Web Hosting Blog

cPanel 11 and Plesk 9 are the latest control panels available for the web hosting service providers. These panels enable them to provide their web hosting services to their clients. With the help of these control panels provided by the hosting firms, clients can manage different tasks involved in the web hosting accounts, these panels simplifies the tasks for the support staff as clients are able to carry out majority of the tasks themselves. There are many different tasks that can be simplified with the use of these control panels, it involves the management of web services, E-mail, DNS and Database on both half’s i.e. client and administrator. Normally most of the web hosting service providers provide control panel access as a standard feature for the web hosting accounts. These control panels are simple to use, a person with no knowledge of web hosting too can operate it and hence this is one of the major reasons why these control panels have gained popularity in the web hosting industry.

Until now cPanel is compatible with Linux Servers only. Which means cPanel can be provided by web hosting firms only to the clients that choose Linux Servers for hosting their web sites. Which is not the case with Plesk, Plesk control panel is compatible with Linux as well as with Windows web hosting platforms. Plesk is majorly used by web hosts due to its stability.

cPanel and Plesk have their own advantages when used by customers and administrators of Web hosting services. Usually Plesk is provided with Windows Web Hosting service and cPanel with Linux Web Hosting solutions.

Below one can find the advantages of Plesk control panel.

>> Windows Support : Plesk works on Windows Web hosting service allowing web hosting service providers to provide Windows based web hosting packages to the customers. Customers ASP and ASP.NET websites can only work on Windows servers, so Windows Web Hosting service needs to be opted. Customers usually prefer Plesk with Windows Web Hosting.

>> Windows Service Support : As Plesk can be used on Windows based servers it has the capability to integrate to integrate with multiple Windows based programs. It has an advanced feature support for some Windows programs such as Microsoft SQL Server which can be managed by Plesk 9.0 by server administrators and clients with their own databases which makes it an ideal control panel solution for Windows.

>> Cross Platform Compatibility : From a system administrator’s point of view,  one may find it more beneficial having a single control panel on all the servers. Mastering a single control panel is much simpler than mastering two. As a customer one may find it easy since it means that one should be able to get the same sort of features from both Linux as well as from Windows web hosting solutions.

Though Plesk seems to be perfect for Windows web hosting packages, it can also be used for Linux packages.

cPanel is a preferred control panel for Linux web hosting services. Benefits of cPanel are as follows.

>> More Features of Linux : cPanel encompasses more features for Linux web hosting solutions than Plesk control panel. cPanel can be used in combination with different add-ons such as Fantastico script installer and CFS firewall to provide customers a wide range of services which can be used from their web hosting accounts control panel, such features can’t be used on Plesk Linux Web Hosting servers.

>> Reseller Support : Apart from Plesk 9.0 version, other versions does not provide support for reseller web hosting accounts whereas cPanel offers good support for resellers. cPanel is available with the Web Host Manager (WHM) panel which allows resellers to control all different aspects of their reseller accounts including the configuring of their own packages and the setting up of client web hosting accounts.

>> Faster Loading : cPanel’s internal pages load more faster than those of Plesk and certain tasks are carried out quicker than they would be with the Plesk control panel. cPanel does not rely on external databases in much cases, this is one of the reasons of the smooth functioning. cPanel has proven to be more reliable than Plesk on Linux.

To sum it up, both the control panels cPanel and Plesk provide web hosting service provider firms a reliable control panel service but come with their own advantages and disadvantages. But, Plesk for Windows and cPanel for Linux is the perfect solution offered by web hosting firms.

Linux is an open source and free operating system. The correct pronunciation of Linux is LIH-nux. A Finnish programmer Linus Torwalds created Linux in 1991. He took support from many developers from around the world. Linux has a lot of resemblance with Unix.

Linux can be freely downloaded and run on computers, the source codes written by programmers too are available free of cost. Having access to the source codes enables users to modify the programs according to their needs.

Linux can be made to run on variety of hardware platforms such as Cell Phones, Personal Computer’s and huge mainframes.

Linux is licensed under the Free Software Foundations GNU projects GNU General Public License, version 2 and under this license users have the right to modify and redistribute the software.

Linux can be taken in two ways: GUI (Graphical User Interface) and Application programs. The different versions of Linux are known as distributions.

Some versions of Linux can be installed alongwith other Operating System on the same hard disk this is called Dual boot, whereas some versions solely needs to be installed on a hard disk. Some versions are designed to run as live CD’s or DVD’s.

If users are completely new to Linux and want to check it out then CLICK to view the ways of testing Linux without altering the Windows computer or installing Linux while keeping Windows.

Ubuntu 8.04 is one of the distributors of Linux that offers a Graphical User Interface similar to Windows. It is based on the “Point and Click” environment which presents delivers attractive visual layout and interface experience. Linux offers users to chose from a variety of interfaces. Most of the distributions have complete desktop environments. They contain tools, games, utilities and other applications. GNOME (Pronunciation : guh-NOME) and KDE (K Desktop Environment) are two of the most popular desktop environments.

