Version 1.0 Author: Falko Timme <ft [at] falkotimme [dot] com> Last edited 05/03/2009
This tutorial shows how to prepare an Ubuntu 9.04 server for the installation of ISPConfig 3, and how to install ISPConfig 3. ISPConfig 3 is a webhosting control panel that allows you to configure the following services through a web browser: Apache web server, Postfix mail server, MySQL, MyDNS nameserver, PureFTPd, SpamAssassin, ClamAV, and many more.
Please note that this setup does not work for ISPConfig 2! It is valid for ISPConfig 3 only!
I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!
1 Requirements
To install such a system you will need the following:
In this tutorial I use the hostname server1.example.com with the IP address 192.168.0.100 and the gateway 192.168.0.1. These settings might differ for you, so you have to replace them where appropriate.
3 The Base System
Insert your Ubuntu install CD into your system and boot from it. Select your language:
Then select Install Ubuntu Server:
Choose your language again (?):
Then select your location:
Choose a keyboard layout (you will be asked to press a few keys, and the installer will try to detect your keyboard layout based on the keys you pressed):
The installer checks the installation CD, your hardware, and configures the network with DHCP if there is a DHCP server in the network:
Enter the hostname. In this example, my system is called server1.example.com, so I enter server1:
Now you have to partition your hard disk. For simplicity's sake I select Guided - use entire disk and set up LVM - this will create one volume group with two logical volumes, one for the / file system and another one for swap (of course, the partitioning is totally up to you - if you know what you're doing, you can also set up your partitions manually).
Select the disk that you want to partition:
When you're asked Write the changes to disks and configure LVM?, select Yes:
If you have selected Guided - use entire disk and set up LVM, the partitioner will create one big volume group that uses all the disk space. You can now specify how much of that disk space should be used by the logical volumes for / and swap. It makes sense to leave some space unused so that you can later on expand your existing logical volumes or create new ones - this gives you more flexibility.
When you're finished, hit Yes when you're asked Write the changes to disks?:
Afterwards, your new partitions are being created and formatted:
Now the base system is being installed:
Create a user, for example the user Administrator with the user name administrator (don't use the user name admin as it is a reserved name on Ubuntu 9.04):
I don't need an encrypted private directory, so I choose No here:
Next the package manager apt gets configured. Leave the HTTP proxy line empty unless you're using a proxy server to connect to the Internet:
I'm a little bit old-fashioned and like to update my servers manually to have more control, therefore I select No automatic updates. Of course, it's up to you what you select here:
We need a DNS, mail, and LAMP server, but nevertheless I don't select any of them now because I like to have full control over what gets installed on my system. We will install the needed packages manually later on. The only item I select here is OpenSSH server so that I can immediately connect to the system with an SSH client such as PuTTY after the installation has finished:
The installation continues:
The GRUB boot loader gets installed:
The base system installation is now finished. Remove the installation CD from the CD drive and hit Continue to reboot the system:
4 Get root Privileges
After the reboot you can login with your previously created username (e.g. administrator). Because we must run all the steps from this tutorial with root privileges, we can either prepend all commands in this tutorial with the string sudo, or we become root right now by typing
sudo su
(You can as well enable the root login by running
sudo passwd root
and giving root a password. You can then directly log in as root, but this is frowned upon by the Ubuntu developers and community for various reasons. See http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=765414.)
5 Install The SSH Server (Optional)
If you did not install the OpenSSH server during the system installation, you can do it now:
aptitude install ssh openssh-server
From now on you can use an SSH client such as PuTTY and connect from your workstation to your Ubuntu 9.04 server and follow the remaining steps from this tutorial.
6 Install vim-nox (Optional)
I'll use vi as my text editor in this tutorial. The default vi program has some strange behaviour on Ubuntu and Debian; to fix this, we install vim-nox:
aptitude install vim-nox
(You don't have to do this if you use a different text editor such as joe or nano.)
7 Configure The Network
Because the Ubuntu installer has configured our system to get its network settings via DHCP, we have to change that now because a server should have a static IP address. Edit /etc/network/interfaces and adjust it to your needs (in this example setup I will use the IP address 192.168.0.100):
vi /etc/network/interfaces
# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system # and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).
