8.1 Impossible to Install Under FreeBSD?

[TDuncklee]

I’ve been using plesk since the early days long before swsoft. In general I’ve always loved Plesk. I’m a FreeBSD user and currently am using 7.5. This last week I’ve been attempting to install 8.1 on FreeBSD. My conclusion so far is that it’s probably not likely anyone is using 8.1 on FreeBSD. Someone please tell me otherwise. I’ve pretty much given up at this point. Nothing should be this difficult to install. Even if I do get it to install I have to wonder how stable it is under FreeBSD.

TD

 

[Whistler]

Plesk 8.0.1 and 8.1.1 runs very stable when you get it installed.

The installation/upgrade might be a lot of troubles. Depending on who you do it and what versions your'e running. I think.

One important thing - when upgrading from 7.5.x to 8.x your license key will be reissued to the 8.x version of Plesk not allowing you to downgrade again.

 

[TDuncklee]

I have not tried upgrading. Only multiple clean, virgin installs. Still have not heard of anyone who has had success at a new install. I do not want to upgrade an existing system. FreeBSD 4.11 is at EOL.

 

[Whistler]

Running clean installs on FreeBSD 6.0 (Plesk 8.1.1) and FreeBSD 6.1 (Plesk 8.0.1) - no problems and running stable.

 

[ricebus]

I'm running Plesk 8.1.1 on FreeBSD 6.2, just install it from the ports, the autoinstaller pretty much sucks at everything..

 

[TDuncklee]

Apparently it's not in the ports collection. CVS does not get it. Can you tell me how to install from ports? I sure would like to get this thing going!

I do see that swsoft is in the ports collection AFTER I attempt an install with autoinstaller. However, I did then try installing from ports and it failed also.

A step by step would be great if anyone knows of one or cares to write one.

Thanks!
TD

 

[ricebus]

Heh, I would be happy to help but I really cant remember.
I just remember I went through ALOT of trouble getting this working.

One this is for sure, you get the port collection only AFTER you try to run the autoinstaller.
try to run 'make' in the main ports directory (the dir where you see psa psa-qmail and so on..)

hope this helps.

 

[RickJones]

I just tried the FreeBSD cli auto-installer.

If I really didn't like someone then I would make them do try this ;-)

I'm using freebsd 6.1 and it seems like ports are incorrectly referenced?

Any idea if this is going to be fixed or if someone could write a decent how to?

It would also help allot if a person would read the installer pl file.

 

[TDuncklee]

I've managed some successful installs. Here are my notes:
Install OS (I'm using FreeBSD 6.2):
Do not install gettext
Install:
cvsup-without-gui
update your ports tree.

Add:
/etc/make.conf
DISABLE_VULNERABILITIES=yes

Not related to installing plesk but an issue I have. If you see this:
WARNING - READ_DMA UDMA ICRC error (retrying request)
In /boot/loader.conf, put
hw.ata.ata_dma="0"

for acpi consuming cpu time (top -S) do this:
add 'hint.acpi.0.disabled="1"'
into /boot/device.hints

If installer appears to hang it may be installing something that needs input. Running tail -f on /tmp/autoinstaller3.log will tell you. If so, manually install that port and re-run autoinstaller.

If installation fails for apache, do make deinstall then make reinstall then run autoinstaller again.

Some things require certain versions of other things. For example, mod_fcgi 2.1 requires apache 2.2. However, Plesk only installs apache 2.0. In this case you will need to fetch an older version of mod_fcgi from cvs. Something like this:

- create a /etc/ports-supfile which will specify to get a snapshot of www/ collection from 11 June 00:00, for example:

-- cut here 8< --
*default host=cvsup.FreeBSD.org
*default base=/var/db
*default prefix=/usr
*default release=cvs tag=.
*default delete use-rel-suffix
*default date=2007.06.11.00.00.00
*default compress

ports-www
#ports-all
-- cut here 8< --

- update ports tree:
# cvsup -g /etc/ports-supfile

- deinstall mod_fcgid 2.1 and Plesk components that depend on it:
# pkg_deinstall psa-rubyrails-configurator-8.1.1
# pkg_deinstall psa-mod-fcgid-configurator-8.1.1
# pkg_deinstall mod_fcgid-2.1

- install 2.0 mod_cfgid:
# cd /usr/ports/www/mod_fcgid
# make install clean

Then you can continue Plesk installation regular way, psa-mod-fcgid-configurator and psa-rubyrails-configurator will be simply installed anew..

If you get this error:/var/db/pkg/pkgdb.db: unexpected file type or format -- Invalid argument
Just delete the file and try again.

At some point the install MAY fail and you will need to cvsup to a current date before running autoinstaller again. Sometimes you, sometimes you don't. Don't know why...

In the end, after autoinstaller claims everything has been installed correctly, the control panel may generate an error. For me, this means that mod_fcgid 2.1 somehow got re-installed. Most likely because something failed to install after you installed version 2.0 and you had to bring cvs current. Just remove mod_fcgid like described above and reinstall 2.0 then run the autoinstaller one last time.

TD

 

[CruzMark]

thanks for that info.

Isn't it somewhat astounding that the plesk installer for a *clean* freebsd system fails.

If the installation had been this hard with the 7.5 product, we *never* would have decided to go with Plesk as a hosting platform.

ridiculous...

 

[TDuncklee]

Actually, having been through this I think I like it better. More flexibility. With the constantly changing ports collection I have to sympathize with swsoft. With them trying to keep more current with ports this seems like the way to go but it is a near impossibility for them to keep up with everything. I don’t see any way they will be able to make the autoinstaller consistently do successful installs with ports constantly changing but I feel it is the right direction. Just my 2 cents...

TD

 

[CruzMark]

Don't get me wrong. I think the ports collection is probably the right way to go too.

But going that direction brings with it some responsibility to make sure your installer works, or, if it doesn't, include the gotchas (as was done by a customer above) in the knowledgebase or somewhere you can actually find solutions without contacting SWSoft support or expecting a customer to figure this out.

I've got plenty of other work to do, rather than troubleshooting a control panel install on a brand new server.

I just think that it should work "out of the box" and they should hustle to fix things if it doesn't. The 8.1 install hasn't worked for over a month now on FreeBSD.

 

[DCoats]

The easiest install on freebsd5.5 6.1 and 6.2 is extracting the ports to /usr/ports/swsoft and make install.

Have done it over a dozen times on different boxes and it works fine.

*EDIT* Additionally you can edit the Makefiles to reflect apache22 and in psa.conf edit the apache2 directives to apache22 and apache22 works fine also.