Parallels Water System 8.4 User Manual

Parallels® Plesk Control Panel

Parallels Plesk Control Panel 8.4 for Linux/Unix Administrator's Guide

(Revision 1.0)

Revision 1.0

ISBN: N/A Parallels 660 SW 39th Street Suite 205 Renton, Washington 98057 USA Phone: +1 (425) 282 6400 Fax: +1 (425) 282 6444

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permission is obtained from the copyright holder.

Patented technology protected by U.S.Patents 7,328,225; 7,325,017; 7,293,033; 7,099,948;

7,076,633.

Patents pending in the U.S. Product and service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.

Contents

Preface 7

Who Should Read This Guide ....................................................................................................... 7

Typographical Conventions ........................................................................................................... 7

Feedback ....................................................................................................................................... 8

About Plesk 9

Overview of Business Model, Users Accounts and Permissions ................................................ 10

Overview of Software Components Managed by Plesk .............................................................. 12

What's New in This Version ......................................................................................................... 12

Getting Started 13

Logging in to Plesk ...................................................................................................................... 14

If You Forgot Your Password ............................................................................................ 16

Becoming Familiar with Plesk's Interface .................................................................................... 16

Items in the Desktop View ................................................................................................. 18

Items in the Standard View ............................................................................................... 19

Changing Your Password and Contact Information .................................................................... 20

Configuring Your Control Panel 21

Upgrading License Key for Your Control Panel .......................................................................... 22

Upgrading the Trial License Key ....................................................................................... 23

Installing Additional License Keys for Plesk Add-ons ....................................................... 24

Upgrading Your License Key ............................................................................................ 24

Rolling Back to Your Previously Used License Key .......................................................... 25

Securing Your Control Panel ....................................................................................................... 25

Restricting Administrative Access to Control Panel .......................................................... 26

Securing Communication to Server with SSL Encryption ................................................. 27

Setting Up Global Account .......................................................................................................... 30

Creating A Global Account ................................................................................................ 31

Connecting Local Accounts To Your Global Account ....................................................... 31

Switching Between Accounts ............................................................................................ 32

Changing Global Account Password ................................................................................ 32

Disconnecting Local Accounts From Global Account ....................................................... 33

Customizing Your Control Panel ................................................................................................. 33

Changing Interface Language and Skin ............................................................................ 35

Customizing the Control Panel in the Standard View ....................................................... 36

Customizing the Control Panel in the Desktop View......................................................... 48

Adjusting Session Idle Time ........................................................................................................ 53

Configuring and Maintaining Your Server 54

Adding and Removing IP Addresses........................................................................................... 55

Configuring DNS Services ........................................................................................................... 58

Configuring Plesk to Run Behind a Firewall ...................................................................... 61

Configuring Mail Services ............................................................................................................ 62

Setting Up Spam Protection .............................................................................................. 64

Configuring Antivirus ......................................................................................................... 71

Preface 4

Configuring Mailman Mailing List Software ....................................................................... 73

Preventing Your Customers From Sending Mass E-mail ................................................. 73

Configuring Plesk for Database Hosting ..................................................................................... 73

Setting Up Remote Database Hosting .............................................................................. 75

Managing Database Servers............................................................................................. 78

Enabling Support for Adobe ColdFusion ..................................................................................... 80

Enabling Integration with Sitebuilder ........................................................................................... 81

Enabling Support for Miva E-commerce Applications ................................................................. 84

Configuring Statistics ................................................................................................................... 86

Configuring E-mail Notification System ....................................................................................... 86

Configuring Help Desk ................................................................................................................ 90

Adjusting System Date and Time ................................................................................................ 92

Starting, Stopping and Restarting Services ................................................................................ 93

Enabling Piped Logs for Web Server to Reduce the Risk of Web Service Disruption ................ 94

Monitoring Mail Server Message Queue and Troubleshooting Mail Congestion ........................ 94

Scheduling Tasks ........................................................................................................................ 96

Extending Plesk Capabilities with Modules ................................................................................. 98

Installing Modules ............................................................................................................. 99

Configuring and Managing Modules ................................................................................. 99

Removing Modules ......................................................................................................... 100

Serving Your Customers 101

Before You Start Serving Your Customers ............................................................................... 102

Simplifying Setup of User Accounts ................................................................................ 103

Simplifying Setup of Domains and Web Sites ................................................................. 107

Prepackaging Applications Your Customers Can Use.................................................... 111

Predefining Content for New Web Sites ......................................................................... 116

Managing User Accounts .......................................................................................................... 118

Adding User Accounts ..................................................................................................... 119

Modifying User Accounts ................................................................................................ 123

Suspending and Unsuspending User Accounts.............................................................. 128

Removing User Accounts ................................................................................................ 129

Hosting Web Sites ..................................................................................................................... 129

Obtaining Domain Names ............................................................................................... 130

Setting Up Hosting Account for a Web Site .................................................................... 131

Creating and Publishing a Site ........................................................................................ 140

Previewing a Site ............................................................................................................ 147

Deploying Databases ...................................................................................................... 147

Installing Applications ...................................................................................................... 151

Securing E-commerce Transactions with Secure Sockets Layer Encryption ................. 154

Restricting Access to Web Site's Resources with Password Protection ........................ 160

Organizing Site Structure with Subdomains ................................................................... 163

Setting Up Additional Domain Names for a Site (Domain Aliases) ................................. 165

Hosting Personal Web Pages on Your Web Server ....................................................... 168

Setting Up Anonymous FTP Access to the Server ......................................................... 170

Customizing Web Server Error Messages ...................................................................... 172

Customizing DNS Zone Configuration for Domains........................................................ 174

Serving Sites with External Domain Name Servers ........................................................ 178

Serving Domain Names for Sites Hosted on Other Servers (Domain Forwarding) ........ 180

Transferring Domains Between User Accounts .............................................................. 181

Suspending and Unsuspending Domains ....................................................................... 181

Removing Domains ......................................................................................................... 182

Using E-mail Services ............................................................................................................... 183

Creating Mailboxes ......................................................................................................... 184

Setting Up Your E-mail Program for Retrieving Mail from Your Mailbox ........................ 185

Accessing Your Mail from a Web Browser ...................................................................... 186

Protecting Mailboxes from Spam .................................................................................... 187

Protecting Mailboxes from Viruses ................................................................................. 192

Preface 5

Suspending and Unsuspending Mailboxes ..................................................................... 194

Removing Mailboxes ....................................................................................................... 195

Switching off the Mailbox Service When You Have Decided to Turn Your Account into a Mail

Forwarder ........................................................................................................................ 195

Setting Up Mail Forwarding to a Single E-mail Address ................................................. 196

Setting Up Mail Forwarding to Multiple E-mail Addresses .............................................. 198

Removing Mail Forwarders ............................................................................................. 200

Setting Up Automatic Reply ............................................................................................ 201

Switching off Automatic Reply......................................................................................... 203

Setting Up Site-Wide Preferences for Handling Mail to Nonexistent Users (Mail Bounce)204

Introducing Similar Changes to a Number of Mail Accounts at Once ............................. 205

Sending E-mail Notices to Multiple Customers at Once ................................................. 206

Maintaining Mailing Lists ................................................................................................. 211

Using Help Desk for Resolving Your Customers' Issues .......................................................... 215

Viewing Trouble Tickets in Your Help Desk .................................................................... 216

Commenting and Closing Trouble Tickets ...................................................................... 217

Migrating User Accounts, Domain Names and Web Sites from Other Hosting Platforms ........ 218

Performing Migration Within a Single Server .................................................................. 221

Backing Up and Restoring Your Data 223

Backing Up the Entire Server .................................................................................................... 224

Backing Up Individual User Accounts with User's Domains ..................................................... 224

Backing Up Individual Domains (Web Sites) ............................................................................. 225

Scheduling Backups .................................................................................................................. 225

Optimizing Server Performance ...................................................................................... 228

Restoring Data From Backup Archives ..................................................................................... 229

Maintaining Backup Files Repository ........................................................................................ 231

Uploading Backup Files to Server ................................................................................... 231

Downloading Backup Files from Server .......................................................................... 232

Removing Backup Files from Server .............................................................................. 232

Configuring Control Panel for Using FTP Repository ................................................................ 233

Viewing Statistics 234

Adjusting Preferences for Web Statistics Presentation by Webalizer ....................................... 236

Hiding and Unhiding Internal References from Your and Other Sites ............................ 237

Grouping and Ungrouping References from Other Sites ................................................ 238

Hiding and Unhiding Direct Requests ............................................................................. 239

Automating Report Generation and Delivery by E-mail ............................................................ 240

Viewing Log Files and Configuring Recycling of Log Files ....................................................... 242

Monitoring Connections to Control Panel and FTP Services 243

Monitoring Connections to Control Panel .................................................................................. 243

Monitoring Connections to FTP Service .................................................................................... 244

Logging Actions Performed by Your Customers in the Control Panel 245

Setting Up Action Logging ......................................................................................................... 246

Downloading the Action Log ...................................................................................................... 247

Clearing the Action Log ............................................................................................................. 247

Using Centralized Access to Your Numerous Plesk Servers 248

Adding a Server Record ............................................................................................................ 249

Viewing Server Information and Logging in to a Server ............................................................ 249

Preface 6

Removing a Server Record ....................................................................................................... 250

Upgrading Your Control Panel 251

Changing Updater Settings ....................................................................................................... 253

Blocking Access to Updater Functions from the Control Panel ................................................ 254

Appendix A. Advanced Features 255

Using Event Tracking Mechanism ............................................................................................. 255

Adding Event Handlers ................................................................................................... 256

Removing Event Handlers .............................................................................................. 276

Including Directives into Web Server Configuration File ........................................................... 277

Changing Tomcat Java Connector Ports .................................................................................. 278

Restoring Mail Configuration ..................................................................................................... 279

Installing Custom SSL Certificates for Qmail or Courier-IMAP Mail Servers ............................ 279

Installing SSL Certificate for Qmail ................................................................................. 280

Installing SSL Certificates for Courier-IMAP Mail Server ................................................ 282

Preface 7

In this section:

Who Should Read This Guide ........................................................................... 7

Typographical Conventions ............................................................................... 7

Feedback .......................................................................................................... 8

Formatting convention

Type of Information

Example

Special Bold

Items you must select, such as menu options, command buttons, or items in a list.

Go to the System tab. Titles of chapters, sections,

and subsections.

Read the Basic Administration chapter.

Italics

Used to emphasize the importance of a point, to introduce a term or to designate a command line placeholder, which is to be replaced with a real name or value.

The system supports the so called wildcard character search.

Monospace

The names of commands, files, and directories.

The license file is located in the

http://docs/common

/licenses directory.

Preface

Who Should Read This Guide

This guide is intended for hosting resellers who manage their servers through Plesk and have access to server administrator's account in Plesk.

Typographical Conventions

Before you start using this guide, it is important to understand the documentation conventions used in it.

The following kinds of formatting in the text identify special information.

8 Preface

Preformatted

On-screen computer output in your command-line sessions; source code in XML, C++, or other programming languages.

# ls –al /files

total 14470

Preformatted Bold

What you type, contrasted with on-screen computer output.

# cd /root/rpms/php

CAPITALS

Names of keys on the keyboard.

SHIFT, CTRL, ALT

KEY+KEY

Key combinations for which the user must press and hold down one key and then press another.

CTRL+P, ALT+F4

Feedback

If you have found a mistake in this guide, or if you have suggestions or ideas on how to improve this guide, please send your feedback using the online form at

http://www.parallels.com/en/support/usersdoc/. Please include in your report the guide's title,

chapter and section titles, and the fragment of text in which you have found an error.

Plesk is a hosting automation solution that gives hosting providers full control over the

In this chapter:

Overview of Business Model, Users Accounts and Permissions........................ 10

Overview of Software Components Managed by Plesk ..................................... 12

What's New in This Version ............................................................................... 12

C H A P T E R 1

About Plesk

managed Web hosting servers and simplifies setup and management of user accounts, Web sites, and e-mail accounts.

Plesk is stable, secure and reliable, and the main benefit of using Plesk is that it will save you and your technical staff much time and effort: all your customers (and customers of your resellers) will have personal isolated control panel environments and will be able to manage their sites and e-mail accounts on their own.

10 About Plesk

Overview of Business Model, Users Accounts and Permissions

Plesk user accounts hierarchy is limited to four user levels:

 administrator account,  client accounts,  domain administrator accounts,  e-mail user accounts.

For your customers who need to resell hosting services or host numerous domains/web sites, you will create client accounts.

Note: for the purpose of hosting your own sites, you should use a special service account which is created during Plesk setup. The account is registered with the control panel under the name My Domains.

Customers with access to client accounts can host on the server any number of sites you allow. They can host the sites of their own and/or resell hosting services to other users: for that purpose your resellers can create domain administrator accounts for their own customers.

Customers with access to domain administrator accounts cannot resell Web hosting services or host more than one site on their hosting accounts. They can only manage their own sites. In the current implementation of Plesk control panel, domain administrator accounts can be created only after the respective domains (web sites) are hosted on the server.

All site owners can set up e-mail accounts for themselves and provide other users with mail hosting services: for that purpose, they create e-mail user accounts and grant email users with access to control panel.

Site owners can also host personal web pages or small sites for other users under their domains. However, the owners of such sites usually do not have their own domain names and cannot have a dedicated control panel environment.

All permissions for operations performed in the control panel you define for a reseller (client account) allow the reseller to further assign them to his or her customers. The resource allotments you define for a reseller can be further redistributed among reseller's customers. For a full list of permissions and resource usage limits you can define, refer to the Managing User Accounts (on page 118) section.

All quotas you define for a client or domain administrator's account are soft quotas: the control panel indicates resource overage by showing the respective icons in the control panel, sends notices by e-mail to the respective users, but it does not automatically suspend user accounts or Web sites.

About Plesk 11

The control panel does not have a built-in billing system, therefore, we recommend that you use a third-party solution of your choice, or use Plesk together with Parallels Business Automation solution.

12 About Plesk

Overview of Software Components Managed by Plesk

Plesk control panel works in cooperation with the following third-party software components and services:

 Bind DNS server  Apache Web server  ProFTPd FTP server  MySQL and PostgreSQL database servers  Qmail mail server  Courier-IMAP IMAP/POP3 server  Mailman mailing list server  Spamassassin anti-spam software  Dr.Web antivirus  Webalizer and AWStats statistical packages  Tomcat

After installation of Plesk package, all essential services, such as DNS, Web, FTP and Mail are configured to run with the default optimal settings, so you can start serving your customers right away. However, we recommend that you review the default settings to make sure that they satisfy your needs, and create user account templates and domain templates, which will simplify further setup of hosting accounts.

What's New in This Version

Plesk Control Panel 8.4 offers you the following new features and enhancements: Simplified installation of site applications. All site applications are sorted by categories,

which makes it easier to choose the right application to install. DomainKeys support. Now you can use DomainKeys e-mail sender authentication

mechanism to reduce the amount of spam and phishing e-mails that are sent to your customers. For more information, refer to the chapter Setting Up Spam Protection (on page 64).

Updated components used with Plesk Control Panel. The latest versions of the following software can be used with Plesk Control Panel: Acronis True Image Server 9.5, Parallels Plesk Sitebuilder 4.2, Horde 3.1.7, SPAW 2.0 (editing software used in Plesk File Manager), Adobe ColdFusion 8.

4PSA VoipNow software support. The VoIP solution developed by 4PSA is now fully supported by Plesk Control Panel. For information about 4PSA VoipNow, refer to

http://www.4psa.com/index.php?pcat=products&pag=4psavoipnow

This chapter describes the first actions you need to perform after installation of the

In this chapter:

Logging in to Plesk ............................................................................................ 14

Becoming Familiar with Plesk's Interface........................................................... 16

Changing Your Password and Contact Information ........................................... 20

C H A P T E R 2

Getting Started

Plesk Control Panel.

14 Getting Started

Logging in to Plesk

 To log in to your Plesk control panel:

1 Open your web browser, and in the address bar type the URL where

your Plesk control panel is located.

