Hopefully DA is Better than the Competition on these Points

fatbear

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Apr 18, 2012
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Hi all,

I've been using Kloxo and am looking to switch. Some questions:

1. I've considered ISPConfig, but I don't like the fact that the UIDs and GIDs have names such as web3 and client7. This makes it hard to do operations such as chown because I always have to look up user and group names. What does DirectAdmin use for the user and group names (as found in /etc/passwd and /etc/group)?

2. MySQL has a maximum identifier length of 64 for database names and 16 for user names. What maximums does DA allow? Also, is the prefix for database and user names the client's Unix username or something easy to remember?

3. Can I use yum to update software on my RHEL or CentOS servers, or does DA require that all updates be done via DA?

Thanks!
Steve Amerige
 
Hello,

1. I've considered ISPConfig, but I don't like the fact that the UIDs and GIDs have names such as web3 and client7. This makes it hard to do operations such as chown because I always have to look up user and group names. What does DirectAdmin use for the user and group names (as found in /etc/passwd and /etc/group)?

You the only one who choose it, or it's up to your billing software and customers (if your billing software allow to choose username).

2. MySQL has a maximum identifier length of 64 for database names and 16 for user names. What maximums does DA allow? Also, is the prefix for database and user names the client's Unix username or something easy to remember?

Underscore is used as a separator between username (system user) and .... so it looks like userbob_db1 or jonh_blabla

3. Can I use yum to update software on my RHEL or CentOS servers, or does DA require that all updates be done via DA?

You can update with yum everything on your server except httpd-*, php-*, mysql-* and some other related software.
 
To expand a bit on point 3, as responded to by Alex:

DirectAdmin by default manages what I call the hosting stack itself using it's own system, called CustomBuild, which does a lot of management very well, and runs make for all it updates. The main advantage of this is that you have much more flexibility; you're not stuck with version numbers in your OS Distribution repository.

The main disadvantage is that you can break it if you move away from standards and defaults. If/when you do, you can get a lot of help on these forums, and should you need expertise not available free in these forums, then I, Alex, and others, offer administration services, either on continuous contract or as needed basis.

If you're an advanced system administrator you can certainly build and use your own system for managing hosting stack services through your OS Distribution's repositories, using YUM, or even your own scripts to manage RPM.

For non hosting-stack software, DirectAdmin depends on your OS Distribution's default mechanism.

Note that DirectAdmin is a closed-source commercial package written in C++ (if I recall correctly) but has many script and API hooks and customizable templates for a lot of flexibility.

Jeff
 
Hoping for Open Source under a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA)

If we can't get the source code for the DA control panel, then we will still offer this to our customers, but we will have to tell them that we may be more restricted in the kinds of customizations that we can do for them. This isn't a total roadblock, but in today's world, being open source is a definite advantage. And, note that open source doesn't mean it costs $0.00. It just means that we'd have the source code so that we could potentially make more customizations than via the available script and API hooks.

Is it possible to get the source code under an NDA agreement? Being closed source presents a real problem for many of my customers. We are a managed-server leasing company, so we want to offer customers their choice of control panels. Also, if we had the source under NDA, and could compile and make changes, we could feed back to DA any fixes we might make to the codebase.

I do understand that you might be reluctant to share your source code and compile methods, but perhaps you could include background checks and organizational requirements that satisfy your concerns that source code and other shared communications would not be released outside of our company. I am happy to discuss this with you further online or offline.
 
The DirectAdmin forums are maintained by JBMC Software, publishers of DirectAdmin; as a service to the community. Posts here do not constitute an official reply from them unless otherwise stated.

I do not represent an official voice of JBMC Software, so I can only respond from my point of view; for a better response you'll need to contact DirectAdmin Sales directly.

I've never used any of the open-source hosting administraton control panels, so I can't say how easy or how had they are to modify. My own experience is as follows:

For years i offered customization services for the Cobalt RaQ series of webhosting appliances, but when Cobalt sold out to Sun I began to look for another solution. I became a Plesk Gold Partner, but soon found that because (at the time, anyway) you could only use RPMs distributed by Plesk, it was impossible to modify.

I was very happy to find DirectAdmin and to this day I find it the most customizable hosting platform I've ever worked with. For example, DirectAdmin doesn't limit you to it's own systems for updating, installing or maintaining packages. With or without DirectAdmin tools you can use many different versions of many hosting stack programs; for example you can chose from multiple FTP, HTTP, SSL and other daemons and versions. You are limited to some specific daemons; for example I don't see how you could easily replace exim, though you could cetainly place it behind or in front of your own systems. You can write plugins and custom skins to allow any of your own software to run inside your DirectAdmin login screens.

You write:
open source doesn't mean it costs $0.00. It just means that we'd have the source code
But that's not the working or legal definition of any open source license I know of. That's closed source with a source-code license. There's a big difference. You should probably contact JBMC staff directly; see the link above.

Specifically to your notes:
1. I've considered ISPConfig, but I don't like the fact that the UIDs and GIDs have names such as web3 and client7.
ISPConfig is open source and you make a big deal about needing the configurability of open source, but you don't take advantage of it to change the behavior you don't like.
2. MySQL has a maximum identifier length of 64 for database names and 16 for user names. What maximums does DA allow? Also, is the prefix for database and user names the client's Unix username or something easy to remember?
Same point. ISPConfig and MySQL are both available as open source. You can fix this yourself.
3. Can I use yum to update software on my RHEL or CentOS servers, or does DA require that all updates be done via DA?
Anything you want.

Jeff
 
hahahah I guarantee you will never see the source code in your life.
 
Hello,

Getting the source will likely never happen, however, we are very open to suggestions as to new locations for custom scripts/hooks/APIs.
If you have a specific requirement for your DA setup, let us know what you need DA to do, and we can look at adding the feature if it would be useful to others as well.

We've got a list of many ways you can change DA here:
http://help.directadmin.com/item.php?id=294

John
 
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