Questions regarding overall setup.

[jim.thornton]

I have just installed ispCP Omega for the first time, so I am VERY new to this. I have been working with Linux (CentOS 5) for about 1.5 years now and would say my skills are about intermediate at best. I can compile from source and I have setup a server before but had help with configuring BIND. My current VPS provider installed Dovecot for me for use with DirectAdmin.

I have some questions for suggestions:

1. FTP: From searching on the net, it seems that there is an equal number of people that like vsftp, proftpd and pureftpd. It seems as though there is a slight performance advantage using PureFTPd. The concensus seems that vsFTP is the most secure but slower in performance. IspCP by default uses ProFTPd which seems - from the posts I've read - to be slightly behind in performance over PureFTP. I'm looking for suggestions on whether I should switch it or not. I found the thread on here with a tutorial on how to do it, but SHOULD I do it? Also... Will it make things more difficult in the future when upgrading ispCP or should it not matter?

2. MTA: Again, same question except that it seems hands down that Dovecot wins in all forums as the preferred MTA (which makes me wonder why it isn't supported from orginal install. Anyway... If I change to Dovecot, will there possibly be any future problems?

3. Security: Is there anything in particular that I should do in order to secure ispCP, or is it pretty secure "out of the box"?

Finally... I notice that when checking out the Server Status there were some services listed that I don't know:

a. Policyd-Weight: Should I be installing this?
b. ispCP Daemon: This is showing as not running for some reason.
c. AMAVIS: Should I be installing this?
d. PostGrey: Should I be isntalling this?

I appreciate any help I can get here.

[kilburn]

1. No, you shouldn't. The performance increase is negligible under a usual Web/e-mail server workload, and it will surely cause issues when upgrading the panel.

2. Ispcp is a vhcs2 fork, a project which started back in 2001, while dovecot started sometime around mid-2002. Migrating from courier to dovecot is not a 100% transparent process, and we're studying the best upgrade-path possible to switch to dovecot as default. Until then... I also recommend you to stick with courier.

3. Ispcp is fairly secure by default (when compared with other hosting panels), but everything can be hardened further. Take a look at how to make ispcp more secure, and/or the other security related howtos from the docs page.

a. Policyd-weight should be enabled after a default install. Whether you should run it or not... depends on your preferences. Read about what it is/does and choose by yourself.
b. IspCP Daemon should DEFINITELY be shown as running. Is your panel really working? (try to add a domain, for example)
c. amavis is an anti-{virus,spam} platform, so your preference again.
d. Postgrey implements greylisting for your mail system. Personal preference again...

[MasterTH]

1. after updating ispcp to a newer release you may have to do the steps again, because the installation & upgrade script just upgrade the default packages and configuration

2. the same problem could happen here.

3. i added a ssl-cert to my admin-page.

a) is good for antispam protection
b) which version of centos ur running? 32bit or 64bit? Take a look in ur log-files why the daemon is not running. the daemon runs the script when u add a user or delete one.
c) Antivirus Scanning Solution
d. another antispam-solution, wants the sender to resend the mail to activate the mail-adress. Otherwise the mail-adress is marked as spam-sender

[jim.thornton]

Thanks for your help, both of you.

I am running CentOS 5.3, Apache 2.2.8, PHP 5.2.9, MySQL 5.0.58. My VM is 384MB Ram and it is in Virtualbox with my Host OS as Vista on Quad Core Q6600 2.4Ghz w/ 2GB ram.

Which log files should I look at?

I can manually start the ispcp daemon without error. How can I get it to run at boot?

[jim.thornton]

Is this acceptable?

# chkconfig --level 3 ispcp_daemon on

After running that, I rebooted and the daemon is now running.

[MasterTH]

thats fine.