For example, https://your-domain.com:8443, where your-domain.com is the domain name of your Web host.

2 Press ENTER. Plesk login screen will open. 3 Type the user name 'admin' and your password into the Login and

Password boxes, respectively. If this is your first login to the freshly installed control panel, use the default password 'setup'.

4 If you log in for the first time, select the language for your control

panel from the Interface language menu. If you had previously specified the interface language and saved it in your interface preferences, leave the User default value selected.

5 Click Login.

After your first login, you should accept the license agreement and then specify the host name and IP addresses to assign to the server.

6 Read carefully the terms of the License Agreement and, if you agree

to all the terms, select the I agree to the terms of this license agreement and Do not show it again check boxes.

7 Click Accept to proceed to the post-install configuration. 8 In the Full hostname field, enter your server's host name. This should be

a fully qualified host name but without a trailing dot (for example, host.domain.tld).

9 Specify the IP address that will be used as the default address of your

server. You have the following two options:

 Select one of your existing IP address from the drop-down box. This list is

populated automatically and contains all IP addresses available on the server. OR  Click the Add IP Address option button, select the network interface and enter the

new IP address and subnet mask in the IP address box. Note: With Plesk you can mark all your IP addresses as shared or dedicated before

you assign them to your customers. This allows the control panel to distinguish between them and not to let you assign a dedicated IP address to several customers at once. A dedicated IP address can be assigned to a single customer, while a shared IP address can be shared among several user accounts.

10 In the Shared IP section, specify the type for existing addresses: shared

or exclusive. Click the Shared and Exclusive buttons to change the types of IP addresses.

Getting Started 15

You can skip this stage and define the type of IP addresses later (Server > IP

In this section:

If You Forgot Your Password .............................................................................16

Addresses).

11 In the Administrator's preferences section, change the default

administrator password.

Change the default administrator's password. Enter the new password and confirm it in the New password and Confirm password fields. The password can have up to 14 symbols. Note that the password is case sensitive.

Note: Do not forget to change the administrator's password from the default one to your own personalized password; otherwise, access to the control panel under the administrator account will be available with the default password 'setup', which is known to many users of Plesk.

12 Click OK. 13 Fill in administrator‘s contact information. Be sure to leave the I would

like to create a default client account check box selected: Plesk assigns Web sites to client accounts, and selecting this check box will create a special user account "My Domains", which you will use for hosting your own Web sites.

14 Click OK.

16 Getting Started

If You Forgot Your Password

You can retrieve your forgotten password in any of the following ways:

 Look it up in the /etc/psa/.psa.shadow file on the server's file system.  Use the password reminder in the control panel.

To use the password reminder:

1 In your web browser‘s address bar, type the URL where your Plesk

control panel is located (for example, https://your-domain.com:8443)

2 Press ENTER.

Plesk login screen will open.

3 Click the Forgot your password? link. 4 Specify your login name and e-mail address registered in the system. 5 Click OK.

Your password will be sent to your e-mail. If your password cannot be sent by email because it was stored by the system in encrypted form, you will be prompted to set up a new password using a secret code that will be generated for that purpose and sent to you.

6 Once you received the e-mail from the password reminder, click the

link in the message body.

A new browser window will open.

7 Specify your login name and a new password. The Secret Code field of

the form should be automatically filled by the system, and if it is not, copy the secret code from the message you received to the clipboard and paste to the form.

8 Click OK to submit.

Note: You should use the secret code within 24 hours after its generation, otherwise it

will expire and you will need to go through the whole process again.

Becoming Familiar with Plesk's Interface

When you log in to control panel, it can open in either a standard view, a simplified desktop view, or a combination of both. The standard view is a customary view of the

control panel divided into two main areas: navigation pane on the left and the main screen where operations are performed on the right.

Getting Started 17

The desktop view can show server statistics and shortcuts to the operations you frequently perform—everything you may need can now be accessible from a single screen.

18 Getting Started

You can switch between the views (by installing the appropriate license key) or use a

In this section:

Items in the Desktop View ................................................................................. 18

Items in the Standard View ................................................................................ 19

In this section:

Using Wizards ................................................................................................... 19

combination of them for your control panel. You can also specify what view should be shown to other control panel users. To customize your control panel, refer to the Customizing the Control Panel (on page 48) chapter.

Note: When Parallels Plesk Sitebuilder, the site creation and management program, is installed on the server and Plesk is connected to it, a few more shortcuts related to Sitebuilder management are added to the Plesk navigation pane. For more information about connecting Plesk to Sitebuilder and using the shortcuts to Sitebuilder, refer to the section Enabling Integration with Sitebuilder (on page 81).

Items in the Desktop View

The desktop view originally shows four sections:  Server Information. This shows your hostname, control panel version, operating

system and kernel versions, license key number, and system uptime.

 Statistics. This shows average processor load for the last minute, five minutes, and

fifteen minutes, memory and disk space usage, number of served client accounts and hosted domains (Web sites). The client accounts include accounts of resellers and customers who have several sites—owners of a single domain are not counted.

 Tools. This group shows shortcuts to the operations that you can perform through

the control panel. You can freely add and remove these shortcuts.

 Favorites. This group shows five types of shortcuts sorted by type and placed on the

respective tabs. The Clients tab shows the shortcuts to administrative tools available for a selected user account, the Domains tab shows shortcuts to domain administration tools, the Mail Accounts tab shows shortcuts to the e-mail account administration tools. The Shortcuts tab shows all other types of shortcuts that do not relate to user accounts, domains and e-mail accounts. The Recent tab shows last ten control panel screens you have been on. The Favorites group also provides search tool for finding user accounts, web site hosting accounts, and e-mail accounts. To use the search tool, select the item type from the drop-down box, type the search criteria (this can be any combination of symbols, search is case insensitive) and click Search.

Getting Started 19

Using Wizards

When you work with Plesk in the Desktop view, you accomplish the tasks you need through wizards. Each wizard is a series of consecutive screens. To accomplish a task using a wizard, follow the instructions displayed on the wizard screens. For information on individual options, refer to the respective sections of this guide.

Items in the Standard View

The navigation pane is located on the left. It gives you access to sets of administrative functions:

 Clients. This is where you manage your clients and all data related to their accounts.  Domains. This is where you manage Web sites and their respective e-mail services.  Server. This shortcut gives you access to server administration functions.  Modules. This is where you manage the additional modules that extend Plesk

capabilities, such as Firewall, Game Server, VPN and others.

 Sessions. When clients, site and mailbox owners log in to control panel, or connect

to the server via FTP protocol, they establish sessions that you can monitor and terminate.

 Master. This shortcut gives you access to centralized management of Plesk enabled

servers.

 Help Desk. This is the help desk system integrated with your control panel. You can

use it to view and solve the problems reported to you by your customers.

 Help. Provides context sensitive help.  Log Out. When finished working with control panel, click this icon to close your

session.

Below the Help icon, there is a context help tip area. It provides a brief description of the current screen or available operations. When you place the mouse pointer over a system element or status icon, it displays additional information.

To navigate through Plesk, you can also use a path bar: a chain of links that appears in the right part of the screen, below the banner area. To return to a previous screen, use

the Up Level icon in the upper-right corner of the screen. To find items in lengthy lists, use search boxes located above every list of items: type a

search criterion into the input box, and click Search. A list will show the items matching the search criteria. To return back to viewing all items, click Show All.

To sort a list by a certain parameter in ascending or descending order, click on the parameter's title in the column heading. The order of sorting will be indicated by a small triangle displayed next to the parameter's title.

20 Getting Started

Changing Your Password and Contact Information

 To update your contact information:

1 Select the Server shortcut in the navigation pane 2 Click the Edit icon in the Administrator information group. 3 Update your information as required, and click OK.

 To change your password:

1 Select the Server shortcut in the navigation pane 2 Click the Change Password icon in the Administrator information group. 3 Enter your old and new passwords. 4 Click OK.

 If you forgot your password:

1 In your web browser‘s address bar, type the URL where your Plesk

control panel is located.

2 For example, https://your-server.com:8443. 3 Press ENTER. Plesk login screen will open. 4 Click the Forgot your password? link. 5 You will be prompted to specify your login name and e-mail address

registered in the system. Type your login name into the Login box, type your e-mail address registered in the system into the E-mail box, and click OK.

6 If your password cannot be sent by e-mail because it was stored by

the system in encrypted form, you will be prompted to set up a new password using a secret code that will be generated for that purpose and sent to your e-mail.

7 Once you received the e-mail from the password reminder, click the

link in the message body. A new browser window will open.

8 At this step, specify your login name and a new password.

The Secret Code field of the form should be automatically filled by the system, and if it is not, copy the secret code from the message you received to the clipboard and paste to the form.

9 Click OK to submit.

The instructions on how to restore your password will be sent to your e-mail address.

This chapter discusses the configuration steps required to set up and manage your

In this chapter:

Upgrading License Key for Your Control Panel ................................................. 22

Securing Your Control Panel ............................................................................. 25

Setting Up Global Account ................................................................................ 30

Customizing Your Control Panel ........................................................................ 33

Adjusting Session Idle Time .............................................................................. 53

C H A P T E R 3

Configuring Your Control Panel

Plesk Control Panel.

22 Configuring Your Control Panel

Upgrading License Key for Your Control

In this section:

Upgrading the Trial License Key ........................................................................ 23

Installing Additional License Keys for Plesk Add-ons ......................................... 24

Upgrading Your License Key ............................................................................. 24

Rolling Back to Your Previously Used License Key ........................................... 25

Panel

Plesk comes with a trial license key, which is automatically installed to the control panel. This license key allows you to create one user account, host one Web site and one mail box. Therefore, to fully use the Plesk Control Panel as you need, you should obtain a license key from Parallels or one of its resellers and install it to the control panel.

Plesk license keys have a built-in expiration date. This has been implemented to help prevent fraud and theft. It requires the Plesk software to check with Parallels licensing server during a 10 day grace period (prior to the expiration date) to verify that the key has not been reported stolen and is being used in accordance with the End User License Agreement (that is, installed on only one server). Once this is verified, the expiration date is prolonged.

Plesk will attempt to connect over TCP/IP to the licensing server through port 5224. Please make sure that this is not blocked by a firewall. The update process runs automatically and the Plesk administrator does not need to do anything unless there is a problem. Should the Plesk key expire, check your firewall and then go to Server > License Management and click Retrieve Keys. If the key cannot be updated, contact your reseller or Parallels (if you purchased the license key directly from Parallels).

You can test the connection to the licensing server anytime by going to Server > License

Management and clicking Retrieve Keys.

Configuring Your Control Panel 23

Upgrading the Trial License Key

 To upgrade the trial license key:

1 Go to Server > License Management and click Order New Key. 2 The Parallels online store will open in a separate browser window. In

this window, select the items and features you want to include into your Plesk license and click Submit. In the next steps, indicate the currency, number of license keys, provide contact details, billing address, and payment method, and submit the form. The new key will be sent to the specified e-mail address.

3 Save the new key to the hard drive on your local machine. 4 Open again the License Management screen in Plesk (Server > License

Management) and click Upload Key.

5 Enter the path to the key file that you saved on your local machine or

click Browse to locate it.

6 Select the Replace the currently installed license key with the selected one check

box to confirm that you really want to replace the current license key with the new one.

If this check box is not selected, the new license key will not be installed and installation will be aborted.

7 If your new license key allows hosting fewer sites than you already

host on the server, Plesk will stop working. However, to prevent the control panel from comparing the amount of the resources used and those covered by the new key, select the Allow the resources usage override check box.

This might be helpful if you want to temporarily install a license key that covers less resources and then upgrade it through the control panel interface.

8 Click OK to install the new key to the control panel.

24 Configuring Your Control Panel

Installing Additional License Keys for Plesk Add-ons

 To install an additional license key for an add-on Plesk component:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the License Management icon in the System group. 3 Click Order Control Panel Add-Ons. 4 The Parallels online store page listing available add-ons will open in a

separate browser window. On this page, select the add-ons you want to order and click Submit.

5 Because Plesk add-ons are added to the license keys that already

exist, the Plesk Number Checking System page will open. Enter the number of your license key to which you add this feature and click Submit.

6 In the next steps, indicate the currency, number of keys, provide

contact details, billing address, and payment method, and submit the form. You will be notified by e-mail when your order is processed.

7 When you receive the e-mail notification, return to the License

Management screen (Server > License Management) and click Retrieve Keys to

retrieve the ordered license key. Plesk License Manager will retrieve the upgraded license key from the Parallels licensing server and automatically install it to your control panel.

Upgrading Your License Key

If you are planning to expand your customer base and host more sites on the server than your current license allows, you need to upgrade your license key.

 To upgrade the license key:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the License Management icon in the System group. 3 Click Order Control Panel Upgrades. 4 On the Parallels online store page, select the desired upgrade option

and click Submit.

5 In the next step, indicate purchase details and submit the form. You

will be notified by e-mail when your order is processed.

6 After you receive the e-mail notification, return to the License

Management screen (Server > License Management) and click Retrieve Keys to

retrieve the ordered license key. Plesk License Manager will retrieve the purchased license key from the licensing server and automatically upload it to your control panel.

Configuring Your Control Panel 25

Rolling Back to Your Previously Used License Key

In this section:

Restricting Administrative Access to Control Panel ........................................... 26

Securing Communication to Server with SSL Encryption................................... 27

 To roll back to the license key you previously used:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the License Management icon in the System group. 3 Click Roll Back Key. The previously installed license key will be

restored.

Securing Your Control Panel

26 Configuring Your Control Panel

Restricting Administrative Access to Control Panel

To alleviate security concerns, you may want to restrict administrative access to your control panel from specific IP addresses.

 To allow administrative access to control panel only from specific IP addresses or

networks:

1 Go to Server > Access. 2 Click Add New Network and specify the required IP addresses. Click OK.

To specify subnets, you can use wildcard symbols (*) and subnet masks.

3 Select the Denied from the networks that are not listed option, and click Set.

When prompted to confirm the operation, click OK.

 To prohibit administrative access from specific IP addresses or networks:

1 Go to Server > Access. 2 Click Add New Network and specify an IP address. Click OK.

To specify subnets, you can use wildcard symbols (*) and subnet masks.

3 Select the Allowed, excluding the networks in the list option, and click Set.

When prompted to confirm the operation, click OK.

By default Plesk allows multiple simultaneous sessions for several users logged into the control panel using the same login and password combination. This can be useful when delegating management functions to other users or in case if you accidentally close your browser without logging out, thus becoming unable to log in again until your session expires. You may want to switch off this capability, if you do not need it.

 To disallow concurrent sessions for your administrative control panel:

1 Go to Server > Edit. 2 Clear the Allow multiple sessions under administrator's login check box and

click OK.

Configuring Your Control Panel 27

Securing Communication to Server with SSL Encryption

For security reasons, you can access your control panel only through a secure connection provided by Secure Sockets Layer-enabled hypertext transfer protocol. All data you exchange with the Plesk managed server are encrypted, thus preventing interception of sensitive information. The SSL certificate used in the data encryption process is automatically generated and installed on the server during installation of the control panel. This is the so-called self-signed certificate: it is not signed by a recognized certification authority (CA), therefore, upon attempt to connect to your control panel, you and your customers will see warning messages in Web browsers.

To gain customer confidence, you should purchase an SSL certificate from a reputable certification authority, and install it to the control panel.

You can either:  use the facilities for purchasing SSL certificates from GeoTrust, Inc. or GoDaddy

provided by your control panel, OR

 create a certificate signing request (CSR) from the control panel and submit it to the

certification authority of your choice, which will create an SSL certificate for you. Note: If you are going to use the control panel's facilities for purchasing a certificate

through MyPlesk.com online store, you should not use command line tools for creating the certificate signing request.

 To purchase an SSL certificate from GeoTrust, Inc. or GoDaddy through MyPleskCom

online store and secure your control panel:

1 Go to Server > Certificates. A list of SSL certificates that you have in

your repository will be displayed.

