Plesk 12.5 preview feedback thread

[custer]

We have been releasing Plesk 12.5 previews for quite some time, so let's have a thread for discussing Plesk 12.5 and accumulating all your feedback.

The goal of Plesk 12.5 is to make Plesk a better, more reliable, and more secure tool for both Web hosts and Website owners. Plesk 12.5 will offer improved database management, support for in-place upgrades to major releases of Debian and RHEL/CentOS, multiple PHP version support, improved Log Browser tool and many other improvements targeted for Web hosts and Web developers.

We need your feedback to make sure we're going the right way and addressing the actual needs of you and your customers. Please don't hesitate and let us know what you think -- whether it's something new you like or something missing that you really need.

To install the latest version of Plesk 12.5 preview, go here:
http://odin.com/products/plesk/preview/

To view the release notes for Plesk 12.5 preview, go here:
http://download1.parallels.com/Plesk/PP12/parallels-plesk-12.1-for-linux.html

To see the latest version of Plesk 12.5, visit our demo server here:
https://a93-91-167-251.ec.parallels-summit.com:8443/login_up.php3?login_name=admin&passwd=panel&locale_id=en-US

Follow us on Twitter to get the latest information on Plesk previews and other cool stuff: https://twitter.com/Pleskdevelopers

 

[Jason_Hilton]

The demo server seems to not be loading.

 

[custer]

Should be working now, Jason. Sorry for this mishap!

 

[custer]

New stuff in 12.1.18 preview build:

1. New left navigation menu in Control Panel.
   
   
2. Administrators can use the command plesk repair installation to repair Plesk configuration after upgrade.
   
   
3. Administrators can use the plesk repair tool to resolve various issues at a domain level. For example plesk repair all example.com will run all check and repair operations for the domain example.com. Running plesk repair fs example.com will run all file system check and repair operations for that domain.
   
   
4. Administrators can use the plesk repair mail command to resolve various issues with mail services at a domain or mailbox level.
   
   
5. Administrators can use the plesk repair tool to resolve inconsistencies between Plesk and MySQL or Microsoft SQL Server databases: restore databases, database users, and database users' credentials.
   
   
6. Administrators can use the plesk repair tool to restore web server configuration files:
   • /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
   • /etc/httpd/conf.d/*.conf
   • /etc/nginx/conf.d/*
   • /etc/nginx/*.conf
   • /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params
   
   
7. Multiple improvements in backup manager.
   
   
8. Security improvements.
   
   
9. Mailman mailing lists manager was excluded from the "typical" installation offered by the Installer.
   
   
10. Descriptions of applications in Plesk were shown in English, even if users selected another language for the Plesk interface. (PPP-14195)
    
    
11. Users could not restore mail data from multivolume backups. (PPP-14197)
    
    
12. Administrators could not limit outgoing mail sent by scripts. (PPP-14433)
    
    
13. PHP warnings "Division by zero; File: /usr/local/psa/admin/application/default/views/scripts/outgoing-mail/messages.phtml" were recorded in /logs/panel.log. (PPP-14418)
    
    
14. Administrators could not use port 587 after running the mchk utility, even if mail submission was disabled in Plesk. (PPP-14342)
    
    
15. Languages on the Plesk login screen were not arranged in alphabetical order. (PPP-14186)
    
    
16. Entries in the list of webspaces were not arranged in alphabetical order. (PPP-13399)

What you think about our new plesk repair tool and redesigned left navigation panel? Let us know!

 

[custer]

12.1.19 preview build introduces:

1. Plesk users can select FPM as the PHP handler for their domains.
   
   
2. Subscriptions could be suspended automatically due to the expiration date being reached or resource usage limits being exceeded even if Plesk was running in the Power User mode. (PPP-14533)
   
   
3. Password recovery emails were being tagged as spam by email providers due to the recipient's address being simultaneously used as the sender's address. (PPP-14475)
   
   
4. Backing up data to the FTP repository required a local backup to be created first. Backup failed if there was not sufficient disk space for the local backup. (PPP-14445)

PHP-FPM is now available, what are your thoughts?

 

[Jason_Hilton]

The demo link seemed to be dead again, but I spun up a VM to check it out.
Thoughts at first glance: I LOVE the new theme/left hand nav bar, incremental backups is a huge improvement, the log browser is also a nice touch.

Question: Any plans for incremental backups to cloud storage or is there a way to create an incremental backup via a Cron Job?
Context: I'm sure I'm in the minority here, but my server is running on Google Compute Engine. This makes FTP impractical, and local server backups expensive. What I've done is create a cron job that creates a full httpdocs/database backup, uploads it via gsutil to a Google Cloud Storage Bucket (which is super cheap), and then removes the file from the server.

Thanks for all the hard work!
Jason

 

[custer]

Hey Jason,

OK, I'm gonna have a stern talk with our demo server... thanks for letting me know!

You can schedule incremental backups in 12.1, but not to a cloud storage, unfortunately:

Thanks a lot for your feedback, Jason - please keep it coming!

 

[Faris Raouf]

The demo only seems to speak French at the moment. I can't seem to change to any other language - as far as I can make out, it is telling me politely in French that this isn't possible in the demo version

 

[custer]

Hi Faris,

The demo is reinstalled daily, so it's in English now. If you happen to encounter this problem again, please let us know, we'll investigate it.

 

[Faris Raouf]

OK. That's great. Thanks.
I have it in a Container now. Some of the (forgive me) very annoying UI issues remain, and there are some seriously confusing things going on with regards to PHP-FPM. I'm not sure if they are expected or whether I've encountered a bug.

