Various questions, incl Debian Etch support

E

electronicfur

Verified User
Joined
Jan 12, 2006
Messages
5
I have a couple of questions. Some background:

I currently have a server running Plesk. My current contract runs out on Saturday. 60% increase in costs, and 3 month minimum renew, so keen to move by then. Because of work my time schedule is a bit tight now. I decided I hate Plesk anyway, even my raq4 was beter, and I should have gone with DA, so here is my chance.

I got a new provider, box is just setup, but they installed Debian Etch instead of CentOS as requested.

Now I'm in a bit of a time fix, of whether to ask for a CentOS box or keep Debian. (apparently they installed Debian because the hardware in question doesnt support CentOS). I have used debian and Ubuntu in the past (and actually prefer it out of all the distros). But wanted CentOS because of DA being developed on it.

So I need to know if Debian Etch runs DA ok. Or is this just asking for trouble?

I also need an idea of how complex it is to move sites/users/mail(currently qmail) from my Plesk box to DA. I have only 12 sites and about 30 users, so nothing major.

Am I mad? Can it be done in 2 days?

Cheers,
EF
 
I recently went through this with etch and I highly reccomend that you install CentOS. Here is a quickie on how to do it from Debian. You may or may not need to add the /boot. Just look to see how the other entries are. Once this is done you should be able to VNC to the CentOS install on port 5901. This should allow you to install CentOS but if your box gets screwed don't blame me dude.

mkdir /newsystem
cd /newsystem
wget http://mirror.centos.org/centos/4/os/i386/images/pxeboot/initrd.img
wget http://mirror.centos.org/centos/4/os/i386/images/pxeboot/vmlinuz
cp vmlinuz /boot/vmlinuz.cent.pxe
cp initrd.img /boot/initrd.img.cent.pxe

// Add this as the first kernel to grub.conf or /boot/grub/menu.lst. kernel line should be one line only.

title Centos Install (PXE)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz.cent.pxe vnc vncpassword=Pass headless ip=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx netmask=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx gateway=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx dns=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx hostname=my.hostname.com ksdevice=eth0 method=http://mirror.centos.org/centos/4/os/i386/ lang=en_US keymap=us
initrd /boot/initrd.img.cent.pxe
 
The problem is that the admin said that CentOS doesnt run on the server hardware, which is why they installed Debian instead...

So if I go for CentOS I need them to give me a new box and set it up. Which will take more precious time.

Are you saying Debian Etch and DA didnt run well together?

Cheers,
EF
 
I am sure that some people are going to flame for this but oh well. I have quite a bit of experience with Debian and no experience with CentOS. Debian with DA was a pain in the ass for me for quite a few reason. Once I got CentOS installed, DA seemed to run much more stable and it was easier for me to administer. If you are renting a dedicated server, make them give you what you want or go somewhere else.
 
electronicfur said:
I currently have a server running Plesk. My current contract runs out on Saturday. 60% increase in costs, and 3 month minimum renew, so keen to move by then.
Click to expand...
I don't think you've given yourself enough time under the best of conditions.
Because of work my time schedule is a bit tight now. I decided I hate Plesk anyway, even my raq4 was beter, and I should have gone with DA, so here is my chance.
Click to expand...
Welcome to the club. When I decided to leave the RaQ platform I spent two years as a Plesk Gold Partner before moving to DirectAdmin.
I also need an idea of how complex it is to move sites/users/mail(currently qmail) from my Plesk box to DA. I have only 12 sites and about 30 users, so nothing major.
Click to expand...
It's doable depending on your experience with DA and with Plesk. The problem is documenting what you've got on the Plesk server (drilling down through EVERY menu looking for email, lists, forwards, etc.) and then setting them up on DA. When we do it we look at sites one a time and make a rather complete list of the resources every site has set up. Then we create the sites on the DA server.

Here are some of the gotchas:

1) Plesk's cgi-bin directory is outside the html path, DirectAdmin's cgi-bin directory is inside it.

2) DirectAdmin and Plesk use different security models; if you upload via FTP you'll get it right but if you're going to move sites through the shell, then you should create a populated domain on the DirectAdmin serer first so you know what permissions, ownership, etc., to give every file/directory under DA.

3) Plesk uses a separate directory for https; DA defaults to that but allows you to do it either in separate directories or the same directory. Either way, the directory names are different.

4) Plesk has some kind of weird way to determine how to read stats; DA is a bit more simple, but by defualt requires a login to the control panel to read the stats; we generally create a directory inside the directory path for old stats and leave new stats the DirectAdmin way.

5) Mail is a bit complex; since qmail uses Maildir you'll have to convert your DA server to use Dovecot/Maildir (see these forums) if you want to move any mail at all. And you'll have to find the Mail on the Plesk server and move it (possibly user by user) to the right place on the DirectAdmin server.

6) Plesk hacks the pop and imap daemons; you login in as username/password and the same username on any two domains cannot have the same password (you may not have ever had the problem but it's there). With DirectAdmin you get two kinds of mail users; the site user (the same username you use to login to the control panel and for FTP), who logs in as username/password (there can't be duplicate site users on the box; if the login name for example.com is example, then the login name for example.net cannot be example), and site mail users who log in as [email protected]/password.

7) Plesk creates a mail name and then assigns different resources (forwards, mailboxes, etc.) to the mailname. DirectAdmin creates separate forwards, mailboxes, etc.

8) Plesk domains can set up individual websites for users (as can the old Cobalt RaQs), while DirectAdmin has no straightforward way to do this.

9) DirectAdmin uses a different naming convention for MySQL databases, and requires they be named username_databasename. If your databases aren't named this way you'll have to change them, and for each site find the code that calls the database and change it there.
Am I mad? Can it be done in 2 days?
Click to expand...
By now probably more angry than mad :) .

I've probably forgotten at least ten times more issues than I've remembered, but you'll come across them. The thing that's going to slow you down is your inexperience with DA. Byte the bullet and take the time to do it right if you can possibly afford it.

That's what I'd do.

Jeff
 
Thanks for all the info.

It turns out I was mad :D

It probably was doable in the time frame, but events turned against me. I set the TTL on my domains and figured even if I only got the server today, I could do an all nighter and get things transfered in time.

But the new provider just informed me 5 minutes ago that they cant run CentOS 4.4 on any of the hardware they have! (after trying to contact them all day - they had a network issue so turned out they were swamped).

They are quite small co I think, and at least they said they would remove CentOS from their webpages and ordering system, but it certainly brought home to me that even my current hosts are better. At least I could phone them and they would answer. I will renew with my current hosts, pay their extortionate 60% price increase, for the stupid minimum 3 months. It grates, but at least it gives me more time to find a better host and get transfered to DA.

BTW Jeff, I do remember you from the cobalt-user lists. Did you ever try BlueQuartz? How does it compare to DA?

Cheers,
EF
 
I never tried Blue Quartz because a friend of mine uses it and I've learned it's limitations. Similarly to Plesk, you're tied mostly into what it supports; DA gives us a lot more flexibility. And Blue Quartz still doesn't have a reseller level.

More in my private message, electronicfur.

Jeff
 
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