2 Click Add New Certificate. 3 Specify the certificate properties:

 Certificate name. This will help you identify this certificate in the repository.  Encryption level. Choose the encryption level of your SSL certificate. We

recommend that you choose a value more than 1024 bit.  Specify your location and organization name. The values you enter should not

exceed the length of 64 symbols.  Specify the host name for which you wish to purchase an SSL certificate. For

example: your-domain.com  Enter your e-mail address.

4 Make sure that all the provided information is correct and accurate, as

it will be used to generate your private key.

5 Click Buy Cert.

Your private key and certificate signing request will be generated — do not delete them. MyPlesk.com login page will open in a new browser window.

28 Configuring Your Control Panel

6 Register or log in to an existing MyPlesk.com account and you will be

taken step by step through the certificate purchase procedure.

7 Choose the type of certificate that you wish to purchase. 8 Click Proceed to Buy and order the certificate. In the Approver E-Mail

drop-down box, please select the correct Approver e-mail.

The approver e-mail is an e-mail address that can confirm that certificate for specific domain name was requested by an authorized person.

9 Once your certificate request is processed, you will be sent a

confirmation e-mail. After you confirm, the certificate will be sent to your e-mail.

10 When you receive your SSL certificate, save it on your local machine

or network.

11 Return to the SSL Certificates repository (Server > Certificates). 12 Click Browse in the middle of the page and navigate to the location of

the saved certificate. Select it, and then click Send File. This will upload the certificate to the repository.

13 Select the check box corresponding to the certificate you just added,

and click Secure control panel.

 To secure your control panel with an SSL certificate from other certificate authorities: 1 Go to Server > Certificates. A list of SSL certificates that you have in

your repository will be displayed.

2 Click Add New Certificate. 3 Specify the certificate properties:

 Certificate name. This will help you identify this certificate in the repository.  Encryption level. Choose the encryption level of your SSL certificate. We

recommend that you choose a value more than 1024 bit.  Specify your location and organization name. The values you enter should not

exceed the length of 64 symbols.  Specify the host name for which you wish to purchase an SSL certificate. For

example: your-domain.com  Enter your e-mail address.

4 Make sure that all the provided information is correct and accurate, as

it will be used to generate your private key.

5 Click Request. Your private key and certificate signing request will be

generated and stored in the repository.

6 In the list of certificates, click the name of the certificate you need. A

page showing the certificate properties opens.

7 Locate the CSR section on the page, and copy the text that starts with

the line -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- and ends with the line -----END

CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- to the clipboard.

Configuring Your Control Panel 29

8 Visit the Web site of the certification authority from which you want to

purchase an SSL certificate, and follow the links on their site to start a certificate ordering procedure. When you are prompted to specify CSR text, paste the data from the clipboard into the online form and click Continue. The certification authority will create an SSL certificate in accordance with the information you supplied.

9 When you receive your SSL certificate, save it on your local machine

or network.

10 Return to the SSL Certificates repository (Server > Certificates). 11 Click Browse in the middle of the page and navigate to the location of

the saved certificate. Select it, and then click Send File. This will upload the certificate to the repository.

12 Select the check box corresponding to the certificate you just added,

and click Secure control panel.

 In case you need to generate a self-signed certificate, follow this procedure: 1 Go to Server > Certificates. A list of SSL certificates that you have in

your repository will be displayed.

2 Click Add New Certificate. 3 Specify the certificate properties:

 Certificate name. This will help you identify this certificate in the repository.  Encryption level. Choose the encryption level of your SSL certificate. We

recommend that you choose a value more than 1024 bit.  Specify your location and organization name. The values you enter should not

exceed the length of 64 symbols.  Specify the host name for which you wish to purchase an SSL certificate. For

example: your-domain.com  Enter your e-mail address.

4 Click the Self-Signed button. Your certificate will be generated and

stored in the repository.

30 Configuring Your Control Panel

Setting Up Global Account

In this section:

Creating A Global Account ................................................................................ 31

Connecting Local Accounts To Your Global Account ......................................... 31

Switching Between Accounts ............................................................................ 31

Changing Global Account Password ................................................................. 32

Disconnecting Local Accounts From Global Account ......................................... 33

Global Account is a Single Sign-On technology feature that allows you to log in to different Parallels products using a single global login and password. If you have several accounts in Plesk, you can connect them all to a global account and switch between these accounts without entering a password every time. You can also connect all your accounts in other Parallels products to your global account and switch between them without providing credentials.

After you create a global account and connect local accounts to it, you will be able to choose from any account connected to your global account when logging in under your global account.

Note. Single Sign-On technology and the ability to use global accounts can only be activated through API or Command Line Utility means. Please refer to your Service Provider or the respective documentation for more information on activating Single Sign-On.

Configuring Your Control Panel 31

Creating A Global Account

 To create a global account:

1 Log in to Plesk, go to Global Account and click Connect To Global Account. 2 Select Create new global account and provide the login and password for

your global account.

3 Click OK.

Your global account is active now, so you can proceed with connecting other accounts to it. Refer to Connecting Local Accounts to Your Global Account (on page 31) section for more information.

Connecting Local Accounts To Your Global Account

 To connect a local Plesk account to your global account:

1 Log in to Plesk under the local account you want to connect. 2 Go to Global Account and click Connect To Global Account. 3 Make sure that Use existing global account option is selected and provide

the login and password for the global account you want to connect to.

4 Click OK.

Repeat steps 1-4 for other local accounts as necessary.

 To connect an account in another product with SSO support to your global account: 1 Log in to software product with SSO support under the account you

want to connect.

2 Follow the instructions on connecting to a global account in respective

software product documentation. Make sure that you provide the credentials for the existing global account when you are asked to.

Repeat steps 1-2 for other accounts or products as necessary.

Note. Different software products may use different names for the Global Account feature, such as Federated Identity or Global Login. Refer to respective software product documentation for more information.

After you have connected all required accounts to your global account, you can log in under your global account all the time in any product where you have a local account connected to your global account. You will be shown the list of local accounts connected to your global account every time you log in under it, so you can choose which account you would like to use now. You can switch to another account any time you want. Refer to Switching Between Accounts (on page 31) section for more information.

32 Configuring Your Control Panel

Switching Between Accounts

 To switch to another account:

1 Click Switch User in the upper right corner. 2 Select the account you want to switch to:

 Choose the required local account from the list of accounts connected to your

global account

or  Select Specify credentials for another account and provide login and password for a

local account not connected to your global account or to another global account.

You can also specify the language for your control panel from the Interface

language menu. If you had previously specified the interface language for that

account and saved it in its interface preferences, leave the Default value

selected.

3 Click OK.

Changing Global Account Password

 To change password of your global account:

1 Log in to Plesk under your global account or any local account

connected to it.

2 Go to Global Account and click Change Password. 3 Enter your old and new passwords, and click OK.

Configuring Your Control Panel 33

Disconnecting Local Accounts From Global Account

 To disconnect a local account from your global account:

1 Log in to Plesk under the local account you want to disconnect. 2 Go to Global Account and click Disconnect From Global Account. 3 Confirm the disconnection and click OK.

Repeat steps 1-3 for other local accounts as necessary.

Customizing Your Control Panel

The control panel's Desktop view and Standard view (as described in the chapter Becoming Familiar with Plesk's Interface (on page 16)) have different customization settings which are adjusted in different areas of the control panel.

To customize the Desktop view, refer to the section Customizing the Control Panel in the Desktop View (on page 48).

To customize the Standard view (that is, all areas and screens of the control panel except for Desktop), refer to the section Customizing the Control Panel in the Standard View (on page 36).

Note that you can choose to have in your control panel only Desktop view, only Standard view, or both views at once: to do this, you need to obtain and install a license key that supports the required interface view. However, you can specify what view should be shown to other control panel users regardless of your license key features.

This chapter explains how to accomplish the following tasks: Change the interface language and theme (skin) for your control panel (on page 35) Remove unwanted buttons from the control panel (on page 37) Add custom hyperlink buttons to the control panel (on page 46) Set a custom logo to the banner area of the control panel (on page 46) Add support for more control panel languages (on page 43) Add interface themes (skins) (on page 44) Add to and remove items from the Desktop (on page 48)

34 Configuring Your Control Panel

In this section:

Changing Interface Language and Skin ............................................................. 35

Customizing the Control Panel in the Standard View ......................................... 36

Customizing the Control Panel in the Desktop View .......................................... 48

Configuring Your Control Panel 35

Changing Interface Language and Skin

 To change the interface language and skin for your control panel and for your

customers, follow these steps:

1 Go to Server > Control Panel > Server Preferences. 2 Specify the following:

a Default locale. Select the interface language that will be set as default for new

control panel users. b Default skin. Select the interface skin (theme) that will be set as default for new

control panel users.

c Administrator's interface language. Select the language for your control panel. d Administrator's interface skin. Select the skin (theme) for your control panel.

3 Click OK.

Note that on that control panel screen, there are also the following settings, which you might want to review (we recommend leaving their default values for most users):

a Button label length. To prevent lengthy button captions in languages other than

English from overlapping in the control panel, you may want to specify a limit

here. Any button caption longer than the defined limit will be shortened and

ended with ellipsis (...).

b Prevent users from working with the control panel until interface screens are completely

loaded. Leave this selected to avoid errors that might occur when users try to

interact with control panel before is it ready.

c Default interface customization template. Once you customize the control panel and

save the settings in a template as described in Using Interface Customization

Templates (on page 37), you will be able to select your template here.

d Desktop preset. Once you customize the desktop and save the settings in a template

as described in Using Desktop Presets (on page 50), you will be able to select

your template here.

e Administrator's interface customization template. Once you customize the control panel

and save the settings in a template as described in Using Interface

Customization Templates (on page 37), you will be able to select your template

here.

f Allow multiple sessions under administrator's login. By default Plesk allows multiple

simultaneous sessions for several users logged into the control panel using the

same login and password combination. This can be useful when delegating

management functions to other users or in case if you accidentally close your

browser without logging out, thus becoming unable to log in again until your

session expires. You may want to switch off this capability, if you do not need it.

g Full host name.

36 Configuring Your Control Panel

h Apache restart interval. Any changes to hosting account settings made through control

In this section:

Using Interface Customization Templates ......................................................... 37

Hiding and Unhiding Sets of Buttons ................................................................. 41

Super Administrative Overrides ......................................................................... 43

Installing and Uninstalling Interface Languages ................................................. 43

Installing and Uninstalling Control Panel Themes (Skins) .................................. 44

Rebranding Your Control Panel with a Custom Logo Banner ............................ 46

Adding and Removing Custom Hyperlink Buttons ............................................. 46

panel take effect only when Web server is restarted. By default, Web server is

set to restart not more than once in every 15 minutes. This value is optimal for

most cases, and we recommend leaving this default setting. Note that when

there are no changes in hosting account settings, the Web server is not forced

to restart.

i Web and traffic statistics retention period. By default, statistics are kept for three

months. You may want to specify another period here.

j Items that statistical utilities should count when calculating disk space and bandwidth usage.

Customizing the Control Panel in the Standard View

Configuring Your Control Panel 37

Using Interface Customization Templates

In this section:

Creating Templates ........................................................................................... 38

Assigning Templates to User Accounts ............................................................. 39

Removing Templates ........................................................................................ 39

Changing Default Template ............................................................................... 40

Exporting and Importing Templates ................................................................... 40

Interface customization templates are sets of interface customization options assigned to Plesk users. You can configure custom settings for interface elements and save these settings in a template. Then, you assign the template to specific client accounts.

Default Customization Template is created automatically after Plesk installation. Initially, the default template allows user access to all interface elements of the control panel. The default template is automatically applied to all user accounts, including the administrator, if no other template is explicitly specified. The default template cannot be removed from the control panel. You can set another template as a default one. In the list of templates, the default template is displayed in bold.

Thus, to customize interface options for customers, you can either modify the default template or create own customization templates and assign them to user accounts.

Note that if you need to hide only buttons related to MyPlesk.com e-commerce portal and buttons related to currently unavailable features (such buttons are shown in the control panel as grayed out), you can do so without using interface customization templates. This is described in Hiding and Unhiding Sets of Buttons.

38 Configuring Your Control Panel

Creating Templates

 To create a template and specify custom rules for interface elements:

1 Go to Server > Interface Management > Interface Templates tab and click Add

Interface Template.

2 On the next page, enter the name for the new template. This field is

required.

3 Select the Default check box to make this template default.

Remember that the default template is applied to all user accounts for which no other template is explicitly defined.

4 Click Show Toolbar to customize the rules for interface elements.

The toolbar serves to customize the appearance of buttons on Plesk screens for user accounts. The toolbar appears at the bottom of a Plesk screen. When the toolbar is on, you can navigate through Plesk interface screens and define rules for separate buttons.

5 Navigate to a Plesk screen on which you want to customize interface

elements.

6 On the toolbar, click the Customize button to switch on the

customization mode.

7 Click the transparent screen over a button you want to customize and

select one of the following options in the drop-down menu:

 Hide – Hide this button from all users, including the administrator  Admin Only – Hide this button from all users, but show for the administrator  Show – Always show this button for all users  Default – Reset previous customizations you have made for this button to the

default settings.

8 When you finish customizing buttons, click OK on the toolbar. 9 Click Hide toolbar to exit the customization mode. 10 Return to the list of interface customization templates (Server > Interface

Management > Interface templates).

The template you have just created is added to the list of customization templates. You can now assign the template to user accounts.

Configuring Your Control Panel 39

Assigning Templates to User Accounts

 To assign a template to your interface:

1 Go to Server > Edit. 2 In the Administrator's interface customization template menu, select the

customization template you need and click OK.

Note: In the list of templates, the template currently used for the administrator‘s interface is shown in italic. The default template name is displayed in bold. If you are using the default template, it is marked as bold italic.

 To assign a template to a client account:

1 Go to Server > Interface Management > Interface Templates tab. 2 In the list of templates, click the number in the Usage column.

This number shows the number of client accounts that currently use this template.

3 Click Add New Client to assign this template to another client account. 4 In the list of clients that do not use this template, select one or

several client accounts and click OK.

The template will be assigned to the selected client accounts.

Note: You can also assign a template to a client when you are creating a new client account or editing client account preferences. To create a new account, click Clients in the navigation pane, then click Add New Client Account. To edit client account preferences, click Clients in the Navigation pane and then click the client name you need.

Removing Templates

 To remove one template or several templates from the control panel:

1 Go to Server > Interface Management > Interface Templates tab. 2 Select a template or several templates using the check boxes on the

right.

3 Click Remove Selected. 4 Confirm the removal and click OK.

The specified templates are removed from the control panel and the default template is assigned to all users that previously used the removed templates.

40 Configuring Your Control Panel

Changing Default Template

 To set another template as a default template:

1 Go to Server > Interface Management > Interface Templates tab. 2 Select a check box corresponding to the template you need. 3 Click Default. The selected template will be used for all users for

which no template is explicitly defined.

Exporting and Importing Templates

 To import a template created on one Plesk server to another Plesk server:

1 Go to Server > Interface Management > Interface Templates tab. 2 Click the icon to save the template you want to export to a file.

3 In the File Download dialog box, click Save and specify the location on

your hard drive where to save the file.

The template settings will be saved as a template_name.xml file.

4 Transfer the template file to another Plesk server. 5 On another Plesk-enabled server, go to Server > Interface Management >

Interface templates tab and click Upload.

6 Enter the name of the template to be imported or locate the template

file on the hard drive.

The file must be in .xml format.

7 Click OK. View the customization settings of this template. In this step,

you can click Show Toolbar to edit the template.

8 When you finish editing, click OK. The new template will be uploaded

to this machine.

9 Assign this template to client accounts (see the Assigning Templates

to User Accounts section).

Configuring Your Control Panel 41

Hiding and Unhiding Sets of Buttons

You can easily hide predefined groups of buttons from the Plesk interface. In this case, users do not see the controls they are not allowed to operate or the features that are not supported (services not installed).

