Parallels Plesk Panel 10.4 User guide

Brand: Parallels

Model: Plesk Panel 10.4

Category: Software

Type: User guide

Parallels

Plesk Panel

Parallels Holdings, Ltd.

c/o Parallels International GmbH

Vordergasse 59

CH-Schaffhausen

Switzerland

Phone: +41-526320-411

Fax: +41-52672-2010

This product is protected by United States and international copyright laws. The product’s

underlying technology, patents, and trademarks are listed at http://www.parallels.com/trademarks.

Microsoft, Windows, Windows Server, Windows NT, Windows Vista, and MS-DOS are registered

trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.

Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

Mac is a registered trademark of Apple, Inc.

All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Contents

Preface 4

Typographical Conventions ........................................................................................................... 4

Feedback ....................................................................................................................................... 5

About This Document 6

Installation and Upgrade Requirements 8

Installation and Upgrade on Linux ................................................................................................. 8

Installation and Upgrade on Windows ........................................................................................... 9

Before Installing or Upgrading Panel 10

Installing Panel 12

Installation from the Web Interface .............................................................................................. 13

Installation from the Command Line............................................................................................ 15

Installation Using One-Click Installer........................................................................................... 17

Initializing the Panel..................................................................................................................... 18

Upgrading Panel 19

Pre-Upgrade Check-up ............................................................................................................... 20

Upgrade from the Web Interface ................................................................................................. 20

Upgrade from the Command Line ............................................................................................... 23

Upgrading Standalone Parallels Plesk Billing to the Panel 25

Installing and Upgrading License Keys 27

Installing License Keys ................................................................................................................ 27

Upgrading a Trial License Key .................................................................................................... 28

Configuring the Panel for Linux to Access Vendor Updates 29

Enabling Support for SecureLVE 30

Troubleshooting the Installation and Upgrade Process 31

You are unable to deselect the Web Presence Builder component when installing the Panel... 31

The system does not recognize that IIS is installed during the Panel installation ...................... 32

You are unable to install the Kaspersky component on Windows 2008 ..................................... 32

4 Preface

In this section:

Typographical Conventions ............................................................................... 4

Feedback .......................................................................................................... 5

Typographical Conventions

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

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 QoS 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 style sheet

selectors, files and directories,

and CSS fragments.

The license file is called

license.key.

Preface

Preface 5

Preformatted Bold

What you type, contrasted with

on-screen computer output.

Unix/Linux:

# cd /root/rpms/php

Windows:

>cd %myfolder%

Preformatted

On-screen computer output in

your command-line sessions;

source code in XML, C++, or

other programming languages.

Unix/Linux:

# ls -al /files

total 14470

Windows:

>ping localhost

Reply from 127.0.0.1:

bytes=32 time<1ms

TTL=128

Feedback

If you have found an error 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.

Purpose

The purpose of this document is to provide information sufficient to install and upgrade

Parallels Plesk Panel (hereinafter referred to as the Panel) on a physical or virtual

server. This document is addressed to hosters who wish to turn their servers into a

complete hosting solution and offer hosting services to their customers. The

recommendations within the document are what we believe to be the best practice -

fully tested and guaranteed - when installing and configuring the Panel.

Scope

The Panel customers are divided into two major groups - hosters and hosting service

providers. A typical hoster owns one or several physical or virtual servers and offers

the hosting services directly to their customers. A hosting service provider generally

has more complex infrastructure and they resell the Panel to hosters.

This document is devoted to the first group - hosters. It explains how to install or

upgrade the Panel onto their environment.

To facilitate the needs of service providers, we offer a separate document called

Parallels Plesk Panel 10.4 Automating Panel Deployment. This document explains how to the

automate the Panel deployment, and how to deploy the Panel inside Parallels

Virtuozzo Containers.

Overview

Chapter "Installation and Upgrade Requirements" as the name suggests discusses the

requirements you should meet before starting the installation or upgrade.

Chapter "Before Installing or Upgrading Panel" provides options you can tune before starting

upgrade or installation.

Chapter "Installing the Panel" covers the installation of the Panel both under Linux and

Windows.

