Introduction

DirectAdmin is a web hosting control panel providing a graphical interface and automation tools to simplify server and account management. Features include E-mail, FTP, DNS and web management, Statistics, Apache configuration, and more.

Prerequisites

• A fresh Webdock cloud Ubuntu Focal (Ubuntu 20.04) instance.

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

• DirectAdmin licence (see the account creation steps below).

Create a new shell user and SSH to your server

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

DirectAdmin licence creation

Create an account on DirectAdmin and create a new licence.

While creating the licence, set the Operating System to Linux 64-bit static. Set IP address to your Webdock server IP address.

For the hostname, set it to hostname.domain.com. For example, if your domain is example.com then your hostname can be directadmin.domain.com, where directadmin is the hostname.

Installing dependencies

After creating the licence WebSSH into the Webdock server.

Become root user by executing:

$ sudo su -

Update packages and upgrade with:

# apt-get update
# apt-get upgrade

Install dependencies:

# apt install wget gcc g++ make flex bison openssl libssl-dev \
perl perl-base perl-modules libperl-dev libperl4-corelibs-perl \
libwww-perl libaio1 libaio-dev zlib1g zlib1g-dev libcap-dev cron \
bzip2 zip automake autoconf libtool cmake pkg-config python \
libdb-dev libsasl2-dev libncurses5 libncurses5-dev libsystemd-dev \
bind9 dnsutils quota patch logrotate rsyslog libc6-dev libexpat1-dev \
libcrypt-openssl-rsa-perl curl libnuma-dev libnuma1

Installing DirectAdmin

Install DirectAdmin by running the below command.

# bash <(curl -Ss https://www.directadmin.com/setup.sh || wget -O - https://www.directadmin.com/setup.sh) 'your-licence-key'

Replace your-licence-key with your DirectAdmin licence key (do not omit the quotes). If you set the IP of your server already while purchasing the licence, but do not know the licence key just enter auto (with the quotes). The DirectAdmin script automatically takes care of the authorization.

The installation takes a long time. Be patient. Once done you will be shown login credentials. Please copy them to a safe place.

Now visit http://YOUR-SERVER-IP:2222 to manage your server. To log in, use the login credentials you saved in the previous step.

Conclusion

The installation is now complete and you can log into the control panel to manage your server.

Make sure you point your hostname URL and all the other domains you create in the DirectAdmin panel to your Webdock server's IP address.

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

If you have any issues with the setup feel free to comment below or contact Webdock support.