# The loopback network interface auto lo iface lo inet loopback
8 Edit /etc/apt/sources.list And Update Your Linux Installation
Edit /etc/apt/sources.list. Comment out or remove the installation CD from the file and make sure that the universe and multiverse repositories are enabled. It should look like this:
vi /etc/apt/sources.list
# # deb cdrom:[Ubuntu-Server 9.04 _Jaunty Jackalope_ - Release amd64 (20090421.1)]/ jaunty main restricted
#deb cdrom:[Ubuntu-Server 9.04 _Jaunty Jackalope_ - Release amd64 (20090421.1)]/ jaunty main restricted # See http://help.ubuntu.com/community/UpgradeNotes for how to upgrade to # newer versions of the distribution.
deb http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty main restricted deb-src http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty main restricted
## Major bug fix updates produced after the final release of the ## distribution. deb http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty-updates main restricted deb-src http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty-updates main restricted
## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu ## team. Also, please note that software in universe WILL NOT receive any ## review or updates from the Ubuntu security team. deb http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty universe deb-src http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty universe deb http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty-updates universe deb-src http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty-updates universe
## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu ## team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself as to ## your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in ## multiverse WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu ## security team. deb http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty multiverse deb-src http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty multiverse deb http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty-updates multiverse deb-src http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty-updates multiverse
## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from the 'backports' ## repository. ## N.B. software from this repository may not have been tested as ## extensively as that contained in the main release, although it includes ## newer versions of some applications which may provide useful features. ## Also, please note that software in backports WILL NOT receive any review ## or updates from the Ubuntu security team. # deb http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty-backports main restricted universe multiverse # deb-src http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty-backports main restricted universe multiverse
## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from Canonical's ## 'partner' repository. ## This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by Canonical and the ## respective vendors as a service to Ubuntu users. # deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu jaunty partner # deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu jaunty partner
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-security main restricted deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-security main restricted deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-security universe deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-security universe deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-security multiverse deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-security multiverse
Then run
aptitude update
to update the apt package database and
aptitude safe-upgrade
to install the latest updates (if there are any). If you see that a new kernel gets installed as part of the updates, you should reboot the system afterwards:
reboot
9 Change The Default Shell
/bin/sh is a symlink to /bin/dash, however we need /bin/bash, not /bin/dash. Therefore we do this:
dpkg-reconfigure dash
Install dash as /bin/sh?<-- No
If you don't do this, the ISPConfig installation will fail.
10 Disable AppArmor
AppArmor is a security extension (similar to SELinux) that should provide extended security. In my opinion you don't need it to configure a secure system, and it usually causes more problems than advantages (think of it after you have done a week of trouble-shooting because some service wasn't working as expected, and then you find out that everything was ok, only AppArmor was causing the problem). Therefore I disable it (this is a must if you want to install ISPConfig later on).
New password for the MySQL "root" user:<-- yourrootsqlpassword Repeat password for the MySQL "root" user:<-- yourrootsqlpassword Create directories for web-based administration?<-- No General type of mail configuration:<-- Internet Site System mail name:<-- server1.example.com SSL certificate required<-- Ok
We want MySQL to listen on all interfaces, not just localhost, therefore we edit /etc/mysql/my.cnf and comment out the line bind-address = 127.0.0.1:
vi /etc/mysql/my.cnf
[...] # Instead of skip-networking the default is now to listen only on # localhost which is more compatible and is not less secure. #bind-address = 127.0.0.1 [...]
During the installation, the SSL certificates for IMAP-SSL and POP3-SSL are created with the hostname localhost. To change this to the correct hostname (server1.example.com in this tutorial), delete the certificates...
cd /etc/courier rm -f /etc/courier/imapd.pem rm -f /etc/courier/pop3d.pem
... and modify the following two files; replace CN=localhost with CN=server1.example.com (you can also modify the other values, if necessary):
vi /etc/courier/imapd.cnf
[...] CN=server1.example.com [...]
vi /etc/courier/pop3d.cnf
[...] CN=server1.example.com [...]
Then recreate the certificates...
mkimapdcert mkpop3dcert
... and restart Courier-IMAP-SSL and Courier-POP3-SSL:
Web server to reconfigure automatically:<-- apache2 Configure database for phpmyadmin with dbconfig-common?<-- Yes Password of your database's administrative user:<-- yourrootsqlpassword MySQL application password for phpmyadmin:<-- [blank]
Then run the following command to enable the Apache modules suexec, rewrite, ssl, actions, and include:
a2enmod suexec rewrite ssl actions include
Secure phpMyAdmin by deleting the /etc/phpmyadmin/htpasswd.setup file...
