private directory to be added to open_basedir

[Cranky]

Yeah, 5.30AM and still working!

Waiting on some rsync's to complete then sleep until 9AM.

 

[Rocky@]

Originally posted by xrom
You won't be able to setup multiple FTP accounts either, as Plesk doesn't allow that. So what is best way ?
a) create multiple FTP accounts (how?)
b) remove open_basedir restriction

A and B probably will be useless after next upgrade.

Sorry if this not right topic. Just hurt

a) Hmmm, that's not good! Another weakness of Plesk, unless Cranky can tell us a way to work around. Sometimes, I need to give my users ftp permission to access certain directory, which can be done easily on CPanel. Not good, not good!

So Cranky, how to I set up an ftp account for a customer that can access only a certain directory? For example, I like to give someone permission to access the layout directory only, so that the scripts won't be touched and messed up.

b) That can be done with the vhost.conf as shown previously. Just enter the correct path.

vhost.conf will not be overwritten when you upgrade. So don't worry.

Sam

 

[Rocky@]

Re: ftp on subdirectory

Man, I did a search and it was listed on Cranky's top 5 features request.

That means it can't be done at this point.

Oh dear! My business is highly dependent on this feature and it can't be done on Plesk. Trouble, trouble!

I thought I have learned all the command line tricks to make Plesk do what I wanted to do. But, I am still finding out more features lacking on Plesk.

Again, I am going to say it because it is the truth. All these features can be easily done on CPanel with a few clicks; no need for command line.

Sam

 

[BDMM]

I wanted to create a data directory in domain root but was unable to do it through the control panel file manager. Not an issue so will set it up via ssh. There are a few issues I just need verifying.

1. If I create a data directory in my skeleton dir /home/httpd/vhosts/.skel/0/data with associated permissions will this be overwritten on doing plesk upgrade. Symbolic links included

2. When doing a backup will this folder be backed up as well. In fact when backing up as domain are all the files for that domain backed up as well ie /tmp /usr etc.

I also have been builing sites for years with most of my data and config files stored outside the web root folder. While it is possible to create directories within httpdocs I get very paranoid about security or services failing making the data available to all. I have had one occasion where a host I was using was upgrading php which failed which left all my code open for several hours. Another time a host moved a site and failed to copy permissions over which was another mess. While htaccess files are a good way to manage security they can be easily misconfigured creating problems. The safest way is put things outside web and use sym links if necessary.

 

[Rocky@]

BDMM,

1. The skeleton might be overwirtten on upgrade, but I don't think it will effect the site if you created a directory instead of changing the setting of the existing ones, like the 'private' directory.

2. I think backup will include the entire content of 'domain.com' directory, so all files and directory will be backed up. Even though I haven't tried it yet, I think it would be the stupidest thing in the world not to program that way. I will try it when I get the chance. If it turn out to be not so, that will be the day I abandon Plesk forever.

Imagine this. I have discovered something lately. Plesk is spending a lot of money on advertisments. I have been seeing them everywhere. I don't know what benefit they gave EV1. The datacenter giant called Plesk "Preferred Control Panel." You don't see much advertisment on CPanel. Yet CPanel has a bigger market share. What does it tell you? Now I am finding out.

My impression so far, after 3 weeks of playing a Plesk box, is lousy. It has nothing much more than a pretty face than CPanel to impress my customers and to make myself busier. I have yet to invest more, like Spamassassin, which come free with CPanel.

The worse part is the lack of communication. Their attitude is "if you don't give me money, I won't talk to you." This forum here is like a ghost town comparing the CPanel.

I am being very patient here because I have already spent money on getting a Plesk box. I am judging whether it is worth losing that money to switch back to CPanel. So far I am finding more and more reasons for doing so.

Sam

 

[BDMM]

I agree everything is an add on at a price. I switched from Ensim but am starting to regret it. I think Plesk is designed for those who don't really wish to customise their setup and aimed more at the ISP. At least with ensim if I had a problem I could find a "How To" in the forum.

So far a quick easy install has turned into a week of stress. Manual DNS entries, painful spamassassin install and i'm sure my clamav is working but who can tell. While the idea is there with Plesk I can't say much for ease of use and it's missing all the real development tools. Oh well

 

[defencer]

> Fact: CPanel is not less secure than Plesk.

That's wrong. Just give me an account on cpanel and I will break the system.

 

[Rocky@]

Do you mean you can't break into Plesk?

And have you tried CPanel lately? No body broke into mine in the past three years! The notion of CPanel being less secure is outdated. Today, it's security is not less than Plesk. Boy, I ended up speaking for CPanel, which I wish I didn't have to, just because of these blind worshipers of Plesk who refuse to get into the shoes of the users.

I don't have to give you an account, you can choose any site to attack and, more often than not, you will get a CPanel user since it has five times more users than Plesk and growing.