 To hide groups of buttons:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the Interface Management icon in the Control Panel group. 3 Click the Interface templates tab. 4 Click the Preferences icon in the Tools group. 5 Select the check boxes to hide the following groups of controls:

 Grayed out buttons. Originally, grayed out icons in the control panel interface

show services or components that are not installed and, hence, cannot be

managed through the control panel. You can hide these buttons to prevent

users from being disappointed that some services are unavailable. To hide all

unavailable buttons, select the Hide all grayed out buttons by default check box.  Limit management controls. To prevent users from viewing grayed out limit

management controls they are not allowed to operate, select the Hide from users

the limit management controls they are not allowed to operate check box.  Permission management controls. To prevent users from viewing grayed out

permission management controls they are not allowed to operate, select the

Hide from users the permission management controls they are not allowed to operate

check box.

6 Under Button sets, select the check boxes to hide the following sets of

buttons or other control panel elements:

 Buttons related to services provided by MyPlesk.com online store. If you are

reselling domain registration services and SSL certificates, select the check

boxes Hide buttons for domain registration, Hide buttons for certificate purchasing, and

Hide buttons for extra services. All buttons related to MyPlesk.com will be removed

from the control panel at all user levels.  Mail bounce controls. If you wish to prohibit your users from using their own mail

bounce policies for e-mail addressed to nonexistent e-mail recipients within their

domains, select the Hide mail bounce controls check box.  Control panel items that promote third-party services: link to Fotolia Web site

(stock photos) and newsfeeds from www.moreover.com which are shown in the

default pages for newly hosted Web sites and in the Webmail application.

7 Click OK.

 To make groups of hidden buttons visible in the interface:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click Interface Management icon in the Control Panel group. 3 Click the Interface templates tab.

42 Configuring Your Control Panel

4 Click the Preferences icon in the Tools group. 5 Clear the corresponding check boxes to make the hidden groups of

buttons again visible in the interface.

6 Click OK.

Configuring Your Control Panel 43

Super Administrative Overrides

The super administrator (root) can define a set of controls that are never shown in Plesk control panel, even to a user with administrative privileges (and even in the Customization mode). To do this:

1 Customize the interface through the Plesk control panel. 2 Create an empty file with name root.controls.lock in

/plesk_installation_directory/var/.

3 Login to the MySQL database server and retrieve the values

describing the state of the hidden controls.

# mysql -uadmin -Dpsa –p mysql> select page, control from itmpl_data; +-------------------------+-------------+ | /server/server.php3 | key_info | +-------------------------+-------------+

4 Add these values to the

/plesk_installation_directory/var/root.controls.lock file separating them with colons:

/server/server.php3:key_info

5 Save the file.

The values you put into this file will override the customizations made through the control panel.

Installing and Uninstalling Interface Languages

You can download new language packs from Parallels site and install them to the control panel. The number of languages you can use with your control panel depends on the license key you purchased. The control panel will alert you when you attempt to install more languages than allowed.

 To view the interface languages installed in the control panel:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the Interface Management icon in the Control Panel group. The

following information is displayed:

 Language status icon shows the current status of the language pack:

language pack is accessible to users, not accessible, the language pack

is not available to users because the limit on the number of language packs

supported by your current license is exceeded.

Note: you can make a language unavailable to control panel users. To do this,

click an icon . To make a language available to users, click an icon .

 Language code contains the four-letter language code;  Language shows the name of the language;

44 Configuring Your Control Panel

 Country displays the countries where this language is native;  Used displays the number of control panel users at all levels that use this

language in their interface.

 To install a new language pack that you downloaded from Parallels Web site:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the Interface Management icon in the Control Panel group. 3 Click the Add Locale button. 4 Enter the path to the language pack file or use the Browse button to

locate it.

If you use an RPM-based system, use language pack files with the .rpm file name extension.

If you use a DEB-based system, use the language pack files with the .deb file name extension.

If you use a FreeBSD system, use language pack files with the .tgz or .tbz file name extension.

If you use a MacOS system, use language pack files with the .sh file name extension.

5 Click OK to install the language to the system.

 To uninstall a language pack from the control panel:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the Interface Management icon in the Control Panel group. 3 Select the appropriate check box and click Remove Selected. On the

next page, confirm the removal operation.

If the language pack you have just removed is used by some other users, their interface language will be automatically set to the default language. The default language of the Plesk distribution package (en-US) cannot be removed.

Installing and Uninstalling Control Panel Themes (Skins)

You can develop and use custom skins for your control panel. Be aware that use of skins created by third parties can be dangerous, as the skin packages can contain malicious code. We strongly recommend that you use only the skins received from the trusted sources.

 To view currently installed skins:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the Interface Management icon in the Control Panel group. 3 Click the Skins tab.

Configuring Your Control Panel 45

 To download a skin package:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the Interface Management icon in the Control Panel group. 3 Click the Skins tab. 4 Click the appropriate icon, or click a skin title and then click

Download Skin.

5 Select the type of archive you would like to have the skin files packed

into, and click OK.

Once the skin is prepared for downloading, a file download dialog window appears.

6 Click Save, specify the location and file name for the downloaded skin

package file to be saved, and then click Save.

You can now prepare your own skin by modifying the contents of the downloaded archive file. To learn how to create custom skins for Plesk control panel, see the Skins Reference document (Server > Interface Management > Skins > Skins Reference).

 To install a new skin to control panel:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the Interface Management icon in the Control Panel group. 3 Click the Skins tab. 4 Click Add New Skin. Specify the skin package file location and click OK.

 To update the contents of an already installed skin:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the Interface Management icon in the Control Panel group. 3 Click the Skins tab. 4 Click a skin title and then click Update Skin. Specify the skin package

file location and click OK.

 To remove one or several skins from the repository:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the Interface Management icon in the Control Panel group. 3 Click the Skins tab. 4 Select the corresponding check box and click Remove Selected. Then,

confirm removal and click OK.

Note: When you remove a skin, which is currently used within a certain user‘s control

panel environment, the user‘s control panel appearance is automatically changed to

the default skin. You cannot remove the default control panel skin.

46 Configuring Your Control Panel

Rebranding Your Control Panel with a Custom Logo Banner

You can replace the default Plesk logo banner in the top frame with your own logo. It will be visible to your customers when they log in to their control panels. You can also make your logo a clickable hyperlink.

You should use a GIF, JPEG or PNG format file for your logo, preferably not larger than 100 kilobytes to minimize the download time. It is recommended that you use an image of 50 pixels in height.

 To set up your logo image:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the Logo Setup icon in the Control Panel group. 3 Specify the path to file or click Browse to locate it. Click Open. 4 To make the logo clickable hyperlink that refers users to your

corporate web site, type the desired URL into the Enter new URL for logo box.

5 Click OK to submit.

When you wish to restore the default Plesk logo, click the Default Logo button.

Adding and Removing Custom Hyperlink Buttons

 To add a custom hyperlink button to your Plesk control panel and specify whether

your customers will see it in their control panels:

1 Go to Server > Custom Buttons and click Add New Button. 2 Specify properties of the button:

 Type the text that will show on your button in the Button label box.  Choose the location for your button. To place it in the navigation pane, select

the Navigation pane option from the Location drop-down box. To place it on each

client's home page or desktop, select the Client home page option. To place it on

each domain owner's home page or desktop (domain owners are your reseller's

customers), select the Domain administration page option.  Specify the priority of the button. Plesk will arrange your custom buttons on the

control panel in accordance with the priority you define: the lower the number –

the higher is priority. Buttons are placed in the left-to-right order.  To use an image for a button background, type the path to its location or click

Browse to browse for the desired file. It is recommended that you use a 16x16

pixels GIF or JPEG image for a button to be placed in the navigation pane, and

32x32 pixels GIF or JPEG image for buttons placed in the main frame or

desktop.

 Type the hyperlink of your choice to be attached to the button into the URL box.  Using the check boxes, specify whether to include the information, such as

domain name, FTP login, FTP password and other data to be transferred within

the URL. These data can be used for processing by external web applications.

Configuring Your Control Panel 47

 In the Context help tip contents input field, type in the help tip that will be displayed

when you hover the mouse pointer over the button.  Select the Open URL in the Control Panel check box if you wish the destination URL

to be opened in the control panel's right frame, otherwise leave this check box

unchecked to open the URL in a separate browser window.  If you wish to make this button visible to your customers, your resellers and their

customers with access to control panel, select the Visible to all sub-logins check

box.

3 Click OK to complete creation.  To remove a hyperlink button from your Plesk control panel:

1 Go to Server > Custom Buttons. 2 Select a check box corresponding to the button that you wish to

remove and click Remove Selected.

48 Configuring Your Control Panel

Customizing the Control Panel in the Desktop View

 To add or remove items from the desktop:

1 Go to Desktop > Customize Desktop. 2 Specify whether to show the Server Information group and what items to

show there. Clearing check boxes will remove the respective items from the desktop.

3 Specify what tasks you would like to accomplish through the control

panel. The appropriate shortcuts will be placed to the desktop. The Selected tasks list shows the tasks for which shortcuts are already placed on the desktop. The Available tasks list shows the tasks for which you do not yet have shortcuts on your desktop.

 To add a shortcut to the desktop, select the required tasks in the Available tasks

list and click Add >>.  To remove a shortcut from the desktop, select the task that you do not need in

the Selected tasks list and click << Remove.

4 To show your custom buttons on the desktop, under Tools, select the

Custom buttons check box.

5 Specify whether to show the Statistics and Favorites group and what

items to show there. Clearing check boxes will remove the respective items from the desktop.

The Favorites group shows the links to items or control panel screens that you added to desktop by navigating to the respective control panel screens and clicking

Add To Favorites or Create Shortcut icon.

6 Click OK.

 To add items to the Favorites group of the desktop:

1 Navigate to the control panel screen you need. 2 Click either the Add To Favorites or Create Shortcut icon in the upper

right corner of the screen.

3 If you want to specify a custom label and description for the shortcut,

clear the Use default check boxes and specify the desired label and description, then click OK.

 To modify label or description for a shortcut in the Favorites group:

1 On the desktop, click the shortcut that you wish to modify. 2 Click the Edit Favorite or Edit Shortcut icon in the upper right corner

of the screen.

3 Modify the label and description as desired and click OK.

Configuring Your Control Panel 49

1 On the desktop, click the icon corresponding to the shortcut that

In this section:

Using Desktop Presets ...................................................................................... 50

you wish to modify.

2 Modify the label and description as desired and click OK.

  To remove items from the Favorites group of the desktop:

1 On the desktop, click the shortcut that you wish to remove. 2 Click the Edit Favorite or Edit Shortcut icon in the upper right corner

of the screen, then click Remove.

1 On the desktop, click the icon corresponding to the shortcut that

you wish to remove, then click Remove.

50 Configuring Your Control Panel

Using Desktop Presets

Alternately, you can modify items in the desktop view by modifying and applying desktop presets. The presets contain configurations of interface elements. You can have several presets for your interface and switch between them when needed. You can predefine the appearance of interface for your customers and customers of your resellers.

 To customize your desktop by means of a template:

1 Go to Server > Interface Management > Desktop Presets tab and click the

Default Administrator Desktop shortcut in the list of desktop presets.

If you wish to create a new preset based on an existing one, click the corresponding

icon.

2 Specify the configuration preset name. 3 Select the Default check box to apply this preset to the interface. 4 Specify whether to show the Server Information group and what items to

show there. Clearing check boxes will remove the respective items from the desktop.

5 Specify what tasks you would like to accomplish through the control

 To add a shortcut to the desktop, select the required tasks in the Available tasks

list and click Add >>.  To remove a shortcut from the desktop, select the task that you do not need in

the Selected tasks list and click << Remove.

6 To show your custom buttons on the desktop, select the Custom buttons

check box located above the list of Available tasks.

7 To show on the desktop a shortcut to functions for creating new

custom hyperlink buttons, select the Show the following buttons in the footer: Create a new custom button check box below the Available tasks list.

8 Specify whether to show the Statistics and Favorites groups and what

items to show there. Clearing check boxes will remove the respective items from the desktop. The Favorites group shows the links to items or control panel screens that you added to desktop by navigating to the respective control panel screens and clicking Add To Favorites or Create Shortcut.

9 Click OK.

Configuring Your Control Panel 51

 To customize desktop for your resellers and customers who have several domains

(client accounts):

1 Go to Server > Interface Management > Desktop Presets tab and click the

Default Client Desktop shortcut in the list of desktop presets.

If you wish to create a new preset based on an existing one, click the corresponding

icon.

2 Specify the configuration preset name. 3 Select the Default check box to apply this preset to the interface. 4 Specify what tasks you would like your users to accomplish through

the control panel. The appropriate shortcuts will be placed to the desktop. The Selected tasks list shows the tasks for which shortcuts are already placed on the desktop. The Available tasks list shows the tasks for which there are no shortcuts on the desktop.

 To add a shortcut to the desktop, select the required tasks in the Available tasks

list and click Add >>.  To remove a shortcut from the desktop, select the task that you do not need in

the Selected tasks list and click << Remove.

5 To show custom buttons on the desktop, select the Custom buttons

check box located above the list of Available tasks.

6 To show on the desktop a shortcut to functions for creating new

custom hyperlink buttons, select the Show the following buttons in the footer: Create a new custom button check box below the Available tasks list.

7 Specify whether to show the Statistics and Favorites group and what items

to show there. Clearing check boxes will remove the respective items from the desktop.

The Favorites group shows the links to items or control panel screens that your users add to their desktops by navigating to the respective control panel screens

and clicking the clicking Add To Favorites or Create Shortcut.

8 Click OK.

 To customize desktop for your resellers' customers (domain owner accounts):

1 Go to Server > Interface Management > Desktop Presets tab and click the

Default Domain Owner Desktop shortcut in the list of desktop presets.

If you wish to create a new preset based on an existing one, click the corresponding

icon.

2 Specify the configuration preset name. 3 Select the Default check box to apply this preset to the interface.

52 Configuring Your Control Panel

4 Specify what tasks you would like users to accomplish through the

control panel. The appropriate shortcuts will be placed to the desktop. The Selected tasks list shows the tasks for which shortcuts are already placed on the desktop. The Available tasks list shows the tasks for which there are no shortcuts on the desktop.

 To add a shortcut to the desktop, select the required tasks in the Available tasks

list and click Add >>.  To remove a shortcut from the desktop, select the task that you do not need in

the Selected tasks list and click << Remove.

5 To show custom buttons on the desktop, select the Custom buttons

check box located above the list of Available tasks.

6 To show on the desktop a shortcut to functions for creating new

custom hyperlink buttons, select the Show the following buttons in the footer: Create a new custom button check box below the Available tasks list.

7 Specify whether to show the Statistics and Favorites group and what items

to show there. Clearing check boxes will remove the respective items from the desktop.

The Favorites group shows the links to items or control panel screens that users add to their desktops by navigating to the respective control panel screens and clicking

Add To Favorites or Create Shortcut.

8 Click OK.

 To download a configuration preset in XML format:

1 Go to Server > Interface Management > Desktop Presets tab. 2 Select the check boxes corresponding to the presets that you wish to

download and click Export selected to file.

3 When prompted, specify file name and location where to save file and

click OK.

 To upload a configuration preset in XML format:

1 Go to Server > Interface Management > Desktop Presets tab and click Upload. 2 Specify the path to preset file or click Browse to locate it. 3 Select the Overwrite presets with the same name and type check box if you

wish to avoid errors on overwriting presets already registered in the control panel, then click OK.

4 To apply the preset, click its title, select the Default check box and click

OK.

Configuring Your Control Panel 53

 To remove a preset:

1 Go to Server > Interface Management > Desktop Presets tab. 2 Select the check box corresponding to the preset that you wish to

remove and click Remove Selected. Confirm removal and click OK.

Adjusting Session Idle Time

You can adjust the allowed idle time for any session in Plesk as required.

 To adjust session security parameters:

1 Click Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click Session Settings in the Control Panel group. 3 Specify the required Session idle time in minutes in the appropriate field.

Should a user session remain idle for the time period exceeding the one specified as the Session idle time, the Control Panel terminates this session.

4 Click OK.

 To reset all parameters back to their default values:

1 Click Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click Session Settings in the Control Panel group. 3 Click Default. The default session idle time will be set to 30 minutes. 4 Click OK.

