DirectAdmin

DirectAdmin is a web hosting control panel that supports various Linux distributions as well as FreeBSD.

Feature-wise, this product is limited when compared to cPanel. Features that I found lacking includes:

• No ability to create just mysql users. Only users + db as a 1:1 mapping
• No way to manage server services. Rebuild apache+php?
• Services are not monitored? they sure are.
• Mail configuration limited - no email redirects limit was set to 0 for the user.

Installation

On a clean install of CentOS 7, install the required dependencies listed at https://help.directadmin.com/item.php?id=354

# yum install wget gcc gcc-c++ flex bison make bind bind-libs bind-utils openssl openssl-devel perl quota libaio \
libcom_err-devel libcurl-devel gd zlib-devel zip unzip libcap-devel cronie bzip2 cyrus-sasl-devel perl-ExtUtils-Embed \
autoconf automake libtool which patch mailx bzip2-devel lsof glibc-headers kernel-devel expat-devel \
psmisc net-tools systemd-devel libdb-devel perl-DBI perl-Perl4-CoreLibs perl-libwww-perl xfsprogs rsyslog logrotate crontabs file kernel-headers

Start the automatic installation with the auto parameter.

# wget https://www.directadmin.com/setup.sh
# sh setup.sh auto

Review /usr/local/directadmin/conf/directadmin.conf and ensure that the ethernet_dev value is correct.

Installation takes less than an hour. When completed, access DirectAdmin on port 2222. The Admin username/password are stored in the /usr/local/directadmin/scripts/setup.txt file.

CustomBuild

CustomBuild is DirectAdmin's way of managing the software running on the server. The primary configuration file is located at /usr/local/directadmin/custombuild/options.conf and can be edited either from the web interface or directly via SSH.