

It's not that difficult to migrate to ports after custombuild installation (i started my migration a year after installing DA, in a production server, without any special downtime in services) at any time.

Here is a topic that i started with some notes. The how to is for freebsd 6.2 (i did an system upgrade to 6.3 afterwards and planning in upgrading to 7.0 sometime) but i don't think that it's release dependent.

http://www.directadmin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=20144

Unfortunately as i posted there i dont have the resources or time to do it again and write a build system or at least keep some step by step notes but any freebsd user is welcome to use this how to, start over and keep some serious notes that can guide to a custombuild like system (my notes were written months after my updates so it may be missing staff that i didn't remember).

We use many servers (not just DA, as routers, mail servers etc with heavy load) at the university that i work as an admin, tested all kind of OS and our experience for freebsd is that it's better to use 32bit for production servers, it's more stable and almost as fast.

# make install clean -C /usr/ports/devel/libtool15
# make install clean -C /usr/ports/devel/autoconf262
# make install clean -C /usr/ports/devel/automake110
# make install clean -C /usr/ports/ftp/wget
# make install clean -C /usr/ports/print/freetype
# make install clean -C /usr/ports/print/freetype2
# make install clean -C /usr/ports/graphics/ImageMagick
# make install clean -C /usr/ports/graphics/gd
# make install clean -C /usr/ports/textproc/libxslt
# make install clean -C /usr/ports/ftp/curl
# make install clean -C /usr/ports/devel/gmake

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It would be incredibly helpful to have some guidance on which options to pick during the installs of these. Even if you dump the X11 and all the printers and graphic types you've never heard of, it takes hours on a quad core 5430. It's tough to imagine this isn't part of the DA install.

I noticed that MySQL, ProFTPD were not installed by custom build and Exim was also installed later. If you do it that way, can you still manage the servers from the control panel?

Unfortunately this procedure does not work for 7.1. The only things you end up with are DirectAdmin, Apache, named, and ssh. MySQL won't even start after the manual procedures.

I didn't realize that the guy who wrote custombuild doesn't even work for DA. Where would DA be without custombuild?

I'm not sure where to next, but this is an unworkable situation.

The gent who wrote Custombuild is on these forums every day and is readily available to work on Custombuild. Of course only JBMC (the publishers of DirectAdmin) can make the final decision as to what Custombuild should support.

Is Custombuild the problem? Or is the problem that Installing FreeBSD 7.0 64-bit from ports isn't supported at all? I don't see what that has to do with whether the person who wrote Custombuild is an employee or a contractor. If you do, then please explain.

Jeff

Is Custombuild the problem? Or is the problem that Installing FreeBSD 7.0 64-bit from ports isn't supported at all? I don't see what that has to do with whether the person who wrote Custombuild is an employee or a contractor. If you do, then please explain.

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If you have a solution for getting DirectAdmin successfully installed on FreeBSD 7.1 64, I and quite a few others would like to hear it.

Hello,

FreeBSd 7.1 64-bit is not yet supported. Keep an eye of our list of OS's to find out when we do:
http://www.directadmin.com/install.html

We do have a build system with 7.1 64-bit installed and are working towards supporting it in the near future. There are few weird compile hurdles (relating to mysql at the moment: http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=37697 .. worst case we'll fall back to mysql 5.0) But after that, it's a matter of updating the install scripts and completing the service binaries for it, then it's ready for testing.

John

scsi said:

There is no reason you cannot manually install every single program in 64 bit on your own...Install 64-bit apache, mysql and whatever you want on your own.

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People would if they knew how. I see no successful examples on this forum of how to install Apache, PHP, and Dovecot from ports, and have the control panel work right when finished. MySQL and Exim have examples and they require quite a few symlinks, moving, and copying. I would assume from threads posted on this forum for which there are no usable responses that Apache and PHP would require the same to get working properly with the control panel. You no doubt have a greater understand of FreeBSD and DirectAdmin and how they work together than I do.

Maintaining with ports would be a huge advantage when we need to add third party software that requires modules and their dependencies to be added. We would use the port method and ignore DA's installs even if they do come out with an install someday.

Thanks!

Ultimately precompiled binaries arent the best way, exim as an example, one of the binaries provided by DA never works for me as it always has a perl issue and thats on 32 bit.

customapache/build do src compiling but that isnt the best way on FreeBSD and can cause issues.

I recently helped out setting up apache and php from ports for on a 64 freebsd 7.1 server and documented it, I am now planning to actually modify the setup.sh so it utilises ports although its all integrated with custombuild so probably be a lot of editing and then I will send what I have done to John in hope he considers changing DA to use ports, in all honesty since custombuild compiles apache and php anyway it shouldnt be much difference to make it compile from ports instead. The same applies to mysql.

The issues that have recently occured for me on DA boxes all stem from outdated precompiled binaries been installed like the segfaulting csh issue generally caused by a mismatch of outdated dependencies.