After you have installed Plesk software on your server and configured the control

In this chapter:

Adding and Removing IP Addresses ................................................................. 55

Configuring DNS Services ................................................................................. 58

Configuring Mail Services .................................................................................. 62

Configuring Plesk for Database Hosting ............................................................ 73

Enabling Support for Adobe ColdFusion ............................................................ 80

Enabling Integration with Sitebuilder ................................................................. 81

Enabling Support for Miva E-commerce Applications ........................................ 84

Configuring Statistics ......................................................................................... 86

Configuring E-mail Notification System .............................................................. 86

Configuring Help Desk ...................................................................................... 90

Adjusting System Date and Time ...................................................................... 92

Starting, Stopping and Restarting Services ....................................................... 93

Enabling Piped Logs for Web Server to Reduce the Risk of Web Service Disruption

.......................................................................................................................... 94

Monitoring Mail Server Message Queue and Troubleshooting Mail Congestion 94

Scheduling Tasks .............................................................................................. 96

Extending Plesk Capabilities with Modules ........................................................ 98

C H A P T E R 4

Configuring and Maintaining Your Server

panel, you need to configure your system and set up all services required for its operation. To configure your Plesk managed server through the control panel, follow the instructions provided in this chapter.

Configuring and Maintaining Your Server 55

Adding and Removing IP Addresses

After installation, Plesk reads all your IP addresses from the network configuration files and can then use these IP addresses for hosting DNS domains and Web sites.

When you obtain a new IP address that you would like to use on the server, you should add the address through the control panel, as Plesk might not recognize manual modifications you make to the network configuration files.

With Plesk you can mark all your IP addresses as shared or dedicated before you assign them to your customers. This allows the control panel to distinguish between them and not to let you assign a dedicated IP address to several customers at once. A dedicated IP address can be assigned to a single customer, while a shared IP address can be shared among several user accounts.

Note that SSL protection with authentic digital certificates and Anonymous FTP services are available only to dedicated hosting accounts on a dedicated IP address. Shared hosting accounts can also have SSL protection, but visitors to such protected sites will get error messages in their browsers.

Note: in this version of Plesk control panel, dedicated IP addresses are referred to as Exclusive IP addresses.

 To view the IP addresses you have at your disposal: 1 Go to Server > IP Addresses.

Your IP addresses are listed and the following supplementary information is given:  An icon in the S (Status) column shows if your IP address is properly

configured on the network interface. If your IP address was removed from the

network interface, an icon will show .  An icon in the T (Type) column shows if an address was allocated to a single

customer as a dedicated IP address, and if an address is shared among

many customers.  The IP address, Subnet Mask and Interface columns show which IP addresses are

on which network interfaces.  The Clients column shows the number of user accounts who you assigned a

given IP address. To view the users by names, click the respective number in

the Clients column.  The Hosting column shows a number of web sites hosted on an IP address. To

view the domain names of these web sites, click the respective number in the

Hosting column.

2 To update the list of IP addresses and their status, click Reread IP.

56 Configuring and Maintaining Your Server

 To add a new IP address to the server:

1 Go to Server > IP Addresses and click Add New IP Address. 2 Select the network interface for the new IP from the Interface drop-

down box. All network cards installed on your server are shown in this drop-down box.

3 Enter the IP address and subnet mask in the corresponding box (e.g.,

123.123.123.123/16).

4 Select the type of the new IP address, shared or exclusive, using the

IP type radio button.

5 From the drop-down box, select the SSL certificate for the new IP

address. You can select the following certificates:

 Default certificate - the certificate that comes with the Plesk distribution package.

However, this certificate is not recognized by web browsers as it is not signed by

a Certificate Authority (a warning message appears). The default certificate is

used to provide access to the control panel via the https protocol (https://<Plesk

Server name or IP>:8443/).  Other certificates - the certificates (self-signed or signed by a Certificate Authority)

that you added to the repository of SSL certificates (about adding certificates,

see the Securing Sites with SSL encryption section).

6 Click OK.

 To remove an IP address from the server:

1 Go to Server > IP Addresses. 2 Select the respective check box and click Remove Selected, confirm

removal and click OK.

 To assign an IP address to a user: 1 Go to Server > IP Addresses and click the respective number in the Clients

column, then click Add New Client.

2 Select the user account you need and click OK.

 To revoke an IP address from a user: 1 Go to Server > IP Addresses and click the respective number in the Clients

column.

2 Select the respective check box and click Remove Selected. 3 Confirm removal and click OK.

Configuring and Maintaining Your Server 57

 To specify what web site will open when users refer to the web resource on your

server by an IP address:

1 Go to Server > IP Addresses and click the respective number in the

Hosting column. All sites hosted on this IP will be listed.

2 Select the site you need and click Set as Default.

 To change an IP address allocation type (shared, exclusive) or assign another SSL

certificate to an IP address:

1 Go to Server > IP Addresses and click the IP address you need. 2 Select the IP address allocation type and SSL certificate you need,

and click OK.

58 Configuring and Maintaining Your Server

Configuring DNS Services

Your control panel works in cooperation with the BIND DNS server, which enables you to run DNS service on the same machine where you host Web sites.

Setup of DNS zones for newly added domains is automated: When you add a new domain name to control panel, a zone file is automatically generated for it in accordance with the server-wide DNS zone template and registered in the name server's database, and name server is instructed to act as a primary (master) DNS server for the zone.

You can:

 Add resource records to and remove from the template  Override the automatic zone configuration with custom settings on a per-domain

basis

 Switch off the domain name service on this machine if your provider or another

organization is running DNS service for your sites

 To view the default records in the server-wide DNS template:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the DNS icon in the Services group. All resource record templates

will be displayed.

The <ip> and <domain> templates are automatically replaced in the generated zone with real IP addresses and domain names.

 To add a new resource record to the server-wide DNS template:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the DNS icon in the Services group. 3 Click the Add New Record icon in the Tools group. 4 Select the resource record type and specify the record properties as

desired.

Note that you can use <ip> and <domain> templates that will be replaced in the generated zone with real IP addresses and domain names. You can use a wildcard symbol (*) to specify any part of the domain name, and you can specify the exact values you need.

5 Click OK.

 To remove a resource record from the server-wide DNS template:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the DNS icon in the Services group. 3 Select a check box corresponding to the record template you wish to

remove, and click Remove Selected.

Configuring and Maintaining Your Server 59

4 Confirm removal and click OK.

Plesk updates automatically the zone name, hostname, administrator‘s e-mail address, and serial number, and writes the default values for the rest of Start of Authority record parameters to the zone files it maintains. If you are not satisfied with the default values, you can change them through the control panel.

 To change the Start of Authority (SOA) record settings in the server-wide DNS

template:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the DNS icon in the Services group. 3 Click SOA Preferences. 4 Specify the desired values:

 TTL. This is the amount of time that other DNS servers should store the record in

a cache. Plesk sets the default value of one day.  Refresh. This is how often the secondary name servers check with the primary

name server to see if any changes have been made to the domain's zone file.

Plesk sets the default value of three hours.  Retry. This is the time a secondary server waits before retrying a failed zone

transfer. This time is typically less than the refresh interval. Plesk sets the

default value of one hour.  Expire. This is the time before a secondary server stops responding to queries,

after a lapsed refresh interval where the zone was not refreshed or updated.

Plesk sets the default value of one week.  Minimum. This is the time a secondary server should cache a negative response.

Plesk sets the default value of three hours.

5 Click OK. The new SOA record parameters will be set for the newly

created domains.

By default, transfer of DNS zones is allowed only for name servers designated by NS records contained within each zone. If your domain name registrar requires that you allow transfer for all zones you serve:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the DNS icon in the Services group. 3 Click the Common ACL icon in the Tools group. A screen will show all

hosts to which DNS zone transfers for all zones are allowed.

4 Click the Add New Address icon. 5 Specify the registrar's IP or network address and click OK.

60 Configuring and Maintaining Your Server

In this section:

Configuring Plesk to Run Behind a Firewall .......................................................61

 If you are using third-party DNS servers, and are not running your own DNS server,

you should switch off your control panel's DNS server:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the DNS icon in the Services group. 3 Click the Switch off icon in the Tools group.

 To restore the original configuration of server-wide DNS template:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the DNS icon in the Services group. 3 Click the Default icon in the Tools group.

You can specify whether your DNS server should provide recursive service for queries. With recursive service allowed, your DNS server, when queried, performs all the lookup

procedures required to find the destination IP address for the requestor. When recursive service is not allowed, your DNS server performs minimal number of queries only to find a server that knows where the requested resource resides and to redirect the requestor to that server. Therefore, recursive service consumes more server resources and makes your server susceptible to denial-of-service attacks, especially when the server is set to serve recursive queries from clients outside your network.

After your install Plesk, the built-in DNS server defaults to serving recursive queries only from your own server and from other servers located in your network. This is the optimal setting. If your upgraded from earlier versions of Plesk, your DNS server defaults to serving recursive queries from any host.

 If you want to change the settings for recursive domain name service:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the DNS icon in the Services group. 3 Click the DNS Preferences icon in the Tools group. 4 Select the option you need:

 To allow recursive queries from all hosts, select Any host.  To allow recursive queries from your own server and hosts from your network,

select Localnets.  To allow recursive queries only from your own server, select Localhost.

5 Click OK.

Configuring and Maintaining Your Server 61

Configuring Plesk to Run Behind a Firewall

If you are running Plesk behind a firewall, you might encounter certain problems with resolution of domain names served by Plesk: when you set up a new DNS domain in Plesk, its zone file includes a resource record that associates the domain name with the IP address your Plesk server is on, i.e. an internal network address like

192.168.1.1. As the 192.168.x.x IP addresses are reserved by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) for use by private networks, this domain name will not be accessible to the Internet users. To work around this, you would have to associate this

domain name with the IP address of the firewall machine in the domain‘s zone file

(Domains > domain name > DNS). We recommend using the DNS zone template (Server > DNS) to automate association of

the newly added domain names with appropriate IP addresses.

Let‘s consider setting up a Plesk server running on 192.168.1.1 in a private network

protected by a firewall, which is running on 11.22.33.44:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the DNS icon under the Services group. 3 Locate all resource records of A type. As you cannot edit any of these

records, you should delete them and then create the new records: be sure to leave the values in the Name column unchanged for each A record, but replace the <ip> templates in the Value column with the IP address of your firewall host – 11.22.33.44.

4 Configure your firewall so as to ensure the proper address translation.

62 Configuring and Maintaining Your Server

Configuring Mail Services

Your control panel works in cooperation with Qmail mail server, which provides mail services for your domains. After installation the mail server is configured automatically and is ready to serve, however, we recommend that you review the default settings to make sure that they satisfy your needs:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the Mail icon in the Services group. The server-wide mail

preferences screen will open on the Preferences tab.

3 If you wish to limit the size of an e-mail message that can be sent

through your server, type the desired value in kilobytes into the Maximum letter size box, otherwise, leave this field blank.

4 To protect your server against unauthorized mail relaying or injection

of unsolicited bulk mail, select the Enable message submission check box to allow your customers to send e-mail messages through the port

587.

Also notify your customers that they need to specify in their e-mail programs' settings the port 587 for outgoing SMTP connections, and be sure to allow connections to this port in your firewall settings.

5 Select the mail relay mode.

With closed relay the mail server will accept only e-mail addressed to the users who have mailboxes on this server. Your customers will not be able to send any mail through your outgoing SMTP server, therefore, we do not recommend closing mail relay.

With relay after authorization, only your customers will be able to receive and send e-mail through your mail server. We recommend that you leave the authorization is required option selected, and specify allowed authentication methods:

 POP3 authorization. With POP3 authorization, once a user has successfully

authenticated to the POP server, he or she is permitted to receive and send e-

mail through the mail server for the next 20 minutes (default value). You can

adjust this interval by specifying another value in the lock time box.  SMTP authorization. With SMTP authorization, your mail server requires

authorization if the e-mail message must be sent to an external address. Your

mail server supports LOGIN, CRAM-MD5 and PLAIN methods of SMTP

authorization.

6 If you wish to protect your users from dictionary attacks by not

allowing them to use simple passwords, select the Check the passwords for mailboxes in the dictionary option.

A dictionary attack is when someone tries to find out a valid user name and password by running a program that tries different combinations of dictionary words in different languages. Dictionary attacks can be successful because many users choose their passwords carelessly.

7 Select the mail account name format.

Configuring and Maintaining Your Server 63

Selecting the Use of short and full names is allowed option will allow users to log in to

In this section:

Setting Up Spam Protection ............................................................................... 64

Configuring Antivirus ..........................................................................................71

Configuring Mailman Mailing List Software ........................................................73

Preventing Your Customers From Sending Mass E-mail ...................................73

their mail accounts by specifying only the left part of e-mail address before the @ sign (for example, username), or by specifying the full e-mail address (for example,

username@your-domain.com).

To avoid possible authorization problems for e-mail users who reside in different domains but have identical user names and passwords, we recommend that you choose the Only use of full mail account names is allowed option.

Once you have set your mail server to support only full mail account names, you will not be able to switch back to supporting short account names until you make sure there are no encrypted passwords for mailboxes and user accounts with coinciding user names and passwords residing in different domains.

8 Click OK to submit any changes.

Note: If you wish to set up spam protection systems, such as SpamAssassin spam

filter, or protection systems based on DomainKeys, DNS blackhole lists or Sender Policy Framework (SPF), proceed to the Setting Up Spam Protection (on page 64) section.

64 Configuring and Maintaining Your Server

Setting Up Spam Protection

To protect your users from spam, you can use the following tools with your control panel:

 SpamAssassin spam filter. It is a powerful spam filter that uses a wide variety of local

and network tests to identify spam signatures. You can configure the spam filter so as to either delete suspicious messages when

they come to your mail server, or change the subject line and add "X-Spam-Flag: YES" and "X-Spam-Status: Yes" headers to the messages. The latter can be useful for users who prefer to filter mail with mail filtering programs installed on their own computers.

To learn more about SpamAssassin, visit http://spamassassin.apache.org. To configure and switch on the SpamAssassin filter, proceed to the Setting Up

SpamAssassin Spam Filter (on page 66) section.

 DomainKeys. DomainKeys is a spam protection system based on sender

authentication. When an e-mail claims to originate from a certain domain, DomainKeys provides a mechanism by which the recipient system can credibly determine that the e-mail did in fact originate from a person or system authorized to send e-mail for that domain. If the sender verification fails, the recipient system discards such e-mail messages. To configure the DomainKeys system on your server, refer to the section Switching on Spam Protection Based on DomainKeys (on page 67).

 DNS blackhole lists. This spam prevention system is based on DNS queries made by

your mail server to a database, which contains known and documented sources of spam, as well as an extensive listing of dynamic IP addresses. Any positive response from this database should result in your mail server returning a '550' error, or rejection of the requested connection.

To configure your mail server for working with DNSBL databases, proceed to the Switching On Spam Protection Based on DNS Blackhole Lists (on page 69) section.

 Sender Policy Framework (SPF). This spam prevention system is also DNS query-

based. It is designed to reduce the amount of spam sent from forged e-mail addresses. With SPF, an Internet domain owner can specify the addresses of machines that are authorized to send e-mail for users of his or her domain. Receivers that implement SPF then treat as suspect any e-mail that claims to come from that domain but fails to come from locations that domain authorizes.

To learn more about SPF, visit http://www.openspf.org/howworks.html. To enable filtering based on SPF, proceed to the Setting Up Support for Sender

Policy Framework System (on page 69) section.

 Server-wide black and white lists. Black and white lists are standard mail server

facilities. You can use the black list to specify the domains from which mail must not be accepted, and white list to specify the IP addresses of machines or networks from which mail must always be accepted.

To set up server-wide black and white lists, proceed to the Setting Up Server-wide Black and White Lists (on page 70) section.

