1. create a full backup of your vps (databases, websites, accounts, emails, …). I have used “tar” command for that.
2. in plesk 8.1 control panel, do a complete backup (you need plesk backup module to be installed), or if you prefer the command line you can use the following command:

1

# /usr/local/psa/bin/pleskbackup all <backup-file>

Since version 9.x, the structure of Parallels Plesk Panel backup has been changed. Plesk backup created with Plesk Backup Manager is not just one file but a number of files and directories under backups directory /var/lib/psa/dumps. So, you will need to convert your backup file created in plesk 8.1 to be compatible with plesk 9.x. It’s a very simple process, see step 3.

3. convert the created backup file to be compatible with plesk 9.x

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# /usr/local/psa/bin/pre9-backup-convert -v convert -d /var/lib/psa/dumps/ <backup-file>

where /var/lib/psa/dumps/ is backups directory on the server with Parallels Plesk Panel 9

4. restore the backup files to use them with plesk 9.x. It can be done using the web interface, Home -> Backup Manager -> Server Repository, click the backup name to enter the backup details page and select the required restoration options and click Restore to start the restoration process.

If you would like to use command line to restore your domains, clients, server configuration, … then you can use the following command:

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# /usr/local/psa/bin/pleskrestore --restore /var/lib/psa/dumps/<your backup xml file> -level server -verbose -debug

You can restore only clients or domains, for more options see:

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# /usr/local/psa/bin/pleskrestore --help

Note: I had a small problem and I found that it is not possible to have a client with the same name as your name in Plesk Admin Profile. Maybe it is stupid, but I had some errors and only after I changed the name in Admin Profile (in Plesk control panel) to be different, I could restore without any problem everything.

I think that’s all what I did, from what I remember. If something is missing I am sure you can find a lot of useful stuff using our friend google.

Other useful stuff:

1. Plesk 9.x support as well postfix, so if you want to change from qmail to postfix, try that:

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# /usr/local/psa/bin/autoinstaller --select-release-current --install-component postfix

if you are not happy, you can switch back to qmail:

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# /usr/local/psa/bin/autoinstaller --select-release-current --install-component qmail.

If you are not sure if you are using qmail or postfix there are many ways to find that, one is to look in Plesk Control Panel on the Services management page {Home -> Services Management} if you have SMTP Server (Postfix) or SMTP Server (QMail)

If you decide you want to switch back, simply, do it, the emails are not lost, don’t worry.

2. Replace Horde webmail with AtMail

One of the many new features of Plesk 9, is the option to choose a different webmail client. The default webmail client Horde can be replaced if you are looking for something a bit lighter, AtMail. You need to install from Plesk Control Panel, both webmail clients, and to switch between them:

• Log into Plesk.
• Chose the domain which you want to use another webmail, enter on “Mail Accounts” page
• Click the “Mail Settings” icon
• Switch the “WebMail” to “AtMail (default is Horde)
• Click “OK”

If you decide you want to switch back, simply reverse the procedure, the emails are not lost, don’t worry.

That’s all.

References:

http://kb.parallels.com/en/5819
http://kb.parallels.com/en/5801
http://kb.parallels.com/en/952
http://kb.parallels.com/en/5969
http://kb.parallels.com/en/5864

To activate it you have to add fast_cgi support for your site. This option is in the same place like the others options (perl/php/python/cgi support).

To check that RoR is installed and it is working:

1. go into the document root folder for that domain.com:

# cd /srv/www/vhosts/domain.com/httpdocs/

2. create a simple RoR application:

# rails myapp

3. go into application directory:

# cd myapp

4. start WEBrick server on 9999 port:

# ruby script/server -p 9999

If you don’t specify a port, default is 3000 but in my case this port was already used.

For more options use the –help option:

[root@bijoux]# ruby script/server --help
=> Booting WEBrick...
Usage: ruby server [options]

    -p, --port=port                  Runs Rails on the specified port.
                                     Default: 3000
    -b, --binding=ip                 Binds Rails to the specified ip.
                                     Default: 0.0.0.0
    -e, --environment=name           Specifies the environment to run this server under (test/development/production).
                                     Default: development
    -m, --mime-types=filename        Specifies an Apache style mime.types configuration file to be used for mime types
                                     Default: none
    -d, --daemon                     Make Rails run as a Daemon (only works if fork is available -- meaning on *nix).
    -c, --charset=charset            Set default charset for output.
                                     Default: UTF-8

    -h, --help                       Show this help message.

5. check your application in browser:

http://www.domain.com:9999

Now, you can see: Welcome aboard so, it is working.

That’s all, bye!

First step is to download subversion package, now the latest version is 1.4.4. It is very nice that they offer also a package with dependencies. So, we download:

subversion-1.4.4.tar.gz

subversion-deps-1.4.4.tar.gz

Unpack them:

# tar -zxvf subversion-1.4.4.tar.gz
# tar -zxvf subversion-deps-1.4.4.tar.gz

The second command will include the dependencies in the same directory with main subversion package.