Let's say Plesk is more secure. So what when it can't do what developers wants it to do? So what if people don't buy it?

If you read the web hosting magazine lately there is an article about what customers are looking for. They don't put security at the top, since it can't be achieved and they were willing to take risk. The top priority is stability. How could my customers get a stable service if each time I upgrade their site is likely to be down?

So what Plesk is more secure? But, the fact is CPanel is not less secure than Plesk as of today.

Sam

 

[jamesyeeoc]

IMO, if you worry about security, then get out of the business. Anyone who thinks any CP is 'secure' is deluding themselves. Just because there are no 'known' security issues doesn't mean squat.

As to configuration options for specific packages, I read posts everyday where people complain about Plesk overwriting a config file here and there. So if Plesk were to pre-configure other packages (such as PHP) to be more friendly and then periodically check and re-write those files, people would still be unhappy. No one single configuration of a base package will suit all admins/users.

Just because one person says CPanel runs better does not negate all the other posts by people who do just as much complaining about other problems with CPanel.

Any CP package has it's good and bad points. I don't know of any where their support forum is nothing but praises. If you know of one, please tell me.

If you don't like Plesk and cannot put up with having to do some mods yourself, and since you are now aware of some of it's limitations, then please decide if you are going to keep using it or not. If so, then post your questions with adequate details, and the rest of us will try to help you out. But these forums are not the place to harp on comparisons.

BTW, I am not blind, and I am both the admin of Plesk servers, as well as a WebDeveloper, as well as a User. So I have all perspectives, and many many pairs of shoes. I also work with many other developers and I don't have nearly the amount of trouble as other hosts. Hmmm, there is something to be said for a modicum of moderation when dealing with servers and life.

So far, nobody has ever managed to break into any of my servers, regardless of what CP they ran, and there have been many many many who have tried and continue to try everyday. It's just a matter of numbers, sooner or later it will happen. 'Any lock made by man can be unmade by man'

Sorry to go on so long. I wish none of you any ill will, nor do I mean anything by my comments, this is just my outlook on stuff.

Peace out.

 

[defencer]

Originally posted by Rocky
Do you mean you can't break into Plesk?
And have you tried CPanel lately?

I don't know easy way to break plesk. Of course, I don't want to say, that it is impossible. But at least plesk does not have so stupid things like an ability for the normal user to create a symlink to /etc/passwd in the place of apache log file. Try this, restart apache and say good-bye to your system. I have seen this about half a year ago.

No body broke into mine in the past three years! The notion of CPanel being less secure is outdated. Today, it's security is not less than Plesk.

The fact, that nobody broke your system means only one: nobody wants to break your system . Just try to do what I said and you'll see how cpanel is secure. Write here your results and I'll tell you about other holes in cpanel.

Boy, I ended up speaking for CPanel, which I wish I didn't have to, just because of these blind worshipers of Plesk who refuse to get into the shoes of the users.

As you wish. I just said my opinion about cpanel security. Nothing more.

I don't have to give you an account, you can choose any site to attack and, more often than not, you will get a CPanel user since it has five times more users than Plesk and growing.

I don't want to attack anybody. I ask you for an account just to show you how cpanel is insecure. BTW, where did you get the information that cpanel users five time more?

Let's say Plesk is more secure. So what when it can't do what developers wants it to do? So what if people don't buy it?

If you read the web hosting magazine lately there is an article about what customers are looking for. They don't put security at the top, since it can't be achieved and they were willing to take risk. The top priority is stability. How could my customers get a stable service if each time I upgrade their site is likely to be down?

So what Plesk is more secure? But, the fact is CPanel is not less secure than Plesk as of today.

Sam

 

[Rocky@]

OK. That's enough. A few closing word in this debate and l will go to my real question. I own Plesk and that's why I am here. I am frustrated because I am unable to easily set up what what I could easily do on CPanel.

I agree that no control panel is secure. So stop defending Plesk on security over CPanel. As for the user base, it was just a speculation based on the forum users 43,000+ on CPanel vs. 9,000+ on Plesk. I think it is a reasonable speculation. Even if it is not 5 times, you can conservatively say, it is at least twice. You can also look at their daily number of postings. Twice is extremely conservative.

---------------------

Now my question.

How do I set up FTP account for a sub directory?

This was posted above and no one was able to answered it yet.

Happy hosting!

Sam

 

[defencer]

Rocky, yes the number of registered users in cpanel forum much more. But did you note, that you can't even READ cpanel forum until you are registered user? For me this means that many of users forget their login/passwords and registered several times.

The number of posts can also means that cpanel has much more problems, isn't it?

Yes you can't setup FTP account sub directody. But how often you need this?

I am sure I can find many useful things which plesk has but cpanel has not. But unfortunatelly I can't find their demo at cpanel.net right now. As I remember their demo works very rarely. And now it seems they remove link to cpanel demo at all.

