Manual ISPConfig installation

[Jan]

Hello HowtoForge Community,

I'm very interested in using ISPConfig. It looks just like the tool a was looking for all the time. It supports sendmail which I'm currently using in our email environment and seems to be very comfortable.
The only issue is that I don't have a fresh installed system and don't want the programs to get installed from source. I like the way that "apt-get" and the other debian tools manage the installed packages. Is there a possibility to do a manual installation?
I tried to understand the steps inside the setup, setup1 and setup2 shell-scripts but finally I gave up because it was too complex.
Maybe someone has already written a manual installation howto or a short instruction.

Have a nice weekend!

Greetings
Jan

[till]

The services / daemons ISPConfig uses are not compiled by the installer, ISPConfig uses the apache, sendmail, mysql, PHP, bind. etc. that belong to your linux distribution.

The only things being compiled are a second apache that is used only to host the controlpanel on port 81 together with the PHP needed for the controlpanel scripts.

So its not nescessary to tweak the installer to use the packages that you have installed with apt

[Jan]

Hello till, thanks for the fast reply.
I just saw that a lot of sourcecode packages are getting compiled during the setup script and thought "hey I do already have those application! Why compiling them again?". Anyway: Is it possible to use the system apache etc for ISPConfig?
In case of a security leak in apache, php5 etc it would be easier to replace those applications if they were managed by the system's package system (such as apt).

Jan

[till]

Hello Jan,

I just saw that a lot of sourcecode packages are getting compiled during the setup script and thought "hey I do already have those application! Why compiling them again?".

you see the sourcecode packages that got compiled but you dont understand correctly that they are NOT being used to host your websites etc. For webshosting the packages from your Linux distribution are being used.

Originally Posted by Jan

Anyway: Is it possible to use the system apache etc for ISPConfig?

No, otherwise you will loose the controlpanel access if your main apache fails.

In case of a security leak in apache, php5 etc it would be easier to replace those applications if they were managed by the system's package system (such as apt).

The packages used for webhosting are managed by the system (apt, rpm or whatever linux distro you use), as i posted above. Only some packages for the backend are compiled. They are not used for hosting the websites you configure in ISPCOnfig. We have to compile them because we need to assure that all the options we need for the backend are compiled in and thsi is not the case in all supported linux distributions.

[falko]

To make it clear: the packages compiled by ISPConfig don't interfere with your existing installation, they are installed in parallel and only used by ISPConfig. They don't replace your existing configuration, in fact your existing and working configuration is a prerequisite for ISPConfig.

[Jan]

Hello,
okay finally I got it . Just installed ISPConfig on a running Debian 3.1 Testserver. It's great! Looks very nice and does it's job .. the next days I'll do more testing .

For QA here some problems that occured during the installation :
* "which httpd" failed because the executable was missing. A soft link form /usr/sbin/apache to /usr/sbin/httpd fixed this issue.
* The mysql socket file had another location. (don't remember the actual location and I have currently no access to the server). A soft link fixed this issue, too. Maybe this occured because I'm using the dotdeb.org MySQL-Packages.

Have a nice weekend and thanks for this great open source program!
Jan

[till]

Originally Posted by Jan

For QA here some problems that occured during the installation :
* "which httpd" failed because the executable was missing. A soft link form /usr/sbin/apache to /usr/sbin/httpd fixed this issue.
* The mysql socket file had another location. (don't remember the actual location and I have currently no access to the server). A soft link fixed this issue, too. Maybe this occured because I'm using the dotdeb.org MySQL-Packages.

The ISPConfig installer only knows the common places for apache and mysql that are used in the default installation of e.g. DEBIAN 3.1, if you use non common packages or locations it might be nescessary to create symlinks.