Configuring and Maintaining Your Server 65

In this section:

Setting Up SpamAssassin Spam Filter...............................................................66

Setting Up Spam Protection Based on DomainKeys ..........................................67

Switching On Spam Protection Based on DNS Blackhole Lists ..........................69

Setting Up Support for Sender Policy Framework System .................................69

Setting Up Server-wide Black and White Lists ...................................................70

66 Configuring and Maintaining Your Server

Setting Up SpamAssassin Spam Filter

 To switch on SpamAssassin spam filter:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the Spam Filter icon in the Services group. 3 To let your users set their own spam filtering preferences on a per-

mailbox basis, select the Apply individual settings to spam filtering check box.

4 If you wish to adjust the amount of system resources the spam filter

should use, type the desired value from 1 to 5 into the Maximum number of worker spamd processes to run (1-5) box (1 is the lowest load, and 5 is the highest). We recommend that you use the default value.

5 If you wish to adjust the spam filter's sensitivity, type the desired

value in the The score that a message must receive to qualify as spam box.

SpamAssassin performs a number of different tests on contents and subject line of each message. As a result, each message scores a number of points. The higher the number, the more likely a message is spam. For example, a message containing the text string ―BUY VIAGRA AT LOW PRICE!!!‖ in Subject line and message body scores 8.3 points. By default, the filter sensitivity is set so that all messages that score 7 or more points are classified as spam.

 When your users receive lots of spam messages with the current setting, to

make filter more sensitive, try setting a lesser value in the The score that a

message must receive to qualify as spam box; for example, 6.  When your users are missing e-mails because your spam filter thinks they are

junk, try reducing filter sensitivity by setting a higher value in the The score that a

message must receive to qualify as spam box.

6 Specify how to mark messages recognized as spam.

At the server level, you cannot set the server-wide spam filter to automatically delete spam: you can do it only on a per-mailbox basis. So, for the server-wide

policy, you can choose only marking messages as spam: ―X-Spam-Flag: YES‖ and ―X-Spam-Status: Yes‖ headers are added to the message source by default, and if

you want, the spam filter will additionally include a specific text string to the beginning of Subject line. To include a desired combination of symbols or words to the message subject, type it into the Add the following text to the beginning of subject of each message recognized as spam box. If you do not want the spam filter to modify message subject, leave this box blank. If you want to include into the subject line the number of points that messages score, type _SCORE_ in this box.

7 If you do not want your users to receive e-mail from specific domains

or individual senders, click the Black List tab, and then add the respective entries to the spam filter‘s black list:

Configuring and Maintaining Your Server 67

 To add entries to the black list, click Add Addresses. If you have a list of entries

stored in a file, click Browse to specify it, and then click OK. Otherwise, select the

From List option, and type the e-mail addresses into the E-mail addresses box.

Place each address in one row, or separate addresses with a coma, a colon, or

a white space. You can use an asterisk (*) as a substitute for a number of

letters, and question mark (?) as a substitute for a single letter. For example:

address@spammers.net, user?@spammers.net, *@spammers.net. Specifying

*@spammers.net will block the entire mail domain spammers.net. To save the

entries you added, click OK, then confirm adding, and click OK again.  To remove entries from the black list, under the Black List tab, select the entries

and click Remove Selected. Confirm removal and click OK.

8 If you want to be sure that you and your users will not miss e-mail

from specific senders, click the White List tab, and then add e-mail addresses or entire domains to the spam filter‘s white list:

 To add entries to the white list, click Add Addresses. If you have a list of entries

stored in a file, click Browse to specify it, and then click OK. Otherwise, select the

From List option, and type the e-mail addresses into the E-mail addresses box.

Place each address in one row, or separate addresses with a coma, a colon, or

a white space. You can use an asterisk (*) as a substitute for a number of

letters, and question mark (?) as a substitute for a single letter. For example:

address@mycompany.com, user?@mycompany.com, *@mycompany.com.

Specifying *@mycompany.com will add to the white list all e-mail addresses that

are under the mycompany.com mail domain. To save the entries you added,

click OK, then confirm adding, and click OK again.  To remove entries from the white list, under the White List tab, select the entries

and click Remove Selected. Confirm removal and click OK.

9 Once finished with setting up the spam filter, click the Switch On icon,

and then click OK.

Now all the incoming mail will be filtered on the server side. By default, spam filter does not delete spam mail, it only adds the "X-Spam-Flag: YES" and "X-SpamStatus: Yes" headers to the message, and "*****SPAM*****" text string to the beginning of Subject line of each message recognized as spam.

If you have enabled the Apply individual settings to spam filtering option, then your users will be able to set their spam filters so as to automatically delete junk mail. They will also be able to set up their personal black and white lists of correspondents that will override the server settings, and teach the spam filter on a per-mailbox basis.

If you wish to adjust spam filtering settings for a specific mailbox, proceed to the Protecting Mailboxes From Spam section.

Setting Up Spam Protection Based on DomainKeys

 To switch on spam protection based on DomainKeys:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the Mail icon in the Services group. 3 Under the DomainKeys spam protection group, select the following options:

68 Configuring and Maintaining Your Server

 Allow signing outgoing mail. Selecting this option allows you and your customers to

switch on support for DomainKeys e-mail signing on a per-domain basis through

the domain administration screens of the control panel (Domains > domain name >

Mail > Preferences > Use DomainKeys spam protection system to sign outgoing e-mail

messages option). It does not automatically switch on signing of outgoing e-mail

messages.

 Verify incoming mail. Selecting this option will configure the DomainKeys system

to check all e-mail messages coming to e-mail users under all domains hosted

on the server.

4 Click OK.

Now your mail server will check all incoming e-mail messages to ensure that they come from the claimed senders. All messages, sent from the domains that use DomainKeys to sign e-mail, which fail verification will be discarded. All messages, sent from the domains that do not participate in the DomainKeys program and do not sign e-mail, will be accepted without verifying.

 To switch on signing outgoing e-mail messages for a single domain:

1 Go to Domains > domain name > Mail > Preferences. 2 Select the Use DomainKeys spam protection system to sign outgoing e-mail

messages check box.

3 Click OK.

 To switch on signing outgoing e-mail messages for a number of domains at once:

1 Click Domains. 2 Select the check boxes to the left of the domain names you need. To

select all domains in the list, select the upper left check box in the column heading.

3 Click Group Operations. 4 Under Preferences, select the Switch on option next to the Use DomainKeys

spam protection system to sign outgoing e-mail messages field.

5 Click OK.

Now, the following will happen for the selected domains:

 Private keys are generated and placed in the server's database.  Public keys are generated and placed in the TXT resource records created in the

domains' DNS zones.

 The sender's policy advertised in the DNS TXT resource records is set to "all e-mail

messages sent from this domain must be cryptographically signed; if someone receives an e-mail message claiming to originate from this domain, which is not signed, then this e-mail must be discarded."

 Outgoing e-mail messages are digitally signed: the "DomainKeys-Signature"

header containing a signature based on a private key is added to the message headers.

Configuring and Maintaining Your Server 69

Switching On Spam Protection Based on DNS Blackhole Lists

You can use free and paid subscription blackhole lists with your server. Visit

http://spamlinks.net/filter-dnsbl-lists.htm and choose a DNSBL server you want to use.

 To switch on spam protection based on DNSBL:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the Mail icon in the Services group. 3 Select the Switch on spam protection based on DNS blackhole lists check box. 4 In the DNS zones for DNSBL service input box, specify the host name that

your mail server should query, for example: sbl.spamhaus.org.

5 Click OK.

Now, e-mail messages from known spammers should be rejected with an error code 550 (connection refused).

Setting Up Support for Sender Policy Framework System

 To set up support for Sender Policy Framework on your server:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the Mail icon in the Services group. The server-wide mail

preferences screen will open on the Preferences tab.

3 Select the Switch on SPF spam protection check box and specify how to

deal with e-mail:

 To accept all incoming messages regardless of SPF check results, select the

Create only Received SPF-headers, never block option from the SPF checking mode

drop-down box. This option is recommended.  To accept all incoming messages regardless of SPF check results, even if SPF

check failed due to DNS lookup problems, select the In case of DNS lookup

problems, generate temporary errors option from the SPF checking mode drop-down

box.  To reject messages from senders who are not authorized to use the domain in

question, select the option Reject mail if SPF resolves to fail from the SPF checking

mode drop-down box.  To reject the messages that are most likely from senders who are not authorized

to use the domain in question, select the option Reject mail if SPF resolves to softfail

from the SPF checking mode drop-down box.  To reject the messages from senders who cannot be identified by SPF system

as authorized or not authorized because the domain has no SPF records

published, select the option Reject mail if SPF resolves to neutral from the SPF

checking mode drop-down box.  To reject the messages that do not pass SPF check for any reason (for

example, when sender's domain does not implement SPF and SPF checking

returns the "unknown" status), select the option Reject mail if SPF does not resolve

to pass from the SPF checking mode drop-down box.

70 Configuring and Maintaining Your Server

4 To specify additional rules that are applied by the spam filter before

the SPF check is actually done by the mail server, type the rules you need in the SPF local rules box.

We recommend that you add a rule for checking messages against the open database of trusted senders, for example, 'include:spf.trusted-forwarder.org'. For more information on SPF rules, visit http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-schlitt-

spf-classic-02.txt.

5 To specify the rules that are applied to domains that do not publish

SPF records, type the rules into the SPF guess rules box.

Specifying a/24 mx/24 ptr gives good results for spam filters scoring Received-SPF lines.

6 To specify an arbitrary error notice that is returned to the SMTP

sender when a message is rejected, type it into the SPF explanation text box.

If no value is specified, the default text will be used as a notification.

7 To complete the setup, click OK.

Setting Up Server-wide Black and White Lists

 To block mail from specific domains:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the Mail icon in the Services group. 3 Click the Black List tab. 4 Click the Add Domain icon. 5 Specify the name of the domain from which you do not want to

receive e-mail. For example, 'evilspammers.net'.

6 Click OK. 7 Repeat steps from 4 to 6 to add as many domains as required.

 To allow mail reception from specific domains or networks:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the Mail icon in the Services group. 3 Click the White List tab. 4 Click the Add Network icon. 5 Specify an IP address or range of IP addresses from which mail must

always be accepted.

6 Click OK. 7 Repeat steps from 4 to 6 to add as many addresses as required.

Configuring and Maintaining Your Server 71

Configuring Antivirus

To provide your e-mail users with anti-virus protection, you can use either the Dr. Web or Kaspersky Antivirus solutions. Both Dr. Web and Kaspersky Antivirus can scan server's mail traffic in real time, however, only Kaspersky Antivirus allows fine tuning and filtering of specific file types from attachments.

The both programs require an additional license key with annual renewal. Check the current prices with your provider or visit Parallels site at

http://www.parallels.com/en/buyonline/plesk8/.

 To install Dr. Web or Kaspersky Antivirus:

1 Go to Server > Updater. 2 Click your Plesk version. 3 In the list of components, select either Dr.Web antivirus or Kaspersky

antivirus.

4 Click Install.

After the installation is completed, obtain and install a license key for the selected antivirus program, as described in the following steps.

5 Go to Server > License Management. 6 Click Order New Key. The Parallels online store page listing available

add-ons opens in a new browser window.

7 On this page, select the check box next to the Dr. Web antivirus or

Kaspersky Antivirus item and click ADD TO MY BASKET.

8 Because Plesk add-ons are added to the license keys that already

exist, the Plesk Number Checking System page will open. Enter the number of your license key to which you add this feature and click Submit.

9 In the next steps, indicate the currency, number of keys, provide

contact details, billing address, and payment method, and submit the form. You will be notified by e-mail when your order is processed.

10 When you receive the e-mail notice, return to the License

Management screen (Server > License Management) and click Retrieve Keys to retrieve the ordered license key. Plesk License Manager will retrieve the upgraded license key from the Parallels licensing server and install it to your control panel.

11 Go to Server > Mail. 12 Under Antivirus preferences, select the antivirus you need and click

OK.

If you installed Dr.Web, you can switch on antivirus protection only on a per-mailbox basis, and only after you have set up mailboxes. By default, virus definitions are retrieved every 5 hours from Dr.Web site, and this setting is not changeable through the control panel.

72 Configuring and Maintaining Your Server

To set up anti-virus protection for a mailbox, proceed to the Protecting Mailboxes From Viruses section.

If you installed Kaspersky Antivirus, for instruction on setting up and using antivirus, see the Kaspersky Antivirus Module Administrator's Guide at

http://www.parallels.com/en/products/plesk/docs/.

Configuring and Maintaining Your Server 73

Configuring Mailman Mailing List Software

To provide your customers with capabilities to run their own mailing lists or newsletters, you should install the GNU Mailman package on your server (you could have done so during installation of Plesk), and set up the mailing list administrator's account— otherwise it will not work.

 To set up the mailing list administrator's account from your control panel:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the Set Up Mailman icon. 3 Specify the user name and password that you will use for

administration of mailing lists and their settings.

4 Click OK.

Once you have set up the Mailman administrator's account, you can configure the mailing list software or change your administrative login and password by visiting the URL: http://lists.yourservername.tld/mailman/admin/mailman

Note: After you have set up Mailman administrator's account, the Set Up Mailman icon will be no longer be accessible from the control panel.

Preventing Your Customers From Sending Mass E-mail

 To prevent your users from sending mass e-mail, do the following:

1 Create a file named maxrcpt in the directory

$QMAIL_ROOT_D/qmail/control/

where $QMAIL_ROOT_D is the location defined in the file /etc/psa/psa.conf

file.

2 Type the number of allowed recipients in this file and save it.

Note that this number also affect sending of messages to mailing list or mail group subscribers. That is, if you set the value to 100, then only 100 subscribers will receive the message sent to the mailing list or mail group.

When you no longer need to restrict the number of recipients, delete the maxrcpt file.

Configuring Plesk for Database Hosting

You can host users' databases either on a single server or on a number of different servers. Having the user databases on a remote server can be useful in multi-server installations, where centralized database hosting can be preferable for administration, backup, and resource utilization. However, if you have a single Plesk server, you are advised to keep all databases on it.

74 Configuring and Maintaining Your Server

In this section:

Setting Up Remote Database Hosting ...............................................................75

Managing Database Servers ..............................................................................78

 To use remote database servers with your hosting machine, you need to: 1 Set up a remote database server:

1. Install MySQL or PostgreSQL software.

2. Set up database administrator's account.

3. Enable network access to the database server.

2 Configure Plesk for working with your remote database server.

Configuring and Maintaining Your Server 75

Setting Up Remote Database Hosting

If you are going to use a Plesk-managed server as a remote database server, you do not need to install MySQL software: Plesk comes with MySQL software, which is automatically installed during installation of Plesk. In this case, you only need to enable network access to this database server and then register it with Plesk.

 To set up a MySQL database server: 1 Copy to your server a MySQL distribution package from your

operating system distribution disk, or download it from

www.mysql.com site and save it on your server.

2 Log in as root to your server and change to the directory where you

saved the RPM distribution. Type the following command at the prompt:

rpm -ivh mysql_file_name.rpm

3 Set the database server administrator‘s password. Type the following

command at the prompt:

mysqladmin -u root password your_desired_password Change your_desired_password to anything you like.

4 Now proceed to the instructions on registering your database server

with Plesk.

 To set up a PostgreSQL database server: 1 Copy to your server a PostgreSQL distribution package from your

operating system distribution disk, or download it from

www.postgresql.org site and save it on your server.

2 Log in as root to the server where you want to host databases, and

change to the directory where you saved the distribution package.

3 Install the package in a way suitable for your operating system.

For RPM based Linux systems, type the following command at the prompt: rpm

-ivh postgresql_file_name.rpm

 For deb package based Linux systems, issue the command:

apt-get install package_name

For FreeBSD systems, to install from a package, issue the following command:

pkg_add pgsql-<version>.tgz  To install from ports, issue the following commands:

cd /usr/ports/databases/postgresql<version>-server

make install package clean

76 Configuring and Maintaining Your Server

4 Open the file /var/lib/pgsql/data/postgresql.conf with a

text editor. If you are installing PostgreSQL version earlier than 8, add the line tcpip_socket = true to this file. If you are installing PostgreSQL version later than 8, add the line listen_addresses = '*'.