Chapter "Pre-Upgrade Check Up" is devoted to owners of Parallels Plesk Panel 9 and

earlier versions; it explains how to make safely upgrade from such Panel versions to

Panel 10.

Chapter "Upgrade the Panel" addresses the upgrade of previous Panel versions to the

latest one both under Linux and Windows. It includes the upgrade of Panels bundled

with Parallels Plesk Billing.

Chapter "Upgrading Standalone Parallels Plesk Billing to the Panel" describes how to upgrade

from Parallels Plesk Billing to Panel 10.

C H A P T E R 1

About This Document

About This Document 7

Chapter "Installing and Upgrading License Keys" explains how to install or upgrade the

Panel license key.

Chapter "Configuring the Panel for Linux to Access Vendor Updates" guides you on how to

keep your server's operating system up-to-date.

Chapter "Enabling Support for SecureLVE" describes how to turn on the Secure Lightweight

Virtual Environment (SecureLVE) extension on a server running Cloud Linux.

Chapter "Troubleshooting the Installation and Upgrade Process" describes how to

troubleshoot difficulties that may occur when you try to install or upgrade the Panel.

Before you install the Panel on your server, make sure you meet the requirements

stated in the following sections.

In this chapter:

Installation and Upgrade on Linux ..................................................................... 8

Installation and Upgrade on Windows ............................................................... 9

Installation and Upgrade on Linux

We recommend you to install the Panel on a clean operating system. Before installing

or upgrading Parallels Plesk Panel for Linux, make sure that the following requirements

are met:

 A static IPv4 address is preliminarily configured. If you wish to install the Customer

& Business Manager component, you also should have a host name that resolves

to this IP address.

 PHP 5 is required for the brand new Web Presence Builder component.

 The disk space allocated to the /tmp directory exceeds 3 GB.

 A user who runs the installer is able to execute files in the /tmp directory. This

makes it possible to install the system packages required for the Panel. When the

installation is completed, we recommend you to mount /tmp with the noexec

option. For details on how to do it, see http://kb.parallels.com/en/1410

(http://kb.parallels.com/en/1410).

 If you run Debian, CloudLinux, or Ubuntu, add updates and security repositories to

your apt (package manager) configuration.

 Your hard drive must be properly partitioned. For instructions, see the article at

http://kb.parallels.com/article_17_819_en.html on partitioning tips.

 On Debian and Ubuntu operating systems, the path /usr/local/psa is reserved

for system needs; we highly recommend that you do not either manually create this

directory or mount a separate partition to this location. Instead, if you want to use a

separate partition for Panel, mount the partition to /opt/psa/, the natural path for

Debian and Ubuntu installations. If you do not follow this recommendation, Panel

will not be able to apply updates.

C H A P T E R 2

Installation and Upgrade Requirements

Installation and Upgrade Requirements 9

If you wish to install Panel with the Business Manager component, you should

preliminarily check that the MySQL server configuration option sort_buffer_size is set to

2 Megabytes (sort_buffer_size=2M) or more. This option is set in the /etc/my.cnf

file. After the configuration change, restart the mysqld service:

service mysqld restart

Installation and Upgrade on Windows

Before installing or upgrading Parallels Plesk Panel for Windows, make sure that the

following requirements are met:

 Before starting the installation process we strongly recommend that you create a

full system backup of the entire server.

 Your server is not working as a Windows Domain Controller (neither primary nor

backup). If this requirement is not fulfilled, a system crash may occur during the

creation of domains with certain names.

 Internet Information Services (IIS) should be installed on the server. Particularly,

the following components are required:

 On Windows Server 2003, World Wide Web (WWW) Service and File Transfer

Protocol (FTP) Service.

 On Windows Server 2008, the default components of the Web Server Role.

 A static IPv4 address should be configured in the OS prior to the Panel installation.

 The installation path of the Panel must contain only ASCII symbols.

 Panel can be installed only on NTFS partition.

 If you plan to use Microsoft SQL Server support in the Panel, the SQL Server

should be installed and configured to use standard or mixed security mode. If the

SQL Server is not installed, you can select it to be installed with the Panel and

configured with administrator name 'sa' and a random password.

 Prior to upgrading Panel, ensure that you have the latest version of the Microsoft

Visual C++ Redistributable Package.

Note: To install Microsoft SQL Server 2008 as a part of Plesk installation, preliminarily

install Microsoft Installer 4.5 and .NET Framework 2.0 SP 2. If you are running

Windows 2003 server install the Service Pack 2 for Windows 2003 before installing the

Panel.

If you wish to install Panel with the Business Manager component, you should

preliminarily check that the MySQL server configuration option sort_buffer_size is set to

2 Megabytes (sort_buffer_size=2M) or more. This option is set in the

%plesk_dir%\Databases\MySQL\Data\my.ini file. After the configuration

change, restart the mysqld service by running these two commands from shell:

net stop mysql

net start mysql

This chapter provides information about some useful extra steps or adjustments you

might want to perform before you start installing or upgrading Panel.

Specify Panel Versions Available for Installation or Upgrade

Since Panel 10.4, we introduced new Panel versioning system. Panel, during its

lifecycle, passes through a number of development stages. It is natural that on earlier

stages, when all new features are just implemented, Panel builds are less stable

comparing to the following ones. To indicate the stage of the current Panel version, we

add a quality tag to it:

 Testing version.

We start each release cycle with publishing a number of testing versions for

preview purposes and let you sequentially upgrade from the first one to the last,

and then upgrade to more stable versions. We do not provide technical support for

such builds even if they were upgraded to more stable versions. Thus, avoid using

this build in a production environment.

Notes:

1. By default, testing builds are not shown as available for installation. You can

install the testing Panel version only by running Parallels Installer with one of the

special options. Learn more in the chapter Installing Panel (on page 12).

2. Upgrade to the next testing version is available only to the owners of a testing

build. More stable Panel builds do not have the corresponding option in the GUI.

 Pre-release version.

A pre-release version has all claimed features and previous versions successfully

upgrade to it. The quality of this version is eventually improved by updates. By

selecting the pre-release version you become the first to see the new features and

receive the most fresh updates.

 Release version.

A release version has passed all quality tests. Minor stability issues are promptly

fixed by updates. We recommend that you always use release Panel versions for

installation or upgrade.

 Stable version.

A stable version has received all updates and a number of service providers

successfully use it for some time. When a version is considered stable, it no longer

receives any updates.

The decision on what version to use is absolutely up to you. For example, consider

installing or upgrading to the pre-release Panel version, if you just want to try new

Panel features before an official release. On the contrary, if you want to get the safest

solution, wait until Panel enters its stable phase (it may take a couple of months after

the official release).

C H A P T E R 3

Before Installing or Upgrading Panel

Before Installing or Upgrading Panel 11

Install Panel with Packages from Alternative Repositories (CentOS Only)

In Panel 10.2 and earlier versions, Parallels Installer fetched the packages required for

Panel installation or upgrade from the Parallels Updates server. This server also

contained upgrades to these packages. Hence, there was no way to use custom

package versions when installing or upgrading Panel. In 10.3 and later you do have

this option if you tune the Installer configuration.

The tuned Installer works this way: It checks that you have the yum package manager

and that it is configured to use alternative repositories. If these check-ups succeed, the

Installer uses the latest versions of packages it finds in all available repositories when

installing or upgrading Panel. For example, if Parallels Updates contains MySQL

v.5.0.84, and the other repository (say, IUS) contains MySQL v.5.0.93, the most current

version (5.0.93) will be installed.

To turn this feature on, edit the /root/.autoinstallerrc file by adding the

USE_YUM='yes' line to it.

To install the Panel on Linux- or Windows-based servers, use the Parallels Installer

utility. The utility connects to the Parallels Updates server where the Panel packages

are stored, retrieves required packages and installs them.

The Parallels Installer utility is available for downloading from

http://www.parallels.com/products/plesk/download/. There are several distributions of

Parallels Installer created for different operating systems and platforms, so be sure to

obtain the Parallels Installer that matches your host operating systems. Normally,

Parallels Installer binaries are distributed under names in the following format:

parallels_installer_v<installer version>_os_<operating system

version>_<platform>. Parallels Installer works in either via a Web graphical user

interface or command line.

If you run Linux and wish to quickly install the latest version of the Panel in the typical

configuration, we recommend that you use our separate utility One-Click Installer.

Learn more about this tool in a corresponding section of this chapter.

After the installation, perform the initial configuration of the Panel. Until the Panel is

initialized, any other operations are prohibited. Initialization sets the Panel administrator

password, e-mail, and contact information.

Parallels Installer and Panel Version Quality Tags

As described in the section Before Installing or Upgrading Panel (on page 10), since Panel

10.4 you can select what Panel build to install depending on its quality tag: Testing,

pre-release, release, or stable. The support of quality tags is available beginning from

Parallels Installer 3.11.0 and later. By default, it shows you only the latest stable and

release versions as available for installation. To give you the ability to install other

Panel versions, Parallels Installer has two options that control the list of Panel versions

will be shown during the installation:

 To view all available Panel versions (with all quality tags), use the --skip-

branch-filter option when running Parallels Installer.

 To view the latest available versions with the specified quality tag, use the --

branch <quality_tag> option when running Parallels Installer, where

<quality_tag> is one of the Panel version quality tags.

Note: Using one of these options is the only possible way to install the testing Panel

version.

These options are available for both Linux and Windows versions of Parallels Installer.

C H A P T E R 4

Installing Panel

Installing Panel 13

In this chapter:

Installation from the Web Interface .................................................................... 13

Installation from the Command Line .................................................................. 15

Installation Using One-Click Installer ................................................................. 17

Initializing the Panel .......................................................................................... 18

Installation from the Web Interface

To install Parallels Plesk Panel from the web interface, follow the instructions provided

below in this section.

If you wish to include the Customer & Business Manager (C&BM) component during

the installation, the Panel host name must be resolvable to an IP address. This

limitation is caused by the fact that the Panel uses Single Sign-on (SSO) to interact

with C&BM, and the SSO service is unable to work with unresolved host names or

directly with IP addresses.

 To install the Panel using the Web interface:

1. Download the Parallels Installer utility that suits your operating system

from http://www.parallels.com/products/plesk/download/ and save it on

your server’s hard drive.

2. (Only for Linux) Set the execution permission for Parallels Installer:

chmod +x parallels_products_installer_file_name

3. Run the Parallels Installer.

On a Linux/Unix server:

./parallels_products_installer_file_name --web-interface

On a Windows server:

parallels_products_installer_file_name

(Only for Linux) Open your browser and enter https://host-name:8447/ or https://IP-

address:8447/ in the address bar. The Parallels Installer Web interface opens.

(Only for Windows) Parallels Installer wizard opens in a new browser window.

When the installer starts, an additional console window opens. This window

displays the operations performed by the utility. It is closed upon the successful

installation, or after 30 minutes of inactivity.

4. (Only for Windows) Select the language for the installation wizard.

5. Log in to the web interface.

14 Installing Panel

 If you are running Windows, type the administrator's username ("Administrator"),

administrator's password, and click Log In.

 If you are running Linux, type the system root user and password, and click Log

In.

6. (Optional) Click Update source and installation settings and specify the source

of Parallels Plesk Panel distribution package:

 By default, the Official Parallels Updates server is selected. Specify the location

where the installation files will be stored.

 If you select a Mirror server, specify the products.inf3 file location in the URL

to the directory with .inf3 file field. Specify the location where the installation files

will be stored.

 If you select a Local media, specify the products.inf3 file location in the

Absolute path to the .inf3 file field.

7. If you use a proxy server, select the Connect using a proxy checkbox and

specify the following settings:

 Specify proxy host name and port number in the Proxy address and port fields.

 If this proxy server requires authentication, select the Require authentication

checkbox and specify username and password.

8. (Only for Linux) Select the installation language and click Save to save

the installation preferences and proceed to installation.

9. Click Install or Upgrade Product. You are taken to the products list.

10. Select the checkbox corresponding to Parallels Plesk Panel and the

version that you want to install. By default, the latest products versions

are selected.

11. Select the installation type:

 By default, Typical installation is selected. It includes a minimal number of

packages required for the Panel to work.

 To install all components of the Panel, select Full installation.

 To install only selected components, select Custom installation.

12. If you wish to specify the components you want to install, select the

Preview components selection checkbox and click Continue.

13. (Only for Windows) To start the installation, change the product

installation paths as required, specify the new administrator password,

and click Continue.

Installing Panel 15

Note: You are able to separate the Panel data and user accounts data by storing it

in two different directories. By default, these paths are set to the same directory, but

we recommend to keep the user accounts data on a separate hard drive to achieve

better performance and stability.

Once the installation is finished, initialize the Panel (on page 18). This is an arbitrary

step when you set the Panel administrator password, e-mail and contact information.

The Panel will not let you perform any actions until you initialize it.

After the Panel is initialized, obtain and install a free trial license key, or purchase and

install a new production license. See the chapter Installing and Upgrading License Keys (on

page 27) to learn how to obtain and install the Panel license keys.

If the server is protected by a firewall, be sure to configure the firewall as described in

the Panel Administrator's Guide, chapter Configuring and Maintaining Your Server, section

Configuring the Panel to Run Behind a Router with Firewall.

Installation from the Command Line

To install Parallels Plesk Panel from the command line, follow the instructions provided

below in this section.

If you wish to include the Customer & Business Manager (C&BM) component during

the installation, the Panel host name must be resolvable to an IP address. This

limitation is caused by the fact that the Panel uses Single Sign-on (SSO) to interact

with C&BM, and the SSO service is unable to work with unresolved host names or

directly with IP addresses.

 To install the Panel from the command line:

1. Download the Parallels Installer utility that suits your operating system

from http://www.parallels.com/products/plesk/download/ and save it on

your server’s hard drive.

2. (Only for Linux) Set the execution permission for Parallels Installer:

chmod +x parallels_products_installer_file_name

3. Run the Parallels Installer.

On a Linux/Unix server:

./parallels_products_installer_file_name

On a Windows server:

parallels_products_installer_file_name --console

4. Read installation notes displayed on the screen and type 'n' to proceed

to the next screen. Press ENTER.

5. Specify the source of Parallels Plesk Panel distribution package.

16 Installing Panel

You can choose to install from a local file system, the official Parallels Updates

server, or another site. By default, the official server is selected.

If you wish to retrieve installation files from a local file system or network storage:

a Type 's' and press ENTER.

b To choose a local file system, type 1. To choose a network storage device, type

3. Press ENTER.

c If you chose a local file system, specify the location of products.inf3

configuration file. If you chose a network storage, specify the address. For

example, http://example.com, http://192.168.10.10, ftp://192.168.10.10.

Note:If you are running Windows, it is possible to use local system paths when

specifying the source. Network shares cannot be used directly, only if you

preliminarily map a network drive to a local drive.

d When finished selecting the source, type 'n' to proceed to the next step and

press ENTER.

6. If you use a proxy server, specify the following settings:

a Proxy host name and port number. To specify them, type 's', type the host name,

type the port number, press ENTER to continue.

b User name and password. If this proxy server requires authentication, type 'a',

press ENTER, type username and press ENTER, type password and press

ENTER.

c When finished with specifying proxy settings, type 'n' and press ENTER to

continue with installation.

7. Select the product versions that you want to install: type the number

corresponding to the product version you need and press ENTER, then

type 'n' and press ENTER to continue.

8. Select the components that you wish to install, type 'n' and press

ENTER to continue.

When prompted, specify the required parameters for the selected components.

 To install a minimum number of packages required for Parallels Plesk Panel to

work, leave Typical and press ENTER.

 To install all components of the Panel, select Full: type the corresponding

number and press ENTER.

 To install only selected components, select Custom: type the corresponding

number and press ENTER.

 To review the components that will be installed, type L and then press ENTER.

Tip: The selected packages are marked with [*] symbols. The packages that are

already installed and do not require updating are marked with [=] symbols. The

component groups that contain selected components are marked with [.]. To select

or deselect a package, type the corresponding number and press ENTER..

Installing Panel 17

9. (Only for Windows) Specify the directory where you want to install the

Panel, and provide the administrator's (admin) password. Type 'n' and

press ENTER to continue.

10. Confirm the installation: type 'n' and press ENTER again.

The packages will be downloaded and installed. When the installation is finished,

the Panel will start automatically.