Praji’s Weblog

Plesk is a leading control panel used in many hosting providers  today. Plesk is avaliable for both windows and linux machine. The latest stable version of Plesk is 8.2.1

Logging in to plesk
************************

To log in to plesk use

https:<domain name/ip> :8443

There are four login levels for plesk

They are

1) Administrator

2)Client/Reseller

3) Domain owner

4) Email user

Each level has got its own functions

Administrator
***************

This login is used to by hosting administators to manage the server items . Client/reseller,Domain owner,Email user  creation can be done by using this account.

Note : We cannot use the root password for login to this account as in Cpanel. To login to this account use

Username : admin
Password : (will be stored in fiel /etc/psa/.psa.shadow )

Client/Reseller
****************

This is the second tier account . Domain owner accounts and Email user accounts can be managed from this account.

Domain owner
*****************

Everything related to  one domain can be managed by using this account. usually client/reseller  creates a Domain owner account.

mail user
**********

This is the fourth tier account. Here users are allowed to manage their mail account. Only mail related functions are allowed here such as sending mails ,seting spam filters etc.

Software componets of plesk.
********************************

The following software components are used with plesk.

DNS server : bind

Webserver : Apache

FTP server : proftpd

Mail server : Mysql,mssql,postgresql

IMAP/POP : courier-IMAP

Mailing list: Mailman

Statistical softwares : Webalizer, AWstats

Types of hosting
******************

In plesk, 3 modes of hosting are avaliable

They are

Physical hosting

The domain is actually hosted on that server.

Standard Hosting

Here url is redirected such that  browser url will be changed to destination url

Frame forward

Here also redirection takes place. But browser url doesnot change

Plesk Backend
****************

>Plesk is database oriented (psa).
>The root directory of plesk is /usr/local/psa
>To know  the version of Plesk see file : /usr/local/psa/version
>The location of all files are specified in the configuration file : /etc/psa/psa.conf
> The common log file for plesk is  /var/log
>Domain related files are

user home directory : /var/www/vhosts/<domain name>/(httpdocs/httpdsdocs)

Domain logs             : /var/www/vhosts/<domain name>/statistics/log

Domain statistics     :   /var/www/vhosts/<domain name>/statistics

Error pages               :  /var/www/vhosts/<domain name>/error_docs

> Files related to  services are

a) APACHE
CONF FILES      /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
/var/www/vhosts/<domain name>/conf/httpd.include (domain specific)
LOG FILES      /var/log/http/

b) DNS:-
CONF FILE         /var/named/run-root/etc/
DB FILES           /var/named/run-root/var/

c) DATABASE

CONF FILE                  /etc/my.cnf
DATABASE PATH         /var/lib/mysql/
LOG FILE                   :  /var/log/messages

d) FTP:-

CONF FILE             /etc/proftpd.conf
LOG FILE              /var/log/xferlog

e) MAIL

CONF FILE      /var/qmail/ control/
LOG FILES      /var/log/maillog
MAIL DIRECTORY  /var/qmail/mailnames/domainname/user/Maildir/new,cur,tmp

>Restarting services on plesk

HTTPD :           /etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd start/stop
/etc/rc.d/init.d/psa for starting https

QMAIL  :          /etc/rc.d/init.d/courier-imap/pop start/stop

DNS     :         /etc/rc.d/init.d/named start/stop

FTP:-     :       /etc/rc.d/init.d/xinetd ftp start/stop

DATABASE:-  /etc/rc.d/init.d/mysqld start/stop

>All psa scripts are stored in /usr/local/psa/bin

>psa log file : /usr/local/psa/admin/logs

PSA DATABASE
*****************

Plesk has a database called psa. We can use the administrator username(admin)  and  password to login to psa database.

>Tables in psa database are

1. Domains

2. Clients

3. db_users

4.db_bases

5. disk_spaces

6.mail

7.lockout

8. web_users

Backup
***********************
>     To back up all data

/plesk_installation_directory/bin/pleskbackup all <backup file
name>

>      To back up all user accounts with all users’ sites,

/plesk_installation_directory/bin/pleskbackup clients <backup file name>