Choosing a control panel

[ashleykaryl]

I have just signed up for a new dedicated server running Centos and I hired an experienced server manager to set it up for me. I liked the look of Kloxo and though he had never installed it before he said the specs looked OK, so he started work on it, opting for the 64 bit version because my server has 8 gigs of ram.

To cut a long story short it's taking a very long time to set up and above all the server manager is having serious difficulty getting the email to work properly, since the server keeps rejecting messages and he has even installed rsmail to try and work with Exim to bypass the problematic qmail but nothing will work. I am not involved in web hosting nor am I any kind of technical guru, so I am simply looking for a stable control panel that is simple to use and allows for all the normal things like a firewall, SpamAssassin and different users, who can add their own domains, email and FTP accounts.

The demo of ispCP Omega looks interesting with a stylish interface and I just wanted to ask in very non technical terms if it is likely to be what I am looking for and if it runs well in 64 bit mode?

Many thanks in advance

Ashley

[foxb]

In Short:

Email - Postfix
firewall - AFAIK no (Manual config)
SpamAssassin - Yes in Centos
different users - Yes
can add their own domains - Does not act as DNS server out of the box
email - Yes
FTP accounts - Yes

What is the amount of messages you have? I saw emails rejected from sendmail after Load average exceeds 20?!
How many users you have for the CP?

[ashleykaryl]

Thanks foxb. I am going to be sharing this server with one other user. We maybe send out ten messages a day each and the amount we receive will vary but never anything that dramatic. I was under the impression that qmail is extremely robust, however in Kloxo we just can't get it to work at the moment despite the best efforts of my server manager who has 8 years of experience in installing various systems. In testing, while we set this up, the server is rejecting every single message. I believe it could be a glitch in the 64 bit version and we could drop down to the 32 bit version but it seems like an awful waste of that 8 gigs of ram.

The interface in ispCP looks really good and is perhaps the best I have seen. The server I am moving away from has WHM/cPanel and despite all the hype surrounding cPanel I've never really liked it or at least when working at root level and it has been costing me €29 euros a month.

I wonder does ispCP provide shell access for users? It's not something I would use myself but the other user would like to have it and Kloxo does allow that. Indeed there are many aspects of Kloxo that we really like, however we started this install last Saturday and it's still not finished because of this email nightmare. I even suggested we try using the Google MX settings to bypass the Kloxo system, but I haven't heard back on that suggestion so far.

Although the new server currently has Centos installed there is no reason why we can't install Debian or some other OS if that would work better with ispCP. I went for Centos initially because my old server uses that and it has always been very reliable.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be welcome. We are just looking for something that is simple to use, fast, stable and obviously secure when properly setup.

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I've just been doing some research on postfix v qmail http://shearer.org/MTA_Comparison and while qmail has some good points it does seem as though it's a pain to set up.

[foxb]

It is a bit strange the problem you have with the e-mail?!
qmail is not the best MTA now. I don not remember where i read that, but someone mentioned that the development is sort of stopped, but still rejecting every message it looks like misconfiguration somewhere.
You mentioned 64-bit - on kloxo web page only 32-bit is noted as stable?!
FYI 32-bit + PAE kernel uses more than 4G RAM.

I had to mention that I've used only sendmail or postfix and I find both very stable.
For example I have a sendmail based spam filter and at some points I was receiving over 50K e-mails/day (96% spam of course).

IspCP work as well with CenOS as With Debian - No need to change the OS

Personally I also do not like cPanel. That one of the reasons I use IspCP now. I missed Kloxo when I did my research on CPs, but it looks nice, maybe it would be a weekend test project this summer.

I'm not aware of any support for shell for users, but someone else can have more information...

[ashleykaryl]

I believe Kloxo in 32 bit is a fairly credible option and certainly worth a look. The 64 bit version is really not ready for use though judging by what the server manager was telling me and he was very disappointed. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it turns into something really good 6-12 months down the road, but right now it's not being supported and I really think it needs more work.

In the end the server manager said he would have found a way to make it work eventually but he felt there would be problems further down the line so it was better to start fresh with a different alternative. Thankfully Hetzner make it easy to do a fresh system install through the VNC.

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I found a decent list of free control panels at the link below but curiously it doesn't include ispCP Omega, which I found by chance mentioned in an online discussion.

http://controlpanelblog.com/general/10-f...nels.html/

[Smallserver]

If you are @Hetzner, why not try Debian Lenny with ISPCP. Setup takes 30 minutes, tweaking it a little longer. I am running a rootserver on Hetzner with Lenny and ISPCP, and had no problems at all, aside from some minor issues that solved quickly.

Regards,
Herman

[Nuxwin]

(07-05-2010 08:06 AM)Smallserver Wrote:  Setup takes 30 minutes

For newbies

In reality, setup take 5 minutes.

[ashleykaryl]

Thanks for all the feedback and kind help. To cut a long story short, the lack of shell access became a real sticking point for the other user, so we ended up installing ISPConfig 3 instead.

The irony is that once it was all done and we had gone though countless steps trying to tailor everything for his requirements he got cold feet and decided it was all a bit geeky, so instead he is no longer using the server and has signed up for a cheap shared hosting package somewhere with a cPanel...

After all of this and the Kloxo headaches I shall just stay as I am for the moment with ISPConfig and see how it goes for a while but I'll keep an eye on ispCP Omega and watch its development with interest. I can't fault the look and for my simple needs I am sure it would be fine.