rm -f /etc/phpmyadmin/htpasswd.setup
... and remove or comment out the following section in /etc/phpmyadmin/apache.conf:
Edit /etc/fstab. Mine looks like this (I added ,usrquota,grpquota to the partition with the mount point /):
vi /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information. # # Use 'vol_id --uuid' to print the universally unique identifier for a # device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices # that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5). # # <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass> proc /proc proc defaults 0 0 # / was on /dev/mapper/server1-root during installation UUID=b8d265bc-5959-404d-a68e-8dc1c76f18d6 / ext3 relatime,errors=remount-ro,usrquota,grpquota 0 1 # /boot was on /dev/sda5 during installation UUID=01e9c3c7-2ad0-4f52-a356-18290517b362 /boot ext2 relatime 0 2 # swap was on /dev/mapper/server1-swap_1 during installation UUID=c1e0bcbb-5c73-4bd2-a7b2-8beeb7526200 none swap sw 0 0 /dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0 /dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0
To enable quota, run these commands:
touch /quota.user /quota.group chmod 600 /quota.* mount -o remount /
quotacheck -avugm quotaon -avug
16 Install MyDNS
Before we install MyDNS, we need to install a few prerequisites:
aptitude install g++ libc6 gcc gawk make texinfo libmysqlclient15-dev
MyDNS is not available in the Ubuntu 9.04 repositories, therefore we have to build it ourselves as follows:
cd /tmp wget http://heanet.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/mydns-ng/mydns-1.2.8.27.tar.gz tar xvfz mydns-1.2.8.27.tar.gz cd mydns-1.2.8 ./configure make make install
Next we create the start/stop script for MyDNS:
vi /etc/init.d/mydns
#! /bin/sh # # mydns Start the MyDNS server # # Author: Philipp Kern <phil@philkern.de>. # Based upon skeleton 1.9.4 by Miquel van Smoorenburg # <miquels@cistron.nl> and Ian Murdock <imurdock@gnu.ai.mit.edu>. #
Vlogger and webalizer can be installed as follows:
aptitude install vlogger webalizer
18 Install Jailkit
Jailkit is needed only if you want to chroot SSH users. It can be installed as follows (important: Jailkit must be installed before ISPConfig - it cannot be installed afterwards!):
cd /tmp wget http://olivier.sessink.nl/jailkit/jailkit-2.5.tar.gz tar xvfz jailkit-2.5.tar.gz cd jailkit-2.5 ./configure make make install cd .. rm -rf jailkit-2.5*
19 Install fail2ban
This is optional but recommended, because the ISPConfig monitor tries to show the fail2ban log:
aptitude install fail2ban
20 Install SquirrelMail
To install the SquirrelMail webmail client, run
aptitude install squirrelmail
Then create the following symlink...
ln -s /usr/share/squirrelmail/ /var/www/webmail
... and configure SquirrelMail:
squirrelmail-configure
We must tell SquirrelMail that we are using Courier-IMAP/-POP3:
SquirrelMail Configuration : Read: config.php (1.4.0) --------------------------------------------------------- Main Menu -- 1. Organization Preferences 2. Server Settings 3. Folder Defaults 4. General Options 5. Themes 6. Address Books 7. Message of the Day (MOTD) 8. Plugins 9. Database 10. Languages
D. Set pre-defined settings for specific IMAP servers
C Turn color on S Save data Q Quit
Command >><-- D
SquirrelMail Configuration : Read: config.php --------------------------------------------------------- While we have been building SquirrelMail, we have discovered some preferences that work better with some servers that don't work so well with others. If you select your IMAP server, this option will set some pre-defined settings for that server.
Please note that you will still need to go through and make sure everything is correct. This does not change everything. There are only a few settings that this will change.
Please select your IMAP server: bincimap = Binc IMAP server courier = Courier IMAP server cyrus = Cyrus IMAP server dovecot = Dovecot Secure IMAP server exchange = Microsoft Exchange IMAP server hmailserver = hMailServer macosx = Mac OS X Mailserver mercury32 = Mercury/32 uw = University of Washington's IMAP server
quit = Do not change anything Command >><-- courier
SquirrelMail Configuration : Read: config.php --------------------------------------------------------- While we have been building SquirrelMail, we have discovered some preferences that work better with some servers that don't work so well with others. If you select your IMAP server, this option will set some pre-defined settings for that server.
Please note that you will still need to go through and make sure everything is correct. This does not change everything. There are only a few settings that this will change.
