Managing System Packages (Apache, PHP, etc.) Myself, what do I need to be aware of

[mrtwice99]

I am new to DA, which was installed on a VPS that I recently signed up for. I am used to managing my Linux systems myself, without the intervention of a control panel. I specifically steered away from cPanel because of this issue.

My installation of DA is using older versions of Apache, PHP, and MySQL. I want to upgrade these packages to their latest versions. I am running CentOS, so the preferred method of doing this would be by using Yum to install RPMs from repositories that have already compiled the packages. However, I have recently discovered by reading the various posts on this forum, that DA handles the installation of the above packages (and more) through "customapache" or "custombuild".

I don't like this setup as it requires another added layer of learning and complexity on top of what should otherwise be a simple system administration task. Therefore, I would like DA to just be a web control panel and leave the system administration to me. Therefore, I have two questions:

1) What would be the best method of uninstalling the packages (Apache, MySQL, PHP) that DA has already installed? I noticed that RPM packages have not been used.

2) Do I need to configure DA somehow since I will be updating these packages myself? I am assuming that it would need to know if I was running Apache 1.x or 2.x, etc.

Any other thoughts on this topic would be appreciated.

 

[nobaloney]

There is a discussion on these forums concerning doing this with FreeBSD, but none that I know of for Linux.

The disadvantage in doing what you'd like to do is that you're limited to what's installable by your CentOS distribution's RPMs.

Jeff

 

[mrtwice99]

Thanks for the response.

I am not that concerned about being stuck with CentOS RPMs. There are plenty of repositories/RPMs out there that I can use.

I did however, after spending 8+ hours trying to get everything working without using custombuild or customapache, finally give up. I got Apache/PHP installed just fine, but DA didn't seem to like some of the paths or permissions. I wasn't sure where to go about changing these things, so I just decided to try custombuild.

Do you have the URL for that BSD thread handy?