5 Open the file /var/lib/pgsql/data/pg_hba.conf with a text

editor and make sure the following lines are there:

# local DATABASE USER METHOD [OPTION]

local samegroup all password

# host DATABASE USER IP-ADDRESS IP-MASK METHOD [OPTION]

host samegroup all 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 md5

6 To restart PostgreSQL, issue the following command at the prompt:

service postgresql restart

7 To set the database server administrator‘s password, issue the

following commands at the prompt (change 'your_desired_password' to anything you like):

psql -d template1 -U postgres

alter user postgres with password 'your_desired_password';

8 Now proceed to the instructions on registering your database server

with Plesk.

 To register a database server with Plesk:

1 Log in to Plesk. 2 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 3 Click the Database Servers icon in the Services group. 4 Click the Add Database Server icon in the Tools group. 5 Specify the properties of the database server:

 Specify hostname or IP address of the database server.  Specify the port number the database server is listening on. By default, MySQL

servers listen on port 3306, and PostgreSQL on port 5342. You can leave the

Port number box blank, if your database server is listening on the default port.

 Specify which database type is running on the database server.  To make this database server default for hosting customers‘ databases, select

the check box labeled Use this server as default for MySQL. If you have a

PostgreSQL database server, select the check box labeled Use this server as

default for PostgreSQL.  Specify the database server administrator's login name and password.

6 Click OK.

Configuring and Maintaining Your Server 77

 To set up database hosting preferences that will affect all databases created through

Plesk:

1 Go to Server > Database Servers > Preferences. 2 To simplify maintenance of customers' databases, select the Add

client's login name and underscore to beginning of database names check box. All names of newly created databases will look like client's login name_database name. This will allow you to locate databases related to a particular Plesk user. Note that even if you do not select this check box, on creation of a new database, Plesk will add client's login name to the database name input box, and you will be able to edit it or remove it.

3 You can also set up Plesk to add client's login names to

corresponding database user names, further simplifying the maintenance of customers' databases. To do so, select the Add client's login name and underscore to the beginning of database user names check box. All names of newly created database users will look like client's login name_database user name. This will allow you to locate database users related to a particular Plesk user.

4 Specify whether creation of databases is allowed on your Plesk

server. Some applications do not support remote databases and can work only with databases hosted on the same server. We recommend leaving the default option Allow local hosting of databases for these site applications selected, otherwise, you will not be able to use such applications.

5 Click OK.

78 Configuring and Maintaining Your Server

Managing Database Servers

 To manage a database server:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the Database Servers icon in the Services group. 3 Click the icon corresponding to the database server you need. A

web interface of a database management tool will open in a separate browser window.

 To change the MySQL database server administrator's password:

1 Login to the MySQL database server as root. 2 Login to MySQL as root. 3 Issue the command at the prompt:

mysql> SET PASSWORD for ROOT = PASSWORD('new_password');

Where root is the user account, and new_password is the new administrator‘s password.

4 Log in to your Plesk control panel. 5 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 6 Click the Database Servers icon in the Services group. 7 Click the database server‘s name. 8 Type the new administrator‘s password and click OK.

 To change the PostgreSQL database server administrator's password:

1 Login to the PostgreSQL database server as root. 2 Login to PostgreSQL as root. 3 Issue the command at the prompt:

ALTER USER root WITH PASSWORD 'new_password';

Configuring and Maintaining Your Server 79

 To unregister a database server from Plesk:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the Database Servers icon in the Services group. 3 Select the check box to the right of the database server‘s name. 4 Click Remove Selected. 5 Confirm the operation and click OK.

 To unregister from Plesk a database server that has databases or is assigned as

default for hosting customers' databases:

1 Delete databases from the database server:

1. Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane.

2. Click the Database Servers icon in the Services group.

3. Click the host name of a database server that you wish to

unregister from Plesk.

4. Click the Databases tab.

5. Select the checkbox in the upper-right corner of the list to

select all databases.

6. Click Remove Selected.

7. Confirm removal and click OK.

2 Make another database server default:

1. Click the Database servers shortcut in the path bar at the top of

the screen.

2. Click the host name of a database server that you wish to

make default. This should be the same database server type

(MySQL or PostgreSQL) as the one you are going to delete.

3. Select the check box labeled Use this server as default for MySQL. If

you have a PostgreSQL database server, select the check box

labeled Use this server as default for PostgreSQL.

4. Click OK.

3 Return to the list of database servers (Server > Database Servers). 4 Select a check box corresponding to the database server that you no

longer need.

5 Click Remove Selected. 6 Confirm the operation and click OK.

Important: You cannot remove site applications‘ databases this way. To remove them,

you should uninstall the respective site applications from the domains that use them.

80 Configuring and Maintaining Your Server

For instructions on managing databases, refer to the Deploying Databases (on page

147) section of this guide.

Enabling Support for Adobe ColdFusion

If you want to support ColdFusion scripts on the server, you should obtain a distribution package from Adobe and then install it on the server. Plesk Control Panel supports Adobe ColdFusion versions 6,7, and 8.

 After you have installed Adobe ColdFusion on your server, do the following:

1 Login to Plesk Control Panel as administrator. 2 Click the Server shortcut in the left side navigation pane. 3 Click the Updater icon in the right frame. 4 Click a link corresponding to the appropriate release version. 5 Select the check box corresponding to the ColdFusion support for Plesk

item, and click Install. Confirm the installation when prompted.

6 Once the selected components are installed, click the ColdFusion

Settings icon on the Server Administration screen (Plesk Control Panel > Server).

7 Specify the path to ColdFusion installation directory and click OK.

Configuring and Maintaining Your Server 81

Enabling Integration with Sitebuilder

Sitebuilder is a Web site creation and content management system developed by Parallels. It has proven to be highly popular with site administrators because it enables users without any technical skills and knowledge of markup languages to create professionally looking Web sites.

 To allow your Web hosting customers to create and publish their sites using Sitebuilder, do

the following:

1 Install Sitebuilder on the same server where Plesk is installed, if you did

not install it during installation of Plesk. This version of Plesk supports only connections to locally installed Sitebuilder systems.

2 Install a license key for Sitebuilder. Log in to Sitebuilder at URL http://your

server's ip address or hostname/Admin, go to Server > License Management > Upload

License Key. Select the license key file in XML or ZIP format and click OK.

3 Log in to Plesk, click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane and click

Sitebuilder Support.

4 Specify the server administrator's username and password that you

specified in Sitebuilder during installation. They will be used by Plesk for authorization in the Sitebuilder system.

5 Click OK.

Now Plesk is connected to Sitebuilder, and the Sitebuilder section appears in Plesk's navigation pane providing the following shortcuts to the Sitebuilder administration panel:

 Desktop. This provides shortcuts to the task-oriented wizards. Here you can perform any

operations on your Sitebuilder system. For more information, see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.0.0/doc/admin/en_US/html/using_desktop_in terface.htm.

 Users. Here you can add and manage user accounts and service plans for your

customers. For more information, see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.0.0/doc/admin/en_US/html/signing_up_custo mers.htm.

 Sites. Here you can add and manage sites. For more information, see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.0.0/doc/admin/en_US/html/managing_sites.h tm.

 Server. Here you can view and manage the following system settings:

 Hosts. Here you can add and manage hosts. For more information, see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.0.0/doc/admin/en_US/html/specifying_ho sts_used_for_publishing_sites.htm.

 License Management. Here you can upload and retrieve your Sitebuilder license. For

more information, see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.0.0/doc/admin/en_US/html/updating_upg rading_and_restoring_your_license.htm.

82 Configuring and Maintaining Your Server

 Integration. Here you can review single sign-on settings for Parallels products installed

on the server. For more information, see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.0.0/doc/admin/en_US/html/viewing_siteb uilder_sso_settings.htm.

 Backup. Here you can back up data from the Sitebuilder system on demand. For more

information, see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.0.0/doc/admin/en_US/html/backing_up_a nd_restoring_sitebuilder_data.htm.

 Trial Sites Settings. Here you can configure settings for trial sites created by your

prospective customers. For more information, see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.0.0/doc/admin/en_US/html/setting_up_sit ebuilder_wizard_for_anonymous_visits.htm.

 Branding. Here you can configure the logo and title setting for your prospective

customers. For more information, see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.0.0/doc/admin/en_US/html/setting_up_lo go_and_title_bar_text.htm.

 Log Settings. Here you can adjust how much information about system errors

Sitebuilder writes to log files. For more information, see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.0.0/doc/admin/en_US/html/specifying_act ions_to_be_logged.htm.

 Notifications. Here you can configure settings for notifications sent by Sitebuilder to

your users. For more information, see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.0.0/doc/admin/en_US/html/configuring_e mail_message_sent_at_trial_site_publishing_attempt.htm.

 Languages. Here you can view the list of available languages. For more information,

see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.0.0/doc/admin/en_US/html/obtaining_add itional_language_packs.htm.

 Skins. Here you can view the list of available skins. For more information, see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.0.0/doc/admin/en_US/html/choosing_lan guage_skin_and_number_of_items_shown_per_page.htm.

 Templates. Here you can view the list of available site design templates. For more

information, see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.0.0/doc/admin/en_US/html/manaing_site _design_templates.htm.

 Modules. Here you can view the list of available modules. For more information, see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.0.0/doc/admin/en_US/html/viewing_and_ configuring_available_modules.htm.

 Page Sets. Here you can view the list of available page sets. For more information, see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.0.0/doc/admin/en_US/html/managing_sit e_structure_templates.htm.

 Site Families. Here you can view the list of available templates that combine design

templates and page sets. For more information, see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.0.0/doc/admin/en_US/html/managin_site _templates.htm.

 Logs. Here you can view system and security logs. For more information, see

http://download1.parallels.com/SiteBuilder/4.0.0/doc/admin/en_US/html/configuring_siteb uilder_logs.htm.

Configuring and Maintaining Your Server 83

You can provide your customers with access to site creation and management services on a per user or per site basis: there are individual settings that you can adjust for a user account (Clients > client name > Preferences) and for a Web site (Domains > domain name > Setup).

All customers who were given access to site creation and management services will be able to create and update their sites by following the Sitebuilder Wizard shortcut which will appear in the domain management screens of their Plesk control panels (domain name > Sitebuilder Wizard). Also, in users' control panels, the following shortcuts will appear in the navigation pane to allow them to manage their own accounts and sites through Sitebuilder: Desktop, Users, Sites, Server (client's control panel); Desktop and Sites (domain administrator's control panel).

84 Configuring and Maintaining Your Server

Enabling Support for Miva E-commerce Applications

To allow your customers use Miva e-commerce solutions, you need to install on the server the Miva Empresa package shipped with Plesk distribution (if you did not install it during installation of Plesk), and then enable support for Miva applications for the respective hosting accounts.

The Miva Fasttrack and Miva Merchant online store applications are shipped with Plesk as standard Web applications, which you or your customers can install from the control panel‘s Application Vault section (Domains > domain name > Application Vault > Add New Application). Note that your customers will need to obtain a license either from Miva or from Parallels and specify its serial number during installation of Miva applications.

To learn more about Miva solutions, refer to http://docs.smallbusiness.miva.com/en-

US/merchant/WebHost/webhelp/web_host_resources.htm

 To install the Miva Empresa package:

1 Go to Server > Updater. 2 Click the shortcut corresponding to your version of Plesk. For example,

Plesk 8.3.

3 Locate the Miva Empresa Support item and select the check box on the left. 4 Click Install. Now the Miva Empresa server environment is installed.

 To enable support for Miva applications for all newly created hosting accounts using domain

templates:

1 Go to Domains > Domain Templates. 2 Click the template name you need. 3 Select the Miva support check box and click OK.

 To enable support for Miva applications for existing hosting accounts:

1 Click the Domains shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Select the check boxes corresponding to the domain names you need, and

click Group Operations.

3 Under the Hosting group, select the Switched on option to the left of the Miva

support field.

4 Click OK.

Configuring and Maintaining Your Server 85

 To enable support for Miva applications for an individual hosting account:

1 Go to Domains > domain name > Setup. 2 Select the Miva support check box and click OK.

To install Miva Fasttrack or Miva Merchant on a site, follow the instructions provided in the Installing Applications (on page 151) chapter.

86 Configuring and Maintaining Your Server

Configuring Statistics

After installation, the control panel's statistical utility is set up to:

 Count the inbound and outbound traffic  Count the disk space occupied by Web content, log files, databases, mailboxes, Web

applications, mailing list archives, and backup files

 Keep the Web statistics and traffic statistics gathered by Webalizer or AWstats programs

only for the last three months

 To review or adjust these settings:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the Server Preferences icon in the Control Panel group. 3 Under the System preferences group, specify the term during which the

bandwidth usage statistics should be kept for your customers.

4 Specify the items that should be considered when disk space and

bandwidth usage is calculated.

5 Click OK.

Note: In addition to the settings related to statistics, this screen provides the means to

rename your server's hostname, and the option to allow or forbid users to create new subdomains and domain aliases in the DNS zones belonging to other users (the Do not let users create DNS subzones in other users' DNS superzones check box). We recommend that you select this check box, otherwise, users will be able to create subdomains under domains belonging to other users, and set up Web sites and e-mail accounts which could be used for spamming or even phishing or identity theft.

For instruction on viewing statistics, refer to the chapter Viewing Statistics (on page 234).

Configuring E-mail Notification System

The control panel notifies you and your customers of disk space and bandwidth overage by sending e-mail notifications. With the default settings, however, domain and web site owners are not notified. We recommend that you enable resource overage notification for domain and web site owners because they need to know what happens to their domains and web sites.

Apart from resource overage, the control panel can notify the appropriate users when:

 New user accounts are created  New domains are added  Hosting accounts are expired (expiration date is defined for user accounts and Web sites

separately)

 There are new requests for assistance (trouble tickets) from your customers in Help Desk  The requests are fulfilled and the trouble tickets are closed in Help Desk

Configuring and Maintaining Your Server 87

 New comments are posted to the existing trouble tickets

Event type

Tags that can be used in notices

The data that tags denote

Creation of a user account

user's first and last name

<client_login>

user name for authorization in the control panel

user's password for authorization in the control panel

host name for access to control panel

Expiration of a user account

<client_login>

user name for authorization in the control panel

user's first and last name

<expiration_date>

user account expiration date

Addition of a new domain name to the server

<domain_name> or <domain>

domain name

<client_login>

user name for authorization in the control panel

 The closed trouble tickets are reopened because the customer has encountered the

same problem again

 To view or modify the notification system settings:

1 Go to Server > Notifications. 2 By selecting the check boxes in the Notifications table, specify the types of

control panel users or external e-mail users who should receive notices on events.

We recommend that you also select all check boxes in the domain administrator column in order to let your resellers' customers know what happens to their Web sites.

3 To view or edit the default notice text, click the respective icon in the

Text column.

In notices you can use tags that will be replaced with actual data (see the table below).

4 Specify when to send the user account and domain (Web site) hosting

account expiration notices. By default, such notices are sent 10 days in advance. Click OK.

Table. Tags used in notification messages

88 Configuring and Maintaining Your Server

user's first and last name

<ip>

IP address the domain is hosted on

Domain (Web site) hosting account expiration

<domain_name> or <domain>

domain name

<client_login>

user name for authorization in the control panel

<client_contact_name> or <client>

user's first and last name <expiration_date>

account expiration date

Resource overage

domain name

<client_login>

user name for authorization in the control panel

user's first and last name

<disk_usage>

information on disk space usage

<disk_space_limit>

information on the disk space allocated to the account

information on bandwidth usage

<traffic_limit>

information on the bandwidth amount allotted to the account

Help Desk events

<ticket_id>

trouble ticket identification number automatically assigned by the system

returns user name for requests submitted by resellers or multi-domain customers, a domain name for requests submitted by domain owner, and e-mail address if the request was submitted by e-mail.

Configuring and Maintaining Your Server 89

the host name

<ticket_comment>

the contents of the ticket, or a comment posted

90 Configuring and Maintaining Your Server

Configuring Help Desk

Help Desk is a convenient way for your customers to reach you when they need your assistance. After you set it up and switch on, the Help Desk becomes accessible to all users who were granted access to control panel, including your resellers, domain owners, and email users. Additionally, you can allow submission of problem reports by e-mail.

