Which O/S to chose? (Debian sux)

[mrbister]

Hi guys!

I've tried to install 7.5.4 on Debian 3.1 and has been doing so for 3 weeks now. Also posted here earlier, but never got any replies. I did a quote for a company managing *nix servers (securing, installing control panels, and so on) and I'm well into a month of trying now.
Started with almost no components was installed, install stopped, fixed missing packages, went further down the installation path, and so it kept on doing.
Finally able to login, but httpd shows as not installed so service is not manageable from Plesk GUI. Webmail login gives IMAP error message.

My questions is:
What's wrong with Plesk for *nix?!?!?
Is it Debian? What O/S should I chose instead?

Working like a charm on windows, never had any problems, setup there takes 10 minutes and then you're up and running, no 40000 missing packages there....

Why do they call it autoinstaller when there's nothing done automatically???

Best of the best is that Plesk wanted 150USD to install the control panel...

I like Plesk (at least on the Windows platform), but maybe it's time to have a look at Direct Admin instead...

//paying customer

 

[Cranky]

There seem to be fewer problems with Plesk on RedHat/Fedora/CentOS than Debian.

 

[mrbister]

Originally posted by Cranky
There seem to be fewer problems with Plesk on RedHat/Fedora/CentOS than Debian.

Ok - thanks for info. I'll give it a few more tries / days before I do a O/S reload.

Br,
MrBister

 

[roeschu]

Hi

Dont now your specific problems but:

i'm new to plesk, installed it 2 weeks ago on a clean, minimal Debian Sarge System without any OS specific problems. Everythings works without problems...also it takes some time until it knew where all the plesk side settings are...but for those things i've used the 30 day plesk installation supoort

i know that this doesn't help you much, but it may show you that there is a good chance to solve your problems.

The fact that there may be fewer problem on RH based or Suse Linux may be because this are commercial distributions and Debian not and afaik RH and Suse have been supported longer from plesk than Debian.

It's a "philosophy" thing but i would not change Debian with RH or Suse for Hosting systems

greets

 

[eilko]

from the past you see that RH-systems are the longest supported and usually the first builds of Plesk are for these systems.

Suse is also quite new but gets lots of attention (see frontpage about certifcation on Novell). The new v8 beta is also only available now on two types of Suse and two types of Fedora.

I would switch to a RH-based system, certainly when you can choose CentOS.

 

[mrbister]

Nice to see that someone got it working on Debian Sarge. I had these options to chose from when I did my O/S reload:

Fedora Core 4
Sarge Plain (only Network and ssh, no other preconfigured Services)
SuSE 9.3

I thought Debian was right one for me.

roeschu, have to ask you regarding your install; mine halted all the time due to missing packages, isn't the autoinstaller supposed to grab them from plesk autoupdate server?
I tried O/S reload several times and it is still not a complete plesk install (httpd component reported as not installed, webmail working, but unable to compose mail correctly since it want to download compose.php instead of sending the message, and so on).

roeschu, how did you solve your missing components during your install?

Br,
MrBister

 

[roeschu]

Originally posted by mrbister
Nice to see that someone got it working on Debian Sarge. I had these options to chose from when I did my O/S reload:

Fedora Core 4
Sarge Plain (only Network and ssh, no other preconfigured Services)
SuSE 9.3

I thought Debian was right one for me.

roeschu, have to ask you regarding your install; mine halted all the time due to missing packages, isn't the autoinstaller supposed to grab them from plesk autoupdate server?
...

roeschu, how did you solve your missing components during your install?

If i'm understanding your posting right, you have your server leased at some provider and you have this 3 distributions to make choice, if yes: maybe your provider is giving you a debian image to install that may have some things "other" than the debian standard image? (maybe a image which is using not the debian standard kernel (which should make no problems under normal circumstances..) or something else that may have a influence in some way?)


Note that i've setup debian and plesk on my own hardware at office, so i have fully control of which image is use:

1) for debian i've used the current netinstall iso from debian.org. I use the debian standard kernel 2.4 in this image, so nothing special there. I've made a basic install (without choosing any software via Tasksel....it' seems to be very important that it's really basic install...means no apache already running or something else..