Chrysalis said:

Ultimately precompiled binaries arent the best way, exim as an example

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There's timing. I'm working against that right now. I tried a symlink first. That worked. However, I wanted to do it the right way and tried to reinstall Exim according to http://help.directadmin.com/item.php?id=125 That didn't work even when I made the other changes shown there. Soooo I guess I restore and go back to symlinks. So I guess your saying for FreeBSD users this is a bit like buying MSOffice from an OEM that decided to install it in /applications instead of /ProgramFiles, and uses their own registry. It creates a situation not all that different from .dll hell for FreeBSD. Perhaps cPanel switched to ports for FreeBSD with their latest version because it's less trouble and takes less time at upgrade time, making it more cost efficient with all things considered.

Chrysalis said:

I am now planning to actually modify the setup.sh so it utilises ports although its all integrated with custombuild so probably be a lot of editing and then I will send what I have done to John in hope he considers changing DA to use ports

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Good show! I'm sure your efforts will be much appreciated. I know I do.

IT_Architect said:

If you have a solution for getting DirectAdmin successfully installed on FreeBSD 7.1 64, I and quite a few others would like to hear it.

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I really have.
I described here, what you can get
http://www.intervipnet.com/freebsd_directadmin.html

One month ago the server on 64bit FreeBSD 7.1 + directadmin was configured by me first time. And all was fine. Some problems have been with Zend, because it is only under freebsd6 amd64. But in general, no problems. Server loaded good, but it works fine.

Mysql I was not able to set on linuxthreads because, it does not work under amd64. But this month experience has shown that they are not needed anymore. In my previous configurations database built on them and it gave a huge increase in productivity. But "home" threads is very good now.

And there is no problem with directadmin binaries. I used binary from 32bit 7.0. So I can safely recommend to John releases 64 bit

I have not worked on modifying the setup.sh yet but even so since custombuild builds from src I dont see why there would be a major issue.

I plan to within 2 weeks setup directadmin on freebsd 7.2 64bit (did consider 8.0 but will do on 7.2) and will also include zend optimiser, I will try and document whatever I do to fix problems I come across.

For those not aware 64bit in freebsd for server use especially when using lots of ram has a very significant advantage in that kernel resources become much more unrestricted eg. I have on a 64bit server over 400meg of disk buffers available but in typical high ram 32bit machines its limited to around 121meg.

PGP said:

So, that's my version of installing DA on FreeBSD 7.0 64-bit...

Your comments and corrections are strongly desired =) Lets make this HOW-TO together.

-------------------------------
Thanx to chatwizrd, paix
Updated...

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Thank you so much PGP! I just used your guide to install DA on a FreeBSD 8.0 "64BIT" with a ZFS file system.

The only change I did was build mysql using enable shared and enable static. I did this to make ./build php n work.

Other wise I added my certs to /etc and everything worked fine. Took a few hours, but otherwise it seems to be good.

One thing that is a problem for me is quotas, but I think I can deal with that until ZFS gets it on FreeBSD.

--tony

Just now installed...
MySQL, Apache, PHP 5.3.6 as FastCGI (in PHP-FPM mode).
All these soft were installed from FreeBSD ports system.
And working correctly

PGP said:

Just now installed...
MySQL, Apache, PHP 5.3.6 as FastCGI (in PHP-FPM mode).
All these soft were installed from FreeBSD ports system.
And working correctly

Click to expand...

Go ahead. Get everyone begging you for your steps on how you installed everything from ports and got it to run side-by-side with a DA install, and still be able to maintain both DA and ports.

To date, I don't know of anyone who has made this work without incurring integration issues with DA. I started out pretty rabid about coming up with a port install and maintenance of all components, like cPanel has, and you and others helped me as well. At length, I realized that the only way an install using ports could work is if Custom Build does it, and maintains it. DA incorporates changes to the standard installs that make things more maintainable that I would not want to give up. The layout of Apache conf files, monitoring of processes, and exim config files to name a few. Moreover, DA makes sure the components it uses work together and with DA, rather than simply ensuring they are the latest of build of each port, and the latest build we've seen in the past is not necessarily a good thing. And where are you going to get the older version? It won't be in the ports tree. Once I reached this point in my thinking, I stopped pushing for using ports during the DA install because I was no longer convinced that the advantages outweighed the disadvantages of doing so. It would be a lot of work for DA for little benefit, and it might delay support for new versions of FreeBSD because they would need to maintain two very different scripts for installing and maintaining DA that would need to be debugged for each new release. Add to this, any problem in the ports system now becomes a DA install/maintenance problem. Moreover, do we want to use pre-compiled binaries, or compile everything and have it take forever, for a benefit that we may not even be able to measure?

I've found DA to be very receptive to suggestions with regard to using ports for DA installs and maintenance, even interested. The problem has been that no one has been able to come up with a convincing plan that would make it worth pursuing.