Not-so-new install

Discussion in 'Installation/Configuration' started by deadguy, Oct 2, 2005.

  1. deadguy

    deadguy New Member

    To the admins: I hate to cross-post, but a bunch of views and no replies makes me think that maybe this *is* more of an install problem than a general problem. Go ahead and delete one of them - I'd just like a couple answers/suggestions.

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    My server crashed thanks to a bad line in my apt-sources, but all existing user data was safe. This was a perfect time to switch from Debian to Ubuntu, and as I did so, I came across the "Perfect Setup" detailed here – an excellent walkthrough, btw. This helped me get a couple things done that I wanted, mainly Postfix.

    However, because I had most of my settings from my old server—the server previously had apache2, bind9, Courier IMAPd, qmail and ProFTPd running—the move to Ubuntu via most of the instructions in the "Perfect Setup" was pretty painless, since most of those configs were already existing. The users—some 30 or so—on the other hand, were also pre-existing – real users on the server with their own home dirs, and I wanted to migrate them without much hassle.

    To make things clear about how the bulk of them are set up, most users have the following:
    • an email account – [email protected]
    • a sub-domain – user.hwcommunity.com (all sites are under /home/user/public_html at the moment)
    • FTP access
    Some users have domains that are unrelated to hwcommunity.com, and have email at those domains. They've registered their own domains, but this server is acting as their primary name server.

    I had been running Courier IMAP previously, so these users already have mail in Maildir format. Both ProFTPd and Postfix seem to be running fine, authing against /etc/shadow (PostFix doing so via saslauthd). Apache2 has a bunch of sites in /etc/apache2/sites-available and symlinks in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled. Now, having tested the ISPConfig setup, I know it installs fine, but I am hesitant, because I don't know how best to migrate these users over.

    Anyone have suggestions as to how to do this? (I have /etc backed up to keep all the configs safe) What current configs will totally break (e.g. bind9, apache2), and if they do, what is the most expedient way to fix it? How do multiple apache2 virthosts get imported under ISPConfig? Does ISPConfig use /etc/shadow at all? Are all users essentially virtual – no real account on the server, with everyhting stored in MySQL? If so, where can I move their maildir and public_html dirs?

    I wish there was a little more documentation on how ISPConfig works, maybe I could have figured some of this out on my own. Maybe this isn't even the best solution for me, but the control panel aspect really attracted me.

    Thanks for the feedback in advance.
     
  2. falko

    falko Super Moderator Howtoforge Staff

    ISPConfig also uses "real" users, i.e. it uses /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow.

    I'd suggest that you create a site called hwcommunity.com and create the users within that site. These users automatically get the email address <username>@hwcommunity.com, and you can also create email aliases like <username_alias>@hwcommunity.com. These users also get their own web space under www.hwcommunity.com/~<username> and www.hwcommunity.com/users/<username>. So you could create a Co-Domain <username>.hwcommunity.com and foward it to www.hwcommunity.com/~<username>.
    These users also have ftp access to their web space.

    You can create new web sites for these users in ISPConfig; these web sites are then totally unrelated to hwcommunity.com.

    I think you have to disable your existing web sites in the Apache configuration because you're going to re-create them in ISPConfig. It might confuse Apache if it finds the same web site twice in its configuration. Other than that I see no problems (but you know, we're dealing with computers... :rolleyes: ).
     
  3. deadguy

    deadguy New Member

    Thanks for replying.

    I've already got username in the passwd/group/shadow files, will ISPConfig create new instances or just use the existing lines?

    Will ISPConfig use existing homedirs? Or should I back those up someplace, create the users in ISPConfig, then copy their files back into the appropriate directories?

    Are the user's Maildirs kept someplace other than /home/user/ when using ISPConfig? (e.g. how vqmail does it)

    Will ISPConfig alter/disrupt my existing named.conf and zone files?

    Will ISPConfig alter/disrupt my existing ProFTPd setup?
     
  4. falko

    falko Super Moderator Howtoforge Staff

    No, it will complain that these users already exist and refuse to create the user.
    So to create the user in ISPConfig you have to delete the existing user and remove the username from /home/admispconfig/ispconfig/users; then you can create it in ISPConfig.

    No, ISPConfig will create new homedirs, e.g. like /var/www/web[no]/user/<username>. You cold copy back the existing files.

    Yes, if you chose /var/www as docroot during ISPConfig setup, then it's /var/www/web[no]/user/<username>/Maildir.

    Yes. Make a backup of your existing configuration, then try how ISPConfig creates the files, and then (if necessary) you can add your configuration parts manually (you can also change the configuration templates under /root/ispconfig/isp/conf/).

    It will only add an Include line at the end of /etc/proftpd.conf and write the configuration to this included file.
    Nevertheless you should back up that configuration and do the same as with the BIND configuration, if necessary.
     
  5. deadguy

    deadguy New Member

    How configurable is this path?

    /var is a pretty small partition on the drive, as all the user files inhabit /home - about 100 gigs of space. Is there a configuration value I can edit someplace to have the users homedir be /home/<username> ?
     
  6. falko

    falko Super Moderator Howtoforge Staff

    It uses the docroot you specified during installation. If you specified /home/www, ISPConfig will use /home/www, etc. /var/www/web[no]/user/<username> was only an example.
     

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