We compile and install the subversion package and dependencies:

# cd subversion-1.4.4
# ./autogen.sh
# ./configure
# make
# cp /etc/apache2/sysconfig.d/loadmodule.conf /etc/apache2/httpd2-prefork.conf
# make install
# cp /etc/apache2/httpd2-prefork.conf /etc/apache2/sysconfig.d/loadmodule.conf

Now, checking the differences between these two files we have:

# diff /etc/apache2/sysconfig.d/loadmodule.conf /etc/apache2/httpd2-prefork.conf
30a31,32

> LoadModule dav_svn_module /usr/lib/apache2/mod_dav_svn.so
> LoadModule authz_svn_module   /usr/lib/apache2/mod_authz_svn.so

so, we can see that already the modules are in the right place.

Edit /etc/ld.so.conf to include /usr/lib and /usr/lib/apache2 and then run:

# /sbin/ldconfig

IMPORTANT: in /etc/apache2/sysconfig.d/loadmodule.conf we need also:

LoadModule dav_module   /usr/lib/apache2-prefork/mod_dav.so

before the previous two lines. dav_module has to appear before dav_svn_module in file. If you don’t have this line before, you will see next message when you try to restart apache server:

Cannot load /usr/lib/apache2/mod_dav_svn.so into server: /usr/lib/apache2/mod_dav_svn.so: undefined symbol: dav_xml_get_cdata

so, my file looks like this (only last three important lines):

[...]
LoadModule dav_module   /usr/lib/apache2-prefork/mod_dav.so
LoadModule dav_svn_module     /usr/lib/apache2/mod_dav_svn.so
LoadModule authz_svn_module   /usr/lib/apache2/mod_authz_svn.so

Edit /etc/sysconfig/apache2 and add: “dav mod_dav_svn mod_authz_svn” to APACHE_MODULES section. My specific section is like this:

APACHE_MODULES="mod_perl access actions alias auth auth_dbm autoindex cgi dir env expires include log_config mime negotiation setenvif ssl   userdir php4 php5 /usr/lib/apache2-prefork/mod_frontpage.so python   suexec rewrite dav mod_dav_svn mod_authz_svn"

Now is time to create our repository and set the correct owner and group for it:

# svnadmin create /home/svn
# chown -R apacheuser:apachegroup /home/svn

If you edit /srv/www/vhosts/domain.com/conf/httpd.include and add at the end something, Plesk will remove your changes.

So, we need to create a new file vhost.conf and to use this file. I will create /srv/www/vhosts/domain.com/conf/vhost.conf and I will put inside:

<Location /svn>
DAV svn
SVNPath /home/svn
</Location>

for a subdomain the file has to be in /srv/www/vhosts/domain.com/subdomains/NAME/conf

Now, you need to tell Plesk to update it’s information. You have to run:

# /usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/websrvmng -u --vhost-name=domain.com

this will configure plesk only for one single domain, in this case domain.com

If you want to configure it for all sites run:

# /usr/local/psa/admin/bin/websrvmng -a

Restart apache web server:

# /usr/sbin/apache2ctl stop
# /usr/sbin/apache2ctl start

Check the repository:

http://domain.com/svn

So, it seems that it is working, we can see:

Revision 0: /
Powered by Subversion version 1.4.4 (r25188).

I hope that also for you. )

Next step is to restrict the access to our repository to give access only for some users:

DAV svn
SVNPath /home/svn/
AuthType Basic
AuthName “Private Repository”
AuthUserFile /etc/svn_auth_file
Require valid-user

We can add first user which is able to access our repository (use htpasswd2 if you have apache2):

# htpasswd -cm /etc/svn_auth_file firstuser

-m means that we want to use MD5 encryption for passwords

To add the second user (don’t use -c option, it is used only the first time to create svn_auth_file):

# htpasswd -m /etc/svn_auth_file seconduser

Bye!

You can now put in any Apache configuration options like you would into httpd.include. In my case I wanted to do only one thing, to have subversion repository accesible over web, without any kind of access restriction.
Here is my vhost.conf file:

DAV svn
SVNPath /home/svn

Now, you need to tell Plesk to update it’s information.
You have to run:

# /usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/websrvmng -u --vhost-name=domain.com

this will configure plesk only for one single domain, in this case domain.com
If you want to configure it for all sites run:

# /usr/local/psa/admin/bin/websrvmng -a

After this command if you look to httpd.include file, will see that your httpd.include will have an include line for your vhost.conf, something like this:

Include /srv/www/vhosts/domain.com/conf/vhost.conf

There is also a vhost.conf file for subdomain in their DocumentRoot directory, if you want to do some specific things for subdomain.

That’s all, bye!

With this new dedicated server, I chose Plesk as a control panel solely because I hated it less than Ensim or cPanel. Normally I’d do all the installation, configuration, and tweaking of a server myself, but I just don’t have time for that anymore. The biggest problem I have with control panels is that they make it very hard to do manual configs the normal Linux way: changes either get overwritten or ignored. Plesk is