KDE is capable of running on any Unix as well as Linux operating system. KDE too is licensed under the terms of GNU General Public license. It is supported by the free software development community which is provided free of cost to Linux users.

GNOME, the GNU Network Object Model environment is a ever-present GUI for linux. This too is licensed under the terms of GNU General Public License.

This article will provide a quick understanding of Linux to Windows users who are keen to try Linux. Windows users who want to try Linux without uninstalling Windows from the hard disk, should try to run Linux from the Live CD. It is one of the versions of Linux which boots from the CD and does not alter the current Operating system installed on the hard disk. Click here to download the Linux OS. Save the download on the desktop then burn it. When the CD is ready insert it in the CD drive and reboot the computer. Now you need to enter the BIOS and check if the CD drive appears before hard drive on the screen which controls boot order of devices on the computer. Save settings and continue booting. After booting is complete Linux would start running.

A live CD can be truly helpful for testing Linux on any other Operating system without altering the current operating system installed on the hard drive. As this OS runs from the CD and not from the hard drive, so it might be slow. But ideal for a new user Linux.

If you are not able to restart apache successfully on your linux server , Please check the error with apache error logs

tail -f /usr/local/apache/log/error_log

if you are getting

pid file /usr/local/apache/logs/httpd.pid overwritten —
Unclean shutdown of previous Apache run?
semget: No space left on device

you can get it resolved with following steps:

The error specifies that there is no more space left in Semaphore Arrays for Apache. You can check the semaphore are with

#ipcs -s

The result will be as

—— Semaphore Arrays ——–
key semid owner perms nsems
0×00000000 9601024 nobody 600 1
0×00000000 9633793 nobody 600 1

So you need to remove nobody

#for i in `ipcs -s | awk ‘{print $2}’`; do ipcrm -s $i;done

then restart apache services

#service httpd restart

Using the Apache Module : mod_spamhaus which uses DNSBL one can block spam transmitted through web forms which prevent URL injection, block http DDoS attacks from bots and protect the web service denying access to bad IP addresses.

Here is how you do it.

INSTALLATION

Apache Extension Tool (apxs2) is essential to be installed in order to compile mod_spamhaus.

• Use following command for it installation:

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apt-get install apache2-prefork-dev

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• Source package is required, it can be downloaded from : http://sourceforge.net/projects/mod-spamhaus/

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wget http://kent.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/mod-spamhaus/mod_spamhaus05.tar.gz

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• Now open archive, compile and install module with the commands:

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tar zxvf mod_spamhaus05.tar.gz
cd mod-spamhaus
make
make install

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• To load mod_spamhaus module, you must add Load Module directive to the main config file of the web server.

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vi /etc/apache2/httpd.conf

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—————————————————————————————————

[...]

LoadModule spamhaus_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_spamhaus.so

—————————————————————————————————

CONFIGURATION

You should be aware of directives that are supported by mod_spamhaus before the configuration is written.

MS_Methods - If the httpd’s method used by the visitor match, module verify user’s IP address
MS_WhiteList - A simple whitelist file where you can put IP address to bypass
MS_DNS - DNSBL to use. Useful if you want make a local rbldnsd instance
MS_CacheSize - Number of cached addresses

• Its time to open the config file of web server for writing the configuration.

———————————–——————————

vi /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

—————————————————————–

————————————————————————–

[...]

<IfModule mod_spamhaus.c>

MS_METHODS POST,PUT,OPTIONS,CONNECT

MS_WhiteList /etc/spamhaus.wl

MS_CacheSize 256

</IfModule>

[...]

————————————————————————–

• Now an empty whitelist file needs to be created :

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touch /etc/spamhaus.wl

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With this we are done with the configuration part.

• Now just restart Apache2 by :

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/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

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With this you are free from Spammers and Hackers.

As we all are aware that Linux is a free downloadable Operating System (OS). Linux has made a strong establishment not only in corporate information technology but also in the embedded market. This is probably because of reusable source code, its support for different types of hardware and an anticipated cost reduction. Linux is highly flexible and offers complete control over development tools, OS and associated packages.

Is Migration A Problem? Here’s how its done.

If you are choosing Linux as the Operating System for migration, then you need to outline a well-organized action plan. Determine the migration goal and evaluate the risk involved.

Migration Methodology

Your maximum effort should be given for application re-design. Existing source code is suitable for porting if the API (e.g., UNIX or POSIX) and the internal structure of the application are similar to Linux.

The software Wind River is a professional Services migration methodology, the migration model used by them is shown below.

Incase the source code is strongly interwoven into the current OS`s API, then an API intermediate layer should be inserted for the purpose of communication between the current operating system`s API and Linux API. API stands for Application Programming Interface. Else, the application can be bundled with the current OS and and layered onto Linux.

The figure below shows the application can be reused, redesigned or ported, with a legacy Operating system too.