Which Operating System is most stable/common to use with DirectAdmin

[Hetzner DirectAdmin]

Hello,

As of 31 October 2025, I have found that Debian 13 is not at all stable, specially in the initial install phase, the DA BUILD ALL terminates.

What is the most common OS that users are using with DirectAdmin?

Considering DirectAdmin is used for emails, some people are going to want to have the most stable parameters possible.

Please help.

 

[Zhenyapan]

Ubuntu24 no problems, almalinux 9 too

 

[cjd]

I run only Debian 12 & 13 and have not experienced any issues. Only time I have seen any issues is when a customer wants too small a VM and it doesn't have enough memory.

 

[Ohm J]

Debian 13 work fine... just add the swap before setup directadmin

 

[DrWizzle]

I use Ubuntu 24.04 ESM and have 0 issues with any installs. Most completely installed after second round of custombuild and ready to rock within ~30 mins. If you're using your hosts mirrors for a Debian image, maybe upload your own image and see how you go but Ubuntu is a fork of Debian if you're looking for something compatible.

 

[DrWizzle]

One other thing, check the custombuild log for the failed session. That should tell you why it failed and where to start looking

 

[fln]

@Hetzner DirectAdmin, could you please share more details (CB build log).

In general DA should work fine on Debian 13. We have not noticed any problems on our daily CI/CD integration tests (testing if CB components builds fine on every supported distro).

 

[Hetzner DirectAdmin]

Debian 13 work fine... just add the swap before setup directadmin

Thank you for that. I suspected the SWAP issue as it is not present, but it seems extremely complicated to setup on Hetzner.

Incidentally, I installed DirectAdmin on CentOS Stream 10 this afternoon and it completed the initial install without any errors !

As far as I am concerned that is enough reason for me not to install DA on Debian 12 or 13. Since October 25th I have re-installed on Debian 17 times, trying to manually fix the initial Custom Build install errors.

 

[DrWizzle]

Thank you for that. I suspected the SWAP issue as it is not present, but it seems extremely complicated to setup on Hetzner.

Incidentally, I installed DirectAdmin on CentOS Stream 10 this afternoon and it completed the initial install without any errors !

As far as I am concerned that is enough reason for me not to install DA on Debian 12 or 13. Since October 25th I have re-installed on Debian 17 times, trying to manually fix the initial Custom Build install errors.

Are you trying to setup swap on a Dedi server or a VPS? Setting a swap on a VPS is very simple, and setting up on a Dedi should be done when you initialise the server.

 

[DrWizzle]

Here's how I set a swap file. Just did this as an illustration for you, for reference, it's a Hetzner VPS with 2 cores, 4GB Ram and a 40GB drive, running a copy of Directadmin 1.688 (This is one of by test build servers I break to my hearts content)

root@t1 ~ # df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
tmpfs           382M  1.2M  381M   1% /run
/dev/sda1        38G  3.7G   33G  11% /
tmpfs           1.9G     0  1.9G   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs           5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
/dev/sda15      253M  146K  252M   1% /boot/efi
tmpfs           382M   12K  382M   1% /run/user/0
root@t1 ~ # swapon --show
root@t1 ~ # sudo fallocate -l 2G /swapfile
root@t1 ~ # sudo chmod 600 /swapfile
root@t1 ~ # sudo mkswap /swapfile
Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 2 GiB (2147479552 bytes)
no label, UUID=1f06505a-418f-49a6-a527-eb68facffcaa
root@t1 ~ # swapon --show
free -h
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           3.7Gi       834Mi       872Mi       6.0Mi       2.3Gi       2.9Gi
Swap:             0B          0B          0B
root@t1 ~ # echo '/swapfile none swap sw 0 0' | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab
/swapfile none swap sw 0 0
root@t1 ~ # cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness
60
root@t1 ~ # sudo sysctl vm.swappiness=10
vm.swappiness = 10
root@t1 ~ # echo 'vm.swappiness=10' | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf
vm.swappiness=10
root@t1 ~ # reboot
root@t1 ~ # Welcome to Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS (GNU/Linux 6.8.0-87-generic x86_64)

 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com
 * Management:     https://landscape.canonical.com
 * Support:        https://ubuntu.com/pro

 System information as of Fri Oct 31 05:32:48 PM UTC 2025

  System load:  0.0               Processes:             203
  Usage of /:   9.7% of 37.23GB   Users logged in:       0
  Memory usage: 18%               IPv4 address for eth0: 49.13.XX.XX
  Swap usage:   0%                IPv6 address for eth0: 2a01:4f8:XXX:XXXX::1

 * Strictly confined Kubernetes makes edge and IoT secure. Learn how MicroK8s
   just raised the bar for easy, resilient and secure K8s cluster deployment.

   https://ubuntu.com/engage/secure-kubernetes-at-the-edge

Expanded Security Maintenance for Applications is not enabled.

0 updates can be applied immediately.

Enable ESM Apps to receive additional future security updates.
See https://ubuntu.com/esm or run: sudo pro status


Last login: Fri Oct 31 17:32:49 2025 from 45.XX.X.XXX
root@t1 ~ # free -h
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           3.7Gi       690Mi       2.7Gi       5.7Mi       604Mi       3.1Gi
Swap:          2.0Gi          0B       2.0Gi