2) i've setup quota_v2 modul to be loaded via /etc/modules (otherwise plesk autoinstaller will not activate Quota support during installation, but this would be no critical error if you dont activate it, quota just would not work in this case)

2) After that i've just run the psa_autoinstaller and i've choosed the plesk packets and the plesk packet source (from plesk server over internet, not local stored). The autoinstaller from plesk downloads all (or most of the packets, i remember some it takes from official debian mirrors...i guess some basic packes, librarys and stuff) from it's own apt source -> http://autoinstall.plesk.com//debian PSA_7.5.4/. So in fact there was nothing other to do than starting the autoinstaller and answering the questions from the installer. So yes the autoinstaller is downloading all the packet by himself.


The setups finished without problems and the admin page was accessible. Note that plesk also is writting his own apt source in /etc/apt/sources.list. This is necessary for the "Updater" Menu in Plesk admin.

if nothing helps: you got 30 days installation support, give plesk support ssh access and they can help you...(i'm sure you can talk with them even if the 30 days are already over..)


greets


p.s i dont think that this is the problem in your case but to prevent you from other problems: note that Plesk is checking his licence every 6 month or so automatically for validity (even if licences is lifetime). For this purpose plesk needs to make an outgoing connection via port 5224 ...just in case your box is firewalled in a bidirectional way (out -> in, in->out firewalled)

maybe the installer also needs (for some strange reason..) a port open from inside to outside which is not open in your environment (mmh not sure about that but if yes we should see it in /etc/apt/sources.list...and there is a normal url...port 80.

 

[mrbister]

Hi there - and thanks for that extensive reply
According to DC it is Debian Sarge, plain install - i.e. only Network and ssh, no other preconfigured services running.

I think I better give them a call, but still waiting on the license (running the temp. license atm.). Renting a licence from the DC-provider, will that entitle me to the same 30 days setup/support help?

Br,
Jonas

 

[chickenbak]

I am contemplating moving from RHEL AS4 to Fedora C5 when it comes out...what do you guys think about that move. I do have a valid RHN entitlement, which is why I have been using AS4...but would I gain or lose anything by going C5? It seems that C5 is more flexible and has more of the newer rpms built for it etc...I am just wondering if I am going to lose anything by going that route.

 

[eilko]

it will take some time for FC5 to become supported by Plesk

 

[sieb@]

My servers are a mix of CentOS 4.2 and Win2k3 installs.

If I am trying out a new OS, I always run them through VMWare to get the installation down and work out any bugs before I put it on a bare system. Though, nowadays, my entire environment is virtualized with GSX.

If you want an easy install, just do a minimal CentOS4 install (first disk only), then yum everything you need via ARTs repos.

 

[Spyder]

Sieb, did you tried the VMWare Server ?? in comparation with GSX??

Did you tried ESX .. I just loving the performance...(using in other company not @ my ISP)

ahhh, and about the topic, please no flames besides this is not an option on DC I still prefer FreeBSD, the stability, performance and easy instalation (for plesk and other tools, you can compile, port aplication, and use the ports/packages ).

Now I trying CentOS 4.2 to base for virtuozzo and probably base to vps's.

Tia

 

[roeschu]

i also use ESX server here it's great, but:

GSX is now available for free, ESX Server costs about 3000 -4000 $ , thats just too...much


greets

 

[chickenbak]

I didn't think ESX and GSX were comparable products...I thought they were mutually exclusive for different applications.

Isn't ESX for virtualization across a shared platform...GSX is for virtualization within a single hardware platform...standardized among many...is that correct?

 

[roeschu]

the difference is in the architecture


esx server is based on a linux kernel (redhat) which is the "hardware layer" for all guest systems. Images are running in a special, with vmfs (vmware filesystem) formatted partition within this linux consol. the basic setup of esx server takes about 5 minutes. it's more performant than gsx.

the gsx server software has to be installed on a normal windows or linux server and the images are running from a normal ext3 (or ntfs, if windows) partition...this means more fragementation.

and, as you've written you can use images started from a SAN with ESX Server...which i think it's not possible in a performant way with gsx

greets

 

[chickenbak]

So does the ESX server share processor architecture and thus effectively load balance as well? That was my understanding of what it does. Almost like a virtual cluster.