Please select your IMAP server: bincimap = Binc IMAP server courier = Courier IMAP server cyrus = Cyrus IMAP server dovecot = Dovecot Secure IMAP server exchange = Microsoft Exchange IMAP server hmailserver = hMailServer macosx = Mac OS X Mailserver mercury32 = Mercury/32 uw = University of Washington's IMAP server
SquirrelMail Configuration : Read: config.php (1.4.0) --------------------------------------------------------- Main Menu -- 1. Organization Preferences 2. Server Settings 3. Folder Defaults 4. General Options 5. Themes 6. Address Books 7. Message of the Day (MOTD) 8. Plugins 9. Database 10. Languages
D. Set pre-defined settings for specific IMAP servers
C Turn color on S Save data Q Quit
Command >><-- S
SquirrelMail Configuration : Read: config.php (1.4.0) --------------------------------------------------------- Main Menu -- 1. Organization Preferences 2. Server Settings 3. Folder Defaults 4. General Options 5. Themes 6. Address Books 7. Message of the Day (MOTD) 8. Plugins 9. Database 10. Languages
D. Set pre-defined settings for specific IMAP servers
C Turn color on S Save data Q Quit
Command >> S
Data saved in config.php Press enter to continue...<-- ENTER
SquirrelMail Configuration : Read: config.php (1.4.0) --------------------------------------------------------- Main Menu -- 1. Organization Preferences 2. Server Settings 3. Folder Defaults 4. General Options 5. Themes 6. Address Books 7. Message of the Day (MOTD) 8. Plugins 9. Database 10. Languages
D. Set pre-defined settings for specific IMAP servers
C Turn color on S Save data Q Quit
Command >><-- Q
Afterwards you can access SquirrelMail under http://server1.example.com/webmail or http://192.168.0.100/webmail:
21 Install ISPConfig 3
To install ISPConfig 3 from the latest released version, do this:
cd /tmp wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/ispconfig/ISPConfig-3.0.1.1.tar.gz?use_mirror= tar xvfz ISPConfig-3.0.1.1.tar.gz cd ispconfig3_install/install/
(Replace ISPConfig-3.0.1.1.tar.gz with the latest version.)
Following will be a few questions for primary configuration so be careful. Default values are in [brackets] and can be accepted with <ENTER>. Tap in "quit" (without the quotes) to stop the installer.
Select language (en,de) [en]:<-- ENTER
Installation mode (standard,expert) [standard]:<-- ENTER
Full qualified hostname (FQDN) of the server, eg server1.domain.tld [server1.example.com]:<-- ENTER
MySQL server hostname [localhost]:<-- ENTER
MySQL root username [root]:<-- ENTER
MySQL root password []:<-- yourrootsqlpassword
MySQL database to create [dbispconfig]:<-- ENTER
MySQL charset [utf8]:<-- ENTER
Generating a 2048 bit RSA private key ..............................................................+++ ..............+++ writing new private key to 'smtpd.key' ----- You are about to be asked to enter information that will be incorporated into your certificate request. What you are about to enter is what is called a Distinguished Name or a DN. There are quite a few fields but you can leave some blank For some fields there will be a default value, If you enter '.', the field will be left blank. ----- Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]:<-- ENTER State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]:<-- ENTER Locality Name (eg, city) []:<-- ENTER Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]:<-- ENTER Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:<-- ENTER Common Name (eg, YOUR name) []:<-- ENTER Email Address []:<-- ENTER Configuring Jailkit Configuring SASL Configuring PAM Configuring Courier Configuring Spamassassin Configuring Amavisd Configuring Getmail Configuring Pureftpd Configuring MyDNS Configuring Apache Configuring Firewall Installing ISPConfig ISPConfig Port [8080]:<-- ENTER
Configuring DBServer Installing Crontab no crontab for root no crontab for getmail Restarting services ... * Stopping MySQL database server mysqld ...done. * Starting MySQL database server mysqld ...done. * Checking for corrupt, not cleanly closed and upgrade needing tables. * Stopping Postfix Mail Transport Agent postfix ...done. * Starting Postfix Mail Transport Agent postfix ...done. * Stopping SASL Authentication Daemon saslauthd ...done. * Starting SASL Authentication Daemon saslauthd ...done. Stopping amavisd: amavisd-new. Starting amavisd: amavisd-new. * Stopping ClamAV daemon clamd ...done. * Starting ClamAV daemon clamd ...done. * Stopping Courier authentication services authdaemond ...done. * Starting Courier authentication services authdaemond ...done. * Stopping Courier IMAP server... ...done. * Starting Courier IMAP server... ...done. * Stopping Courier IMAP-SSL server... ...done. * Starting Courier IMAP-SSL server... ...done. * Stopping Courier POP3 server... ...done. * Starting Courier POP3 server... ...done. * Stopping Courier POP3-SSL server... ...done. * Starting Courier POP3-SSL server... ...done. * Restarting web server apache2 ... waiting ...done. Restarting ftp server: Running: /usr/sbin/pure-ftpd-mysql-virtualchroot -l mysql:/etc/pure-ftpd/db/mysql.conf -l pam -A -E -b -u 1000 -O clf:/var/log/pure-ftpd/transfer.log -B Installation completed. root@server1:/tmp/ispconfig3_install/install#
The installer automatically configures all underlying services, so no manual configuration is needed.
Afterwards you can access ISPConfig 3 under http://server1.example.com:8080/ or http://192.168.0.100:8080/. Log in with the username admin and the password admin (you should change the default password after your first login):