It is impossible to explain the UI issues in a few words. It is too late to do anything about it for 12.1 anyway. I will look into this in detail later (maybe you could remind me) and try to come up with a way to explain what I feel is wrong and how I think it might be improved. The basic thing is that certain settings that in my view should be grouped together are found in several different places - I don't think it should be necessary to hunt around trying to figure out where things are "hidden" in a control panel as powerful and mature as Plesk.

With regards to the php-fpm oddities I noticed:
In my test Centos 6 Container, where I have a test domain set up on the pre-configured Unlimited Service Plan, when logged in as admin I can select php-fpm in the Hosting Settings irrespective of whether there is a tick in the "Process PHP by nginx" box on the Webserver Settings page. This is contrary to the text in the online manual which says "The PHP-FPM handler is available only if it was installed by the hosting provider and if the option "Process PHP by nginx" in the website’s settings is turned on..." So with no tick in that box, I would not expect to see php-fpm as an option.

I also note that only the "main" version of php (OS Vendor supplied) can be selected when php-fpm mode is selected - no other version of PHP is selectable even if it is installed as an alternate version (i.e. the plesk-php5x packages). Is this expected behaviour? I'm sorry if this is a foolish question - I've not looked into php-fpm or nginx at all until now. I do seem to recall some mention of this limitation on this forum or maybe elsewhere in the past, but I can't currently find it using a search.

As an aside, I was surprised to see that "nginx" appeared in the headers for .php pages no matter which php mode or version I had selected and no matter whether there was a tick in the "Process PHP by nginx" or not. I'm going to investigate this in more detail later, but my assumption from nginx appearing in the header is that it is somehow active even though it should not be and I need to figure out why/what I might have done wrong to cause this to happen.

 

[Noturns]

Gosh i am amazed. The development team must have been very busy before Easter and have done an amazing job.
I love the landing page for databases.

Is the Web Application Firewall app as shown in Plesk v12.2 also available for Plesk v12.0.18 ?

 

[custer]

Hi Noturns,

ModSecurity integration (WAF app you've mentioned) is available in Plesk 12.0. Check it out and let us know what you think.

 

[custer]

Thank you for your feedback, Faris.

Good point about PHP-FPM availability and checkbox - we'll fix it in upcoming previews.

If you select PHP-FPM, only vendor PHP version is available, so yeah, this is currently working as expected. We are considering packaging PHP-FPM for other versions, though, so stay tuned.

 

[Noturns]

Hi Noturns,

ModSecurity integration (WAF app you've mentioned) is available in Plesk 12.0. Check it out and let us know what you think.

Thanks! got it

 

[custer]

12.1.20 preview is out with multiple PHP-related improvements:

1. Users can configure the PHP handlers and switch PHP support on or off in Websites & Domains > PHP Settings. They can also view the default settings for the selected PHP handlers. Administrators and resellers can view the default settings of PHP handlers, select PHP handlers, and switch PHP support on or off while configuring service plans (in Service Plans > plan name > PHP Settings tab).

2. Administrators can configure the global settings of PHP handlers in Tools & Settings > PHP Settings, and select which PHP handlers should be available on the server.

3. Users can access reports on PHP settings for websites (phpinfo output) from Websites & Domains tab > PHP Settings

4. The list of websites on the Websites & Domains tab is now loaded faster. (PPP-14536)

5. After installation of WordPress, users were prompted to add it to WordPress Toolkit, even if WordPress Toolkit was not available in Plesk. (PPP-14784)

6. Administrators could not remove IP addresses if site preview was switched on in Tools & Settings > Website Preview Settings. (PPP-14591)

7. Users could not update the Moodle application via Plesk. Updating failed with the error "Non-zero exit status returned by script". (PPP-14196)

8. After changing the default SSL certificate on the server, administrators could encounter issues with nginx configuration. (PPP-13673)

9. Website owners could not view real IPv6 addresses of website visitors in access_log files. (PPPM-2672)

10. Users could not back up website files that contained the percentage sign (%) in the file names. (PPP-14722)


More PHP-related changes are coming - let us know what you think so far!

 

[redhell]

I was able to register my own fpm handler but it reacts strange:
i can parse php files but i can't login to an ownlcloud instance because it tries to download the file instead of parsing it.

phpinfo.php is works but domain.tld/index.php/apps/files/ downloads the file.

 

[custer]

redhell,

Can you switch to a different PHP handler and see if your app works this way?

 

[redhell]

- FastCGI Vendor -> ok
- FPM Vendor -> ok
- FastCGI self build -> ok
- FPM self build -> not ok

 

[custer]

- FastCGI Vendor -> ok
- FPM Vendor -> ok
- FastCGI self build -> ok
- FPM self build -> not ok

Can you tell us, step-by-step, how you compiled the handler, where did you put it and how you've registered it in Plesk?

 

[redhell]

I wrote a guide https://www.ming-block.de/2014/01/php-5-5-8-mit-mariadb-kompilieren/ (german) and worked very well.

For fpm i added '--enable-fpm' '--with-fpm-user=www-data' '--with-fpm-group=www-data' and added with

plesk bin php_handler --update -id d23c33aa71b42ba83d6c2d781fae8267bbfd0943 -displayname PHP56-FPM -path /usr/local/php56-fpm/sbin/php-fpm -type fpm -phpini /usr/local/lib/php56/php.ini -poold /usr/local/php56-fpm/etc/pool.d/ -service php56-fpm -clipath /usr/local/php56-fpm/bin/php

(first i used --add but i had to change something)