 

[Rocky@]

Yes you can't setup FTP account sub directody. But how often you need this?

No kidding? You don't even have a workaround? Does the Power Pack or some other plugin toys do that trick?

I need it quite often, because I set up php scripts for people and teach them to change the layout the way they like to change and as often as they want to change. But they can't handle the scripts so I only want to give them ftp access to the layout directory.

I think your question "how often you need this?" might be the determinative question of which control panel I should use. Our choice of the control panel all depends on what feature we want and how often we want it, dosen't it?

Sam

 

[defencer]

For your purpose you can use webusers feature of plesk. Just give them webuser accounts.

About "how often". You are developer, so you need some features. Plesk is not a development tool, plesk is a control panel. Control panel for people who are not developers. Most of them even do not know what is it FTP account, right? And control panel must be simple enaugh for such people.

My question. Is it possible to assign one IP address to several domains in cpanel? Is it possible to assign one IP address to several customers?

 

[Rocky@]

Hey Defencer, I am not debating with you with my questions here. I am seeking for a support answer.

Are you really having a CPanel problem? You can ask that question in CPanel.net and you will get a lot of answers and very quickly for sure. For the sake of your arguement, yes, those things can be easily done on cpanel.

You are trying to engage in a argument again. I am someone trying to use Plesk and I want to do the things that I need to do regularly which was done easily on CPanel, so I can switch over.

Your excuse for Plesk being just a controle panel for none developers doesn't make sense, since CPanel is the same type and can do those things.

Anyway, I am not getting my answer for my question here. I just don't want to pay $299 to find out that I can't assign ftp to subdomain at all and have to switch back to CPanel after spending the money.

BTW, as I am developing a site right now, I am running into another problem, which I don't know whether it has to do with PHP or MySQL. Problem after problem. I want to cry!

10 more days and it will be exactly one month sleeping with Plesk. If in 10 days, I can't figure out how to get my site done on this server, I am reinstalling it with CPanel.

Bye!

Sam

 

[xrom]

Originally posted by defencer
For your purpose you can use webusers feature of plesk. Just give them webuser accounts.

Web user do not help. Script located on domain did not see any file inside web_user directory. And this is bad. I do not check if script will se file in domain, probably not.

 

[defencer]

Well, I suggested to you to use webusers to create additional FTP accounts. Also you CAN create dedicated FTP account for subdomains (namely for subdomains, not for subdirectories as you said before).

BTW, as I am developing a site right now, I am running into another problem, which I don't know whether it has to do with PHP or MySQL. Problem after problem. I want to cry!

Explain the problem, I can try to help you

BTW, I do not have a problems with cpanel, because I do not use it

 

[xrom]

I probably do not understand, but this extra ftp account for web domain and sub domain useless for me. What reason for this extra ftp? I need integration with domain, sub_domain should be sub, not fully separated, (or i need to chouse). I can chose now using same ftp account(as main) or different, both choices not allow me to see files from main to sub. For my situation one company few departments, each department should have separate ftp account and contents, but it still one company and information should easily flow between main and sub. Same for web_user.
Not possible make files available for everyone if it uploaded by web_user, script didn’t see file base_directory restriction.

Another scenario:

Website for church. All script located at main domain. The sermons songs audio text contents changes daily by different people. I am not able to provide my general login to everyone. I need place to keep all my data (preferred outside my httpdocs), the idea web_user nice, but script from main domain do not see any files because ownership psaserv.

There is another problem I am not able some time delete file from plesk, if this file was created by system. Gallery create folders for user’s picture, which not possible delete after.

Any way I like plesk, just want better.

 

[Rocky@]

Any way I like plesk, just want better.

I like Plesk too. It just doesn't do some important practical tasks.

I have solved my problem mentioned above, which I found out was not Plesk fault.

At this point, I would be happy if someone can give us a commandline method to set up ftp users for the sub-directories, that, of course, doesn't overwritten upon upgrade.

And,

I can't figure out how to upgrade my Apache, which my security system keep warning me that I have a vernerable version. I use RHE S3, and up2date tells me that I am up to date. Other ways I tried didn't work. It says I need Plesk's version, which I don't know where to find.

Sam

 

[met00]

Originally posted by Rocky
I like Plesk too. It just doesn't do some important practical tasks.

I have solved my problem mentioned above, which I found out was not Plesk fault.

At this point, I would be happy if someone can give us a commandline method to set up ftp users for the sub-directories, that, of course, doesn't overwritten upon upgrade.

the only work around I have been able to find is to allow my users unlimited subdomains and then I have provided a crontab shell script that they can set to run ever 5 minutes that moves all uploaded files to the right place (a seperate subdomain where the files are stored in a directory structure where every file is stored in a directory that matches the subdomain name that it came from).