Your Help Desk shows all reports posted by your resellers and their customers. Your reseller's Help Desk shows only reports posted by himself or herself and his or her customers. The domain owner's Help Desk shows only reports posted by himself or herself and by e-mail users under his or her domain.

 To configure Help Desk and allow your customers post problem reports through the control

panel:

1 Go to Help Desk > General Settings. 2 Select the Allow customers to submit tickets check box. 3 Select the trouble ticket queue, priority and category that will be offered to

your customers as the default choice.

When users post a new ticket, they can specify the order in which they would prefer their problems to be resolved (queue), the priority of their requests (priority), and the category to which the problem is related (category). The queue, priority and category are abstract entities: they have no effect on the system, but they can help you decide what problems to resolve in the first place. There are three predefined queues and priority levels and nine predefined categories including Database, DNS, FTP, General, Hosting, Mail, Mailing Lists, Site Applications, and Tomcat Java. You can remove these items and add your own.

4 Click Switch On in the Tools group, then click OK.

 If you wish to allow users to submit problem reports by e-mail: 1 Create a POP3 mailbox with an e-mail address like helpdesk@your-

domain.com or anything you like.

2 Configure the Help Desk to periodically retrieve problem reports from that

mailbox and post them to your Help Desk.

3 Inform your customers of the Help Desk's e-mail address.

 To allow users to submit problem reports to Help Desk by e-mail:

1 Go to Help Desk > Mail Gate Settings. 2 Specify the following settings:

Configuring and Maintaining Your Server 91

 Notification sender's name, and Notification sender's return address. Once a report has been

retrieved by e-mail and posted to the Help Desk, the Help Desk sends a notice to the report sender. This allows the report sender to subsequently add comments to the report by replying to the message. Therefore, we recommend that you specify your Help Desk's e-mail address in the Notification sender's return address box, and type a phrase like "<company name> Help Desk" into the Notification sender's name box. Be sure to specify your organization name in place of <company name> and omit the quotation marks.

 POP3 server: POP3 server the mail should be fetched from.  POP3 login: user name for authentication to the mail server.  New POP3 password: password that will be used for authentication to the mail server

and retrieving problem reports from the mailbox.

 Confirm POP3 password: retype password for confirmation.  Query mail once in: specify how often Help Desk should check for new reports.  Ticket subject must start with: specify the combination of symbols the subject line of e-

mail messages (problem reports) must start with. This can help filter out spam. All email messages that do not have the specified combination of symbols in the subject line will be deleted.

3 Click Switch On in the Tools group and click OK.

 To view, add, edit, or remove queues: 1 Go to Help Desk > Queues. The queues will be presented in a list.

 To add a new queue, click Add New Queue, type the desired number into the Title box,

leave the Switched on check box selected, and click OK.

 To edit a queue, click its title in the Title column. Edit it as required, and click OK.  To temporarily disallow your users to select a queue when posting new reports, click

its title in the Title column, clear the Switched on check box, and click OK.

 To delete a queue, select the respective check box and click Remove Selected.

 To view, add, edit, or remove priorities:

1 Go to Help Desk > Priorities. The priorities will be presented in a list.

 To add a new priority, click Add New Priority, type the desired combination of symbols

into the Title box, leave the Switched on check box selected, and click OK.

 To edit a priority, click its title in the Title column. Edit it as required, and click OK.  To temporarily disallow your users to select a priority when posting new reports, click

its title in the Title column, clear the Switched on check box, and click OK.

 To delete a priority, select the respective check box and click Remove Selected.

 To view, add, edit, or remove categories:

1 Go to Help Desk > Categories. The categories will be presented in a list.

 To add a new category, click Add New Category, type the desired combination of

symbols into the Title box, leave the Switched on check box selected, and click OK.

 To edit a category, click its title in the Title column. Edit it as required, and click OK.

92 Configuring and Maintaining Your Server

 To temporarily disallow your users to select a category when posting new reports,

click its title in the Title column, clear the Switched on check box, and click OK.

 To delete a category, select the respective check box and click Remove Selected.

 To disallow customers to send reports to Help Desk by e-mail:

1 Go to Help Desk > Mail Gate Settings. 2 Click Switch off in the Tools group.

 To disallow use of Help Desk for all your customers and resellers:

1 Go to Help Desk > General Settings. 2 Click Switch off in the Tools group.

Also see the Using Help Desk for Resolving Your Customers' Issues section.

Adjusting System Date and Time

You can manually set the server date and time through the interface and enable server time synchronization with a Network Time Protocol (NTP) server.

 To adjust the system date and time settings:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click System Time. 3 Edit the time and date settings as desired, and select your time zone.

You will need to reboot your Plesk server for the time zone change to take effect.

4 To synchronize your server time with that of a server running the Network

Time Protocol, select the Synchronize system time check box, and specify a valid IP address or a domain name. For a list of available NTP servers, visit

http://ntp.isc.org/bin/view/Servers/WebSearch?search=open+access&scop e=text

5 Click OK.

Note. Enabling the Synchronize system time function will override any time and date you

manually enter in the System Date and Time fields. It is also important to be sure the domain name or IP address you enter for synchronization is a valid NTP server. If not, this function will not work and your server will continue running with its current time settings.

Configuring and Maintaining Your Server 93

Starting, Stopping and Restarting Services

You can monitor, start, stop and restart various Plesk services from the control panel. To see the status of a service:

1 Select the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click Service Management on the Server administration page.

The current state of a service is marked by an icon: for the service running, for the service stopped, and if service is not installed or its management capabilities are not

supported by the license key. To start a service:

1 Select the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click Service Management on the Server administration page. 3 Click the icon corresponding to the service you wish to start.

To restart a service:

1 Select the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the Service Management icon on the Server administration page. 3 Click the icon corresponding to the service you wish to restart.

To stop a service:

1 Select the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the Service Management icon on the Server administration page. 3 Click the icon corresponding to the service you wish to stop.

94 Configuring and Maintaining Your Server

Enabling Piped Logs for Web Server to Reduce the Risk of Web Service Disruption

If you are going to host more than 300 domains or Web sites on your server, you should switch on support for piped logs in the Apache Web server. To do this, follow these steps:

1 Log in to the server shell. 2 Issue the command mysql -uadmin -p`cat /etc/psa/.psa.shadow` -D psa -e

"replace into misc (param,val) values ('apache_pipelog', 'true');"

3 Rebuild Apache configuration by issuing the command

/usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/websrvmng -a -v

This will allow to host about 900 domains/Web sites. If you need to host more than 900 domains/Web sites, then you will need to recompile Apache and some other system packages, as described in the online knowledge base article at

http://kb.parallels.com/en/260.

Monitoring Mail Server Message Queue and Troubleshooting Mail Congestion

If your customers complain that they cannot send e-mail through your mail server, this can mean that your mail server is overloaded and cannot cope with the amount of received messages. This can happen when somebody is sending spam through your mail server, or the qmail-send daemon responsible for sending mail is down.

To return your mail server to an operable state, delete the unwanted messages from the mail server‘s message queue.

To see the messages in the message queue and to delete them:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click Mail icon in the Services group. 3 Click the Mail Queue tab. The following information will be presented:

 Total number of undelivered messages. When messages come to your mail server

they are first added to the main queue. Then, the mail server preprocesses them in order to find out whether they should be delivered to a local e-mail account on the same server or sent further to a remote recipient‘s e-mail address. After preprocessing, the messages directed at local mail recipients are put to a local queue, and the messages directed at remote recipients are put to a remote queue. Once delivered, the messages are removed from the queues.

 Message properties: subject, sender, recipient, queue type (local, remote, not

preprocessed), date the message was sent from user‘s computer, the time lapsed

since the moment when message was put to queue (age), and message size.

Configuring and Maintaining Your Server 95

4 To find a message with specific subject, select the queue in the Queues

drop-down box, type the desired combination of symbols into the Subject box, and click Search. The messages matching your search criteria will be listed at the bottom of the screen. To reset the filter, click Show All.

5 To find a message from a specific sender, click the Show Advanced link, type

the sender‘s e-mail address into the Envelope Sender box, and click Search. The messages matching your search criteria will be listed at the bottom of the screen. To reset the filter, click Show All.

6 To find a message addressed to a specific recipient, click the Show Advanced

link, type the recipient's e-mail address into the Recipients box, and click Search. The messages matching your search criteria will be listed at the bottom of the screen. To reset the filter, click Show All.

7 To find a message by date, age, or size, click the Show Advanced link, type

the required values into the Date, Age, or Size boxes, respectively, and click Search. The messages matching your search criteria will be listed at the bottom of the screen. To reset the filter, click Show All.

8 To delete a message from the queue, select the corresponding check box

and click Remove Selected. To delete all messages from the queue, select the check box in the upper-right corner of the messages list, and click

Remove Selected.

96 Configuring and Maintaining Your Server

Scheduling Tasks

If you need to run scripts on your server at specific time, use the task scheduling facility on your server to make the system automatically run the scripts for you.

Important: To prohibit control panel users from scheduling tasks on behalf of user "root", create on the server's file system an empty file with name root.crontab.lock in the location /plesk_installation_directory/var/.

During installation of Plesk the following tasks are automatically created:  autoreport.php – delivers daily, weekly and monthly reports on clients and domains (three

separate tasks)

 backupmng – initiates scheduled backing up of domains once every 30 minutes  statistics – generates statistics on the limits imposed on domains, such as traffic, disk

usage, and so on

 mysqldump.sh - creates a backup copy of three MySQL databases: psadump, MySQL,

and Horde databases

As all these tasks are related to domain statistics, databases and reports, it is strongly recommended that you neither change nor remove these tasks.

Note. You can also schedule tasks on a per-domain basis. To do so, follow the same procedures listed below, but instead of going to Server > Scheduled Tasks, go to Domains > domain name > Scheduled Tasks.

 To schedule a task:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the Scheduled Tasks icon in the Services group. 3 Select the system user account on whose behalf the task will be executed. 4 Click Add New Task. 5 Specify when to run your command:

 Minute - enter the value from 0 to 59  Hour - enter the value from 0 to 23  Day of the Month - enter the value from 1 to 31  Month - enter the value from 1 to 12, or select the month from a drop-down box  Day of the Week - enter the value from 0 to 6 (0 for Sunday), or select the day of the

week from a drop-down box You can schedule the time using the UNIX crontab entry format. In this format, you can  enter several values separated by commas. Two numbers separated by a hyphen

mean an inclusive range. For example, to run a task on the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 20th of a

month, type 4-6,20.  insert an asterisk to specify all values allowed for this field. For example, to run a task

daily, type * in the Day of the Month text box.

Configuring and Maintaining Your Server 97

To schedule the task to run every Nth period, enter the combination */N, where N is the legal value for this field (minute, hour, day, month). For example, */15 in the Minute field schedules the task to start every 15 minutes.

You can type the contracted names of months and days of the week, which are the first three letters: Aug, Jul, Mon, Sat, etc. However, the contracted names cannot be separated with commas or used together with numbers.

6 Specify which command to run. Type it into the Command input box. 7 Click OK.

 To temporarily suspend execution of a scheduled task:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the Scheduled Tasks icon in the Services group. 3 Select the system user account on whose behalf the task is executed. 4 Locate the task that you want to suspend and click on the command name. 5 Clear the Switched on check box and click OK.

 To resume execution of scheduled task:

command name.

5 Select the Switched on check box and click OK.

 To cancel a task:

1 Click the Server shortcut in the navigation pane. 2 Click the Scheduled Tasks icon in the Services group. 3 Select the system user account on whose behalf the task is executed. 4 Select a check box to the left of the task that you want to cancel. 5 Click Remove Selected. 6 Confirm removal and click OK.

98 Configuring and Maintaining Your Server

Extending Plesk Capabilities with Modules

In this section:

Installing Modules .............................................................................................. 99

Configuring and Managing Modules .................................................................. 99

Removing Modules ............................................................................................ 100

In this version of Plesk, you can extend the functionality of your control panel without upgrade. This can be done by installing additional functional components, available as modules developed by Parallels or third parties.

The modules can be easily installed, removed, and configured directly from the control panel. The modules come as a single RPM package, a self-extracting shell script, or in any other

form suitable to your operating system. If you wish, you can also install the module from the command line. When you install the module on server using the control panel, you are taken to the module‘s configuration screen.

The following modules are available for Plesk 8: Acronis True Image Server management module - Allows to create server disk backup

images without interrupting server operations and perform easy and fast recovery of the entire system. This module is free, however, the Acronis True Image Server application requires a license key, which you can purchase and install through Plesk control panel.

*Battlefield 2 Game Server module - Allows to install and manage Battlefield 2 game servers.

*Counter-Strike Game Server module - Allows to install and update Half-Life: CounterStrike game server, to create and manage games.

Firewall module - Helps you protect your host and private network from unauthorized access.

Kaspersky Antivirus module - Scans mail traffic for viruses and provides filtering of e-mail attachments.Samba Fileserver Configuration module - Helps you share your directories in SMB network.

Virtual Private Networking module - Builds a secure network over insecure channels. Watchdog module - Monitors Plesk control panel services and scans your server for

security vulnerabilities. Plesk modules marked with asterisk (*) require installing additional license keys (see page

24) for being used. When you install Plesk on FreeBSD systems, all modules are installed by default. During

installation of Plesk on RPM/Deb package-based systems you are prompted to choose the modules you would like to install.

Configuring and Maintaining Your Server 99

Installing Modules

You can install a module to the Plesk server in two ways: from the control panel (recommended), and from the command line.

 To install modules from the control panel:

1 Login as administrator to the control panel. 2 Select the Modules shortcut in the navigation pane 3 Click Manage Modules. 4 Click Add new module. 5 Select a module package file, and click OK.

 To install modules from the command line:

1 Login as root to the server, where Plesk is installed. 2 Run the command

/plesk_installation_directory/admin/bin/modulemng --

install --file=<module_filename>, where

'plesk_installation_directory' is the directory you installed Plesk to.

Example:

/usr/local/psa/admin/bin/modulemng --install --file=cs-gs-1.0.0rh9.build72041021.16.i586.rpm

Note: All modules that come with Plesk are located in the directory /opt/modules in Plesk distribution.

Configuring and Managing Modules

Before you begin to use the module, you should configure it. Configuration steps vary depending on each module. Once you install a module on the server using the control panel,

you are taken to the module‘s configuration screen. If you installed the module from the

command line, you need to configure it via Plesk.

 To access the module configuration screen:

 Select the Modules shortcut in the navigation pane, and then click the button labeled with

module‘s name.

Or  Select the Modules shortcut in the navigation pane, and then click Manage Modules. In the

list of modules, click the module‘s name presented as link.

100 Configuring and Maintaining Your Server

Some modules might require you to install a license key in order to be able to use them. You

can check out the terms of usage on the module manufacturer‘s web site, or look them up in

the control panel‘s Modules management screen: for each module installed there is a

corresponding list entry accompanied by an icon, which shows whether license key is required. There are three types of icon that indicate the following:

- the module does not require a license key

- the module requires a license key, and the key is installed

- the module requires a license key, but the key is not installed.

If a module is provided by Parallels and requires a license key, you can obtain it from Parallels using the License Manager function. In other cases, you should obtain the information on installation of license keys for modules from the module manufacturer.

Removing Modules

You can remove modules from Plesk in two ways: from the control panel (recommended), and from the command line.

 To remove a module using a control panel:

1 Login as admin to the control panel. 2 Select the Modules shortcut in the navigation pane. 3 Click Manage Modules. 4 Select a checkbox corresponding to the module you wish to remove, and

click Remove Selected.

 To remove a module from the command line:

1 Login as root to the server, where Plesk is installed. 2 Run the command

/plesk_installation_directory/admin/bin/modulemng --

remove --module=<module_codename>.

Example:

/usr/local/psa/admin/bin/modulemng --remove --module=cs-gs

You can look up a module‘s codename by running the following command:

# echo "SELECT name, display_name FROM psa.Modules;" | mysql -u admin – p<admin_password> psa

Parallels Water System 8.4 User Manual

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual