How to set up cPanel on Webdock

Introduction

cPanel is a web hosting control panel software. It provides a graphical interface and automation tools designed to simplify the process of hosting a web site to the website owner or the "end user". It enables administration through a standard web browser using a three-tier structure.

Prerequisites

• A fresh Webdock cloud Alma Linux 8 instance. A server with at least 2GB of RAM recommended(as per official cPanel system requirements).

• You have shell (SSH) access to your VPS.

• A paid licence with cPanel (though you can try cPanel for free for 15-days)

Create new shell user and SSH to your server

Create new shell user. After creating the shell user, on the right side, enable "Passwordless Sudo" and apply the settings.

Creating root password

WebSSH into your Webdock server.

Switch to root user by executing:

$ sudo su -

Change your root password using:

# passwd root

Enabling EPEL repo

Enable the EPEL repo by installing epel-release.

# yum install epel-release
# yum repolist

Installing dependencies

# yum install chrony
# systemctl enable chronyd

Chrony is required by cPanel to set system date.

Installing network-scripts and enabling the network service.

# yum install network-scripts
# systemctl enable network

cPanel seems to use old init.d scripts to manage the network instead of using NetworkManager. The above network service will be started automatically by cPanel and NetworkManager service will be disabled.

Setting hostname

Set hostname by executing:

# hostnamectl set-hostname hostname.example.com

"hostname" can be anything you like. For example, if it's cpanel, then your fully qualified domain name (FQDN) looks like cpanel.example.com. Also, make sure that your hostname points to your Webdock server's IP address. If you use Cloudflare switch proxy to off when adding the A record.

Installing cPanel

Now, run the installation command shown in the official CPanel documentation.

Once the installation completes you will be shown a URL. Visit the URL to set up CPanel.

Login to the CPanel store if you already have an account with them, else you can signup for an account. If it's the first time you signed up for an account, CPanel gives you 15-day trial after which you should purchase a licence.

Proceed through the setup. Choose your nameservers and add the necessary A records to your DNS setup.

Conclusion

Once done, restart the server by clicking "You must reboot the server to apply software updates." → Reboot.

After reboot, visit https://hostname.example.com:2087 and enter root for username and password is the root password you set.

Please note: At the moment, Filesystem Quotas won't work as our VPS filesystem is ZFS. So, things like setting limits on users' disk space usage is not possible.

Feel free to ask any questions regarding the setup in the comments below or contact Webdock support.