client directory structure in ispconfig 3

[MrM]

Hi,

We are currently using ispconfig 2 for our production web server and are quite pleased with it, aside from some minor annoyances. One of these is the directory, user and db naming. Having many sites hosted on the server, it can get next to impossible to find the directory, database or user of a particular site, when they are named web1, web2, db1, db2, etc.

I have been testing ispconfig 3.0.0.9 a while now (from the downloadable debian vmware image), and must say I am very impressed with it. It seems that the naming issue has been somewhat addressed in ispconfig 3, too. The databases can now be named arbitrarily, with a prefix (I changed the prefix to [CLIENTNAME] and it seems to work). There is now also an option to define a custom directory structure in Server Config > Web. For lack of documentation though, I don't know how to set it to what I would like to achieve.

Here is what I would like to have:
- linux (shell) users equal to the domain name (i.e. 'domain.tld')
- linux (shell) groups equal to the client's ispconfig username
- the client directory structure equal to something like this: /var/clients/[username]/[website_domain]

Is this possible with ispconfig 3? If so, this would be a major incentive for us to upgrade to version 3, even though we would have to reinstall the OS from scratch.

[till]

This is not implemented in ISPConfig 3, but you may write new plugins for the ispconfig server part to implement this as ISPConfig 3 is very modular and you can replace all configuration paers with your custom plugins easily.

[MrM]

Thanks for the answer, till. Is there any documentation for writing plugins?

How much path customization is possible without a plugin? Which variables can be used instead of [client_id] in the "Website path"?

[till]

Originally Posted by MrM

Thanks for the answer, till. Is there any documentation for writing plugins?

None except of the posts in the developer forum. As a start you just copy a plugin and change it to suit your needs.

How much path customization is possible without a plugin? Which variables can be used instead of [client_id] in the "Website path"?

All possible variables are alraedy used in the default path.

[MrM]

Originally Posted by till

None except of the posts in the developer forum. As a start you just copy a plugin and change it to suit your needs.

OK, I'll take a look at the developers' forum then. Thanks.

Originally Posted by till

All possible variables are alraedy used in the default path.

Would it be possible to make a feature request for more variables (e.g. all fields from the client and web_domain tables)? This should be extremely easy to implement, since variable replacing is already there.

One more note: I've tried changing the Documentroot, Linux User and Linux Group in Web Domain Options, but this feature doesn't seem to work. After I click save and edit it again, the values revert to default. Although the directories in /var/clients get created, the symlinks still point to the old location.

[till]

Would it be possible to make a feature request for more variables (e.g. all fields from the client and web_domain tables)? This should be extremely easy to implement, since variable replacing is already there.

Please post feature request here:

http://bugtracker.ispconfig.org

One more note: I've tried changing the Documentroot, Linux User and Linux Group in Web Domain Options, but this feature doesn't seem to work. After I click save and edit it again, the values revert to default. Although the directories in /var/clients get created, the symlinks still point to the old location.

This works fine for me, but you will have to move all existing directories and to the new place too and change all symlinks to the new locations.

[MrM]

Thanks for your quick replies, till!

Originally Posted by till

Please post feature request here:

http://bugtracker.ispconfig.org

Will do that.

Originally Posted by till

This works fine for me, but you will have to move all existing directories and to the new place too and change all symlinks to the new locations.

When I change these settings, they do not change in the database (table web_domain), however new directories get created. It seems that the system-wide default path takes precedence. If I change that, all my sites' paths get updated as well.

Also, shouldn't symlinks be updated automatically?

[till]

When I change these settings, they do not change in the database (table web_domain), however new directories get created. It seems that the system-wide default path takes precedence. If I change that, all my sites' paths get updated as well.

Also, shouldn't symlinks be updated automatically?

Nno. it is not intended that the path is changed on a system were you created anything.

[MrM]

Originally Posted by till

Nno. it is not intended that the path is changed on a system were you created anything.

OK, I can understand that. The problem is, that when adding a new site, the site gets created when I click Options. At that stage, as you pointed out, it is already impossible to change the path, since the site already exists and the directories have already been created. This means that these settings can't be changed ever, if they cannot be changed while creating a new site. Am I missing something?

[till]

There is no option to set the path by site in ispconfig 3. The setting fo the global path is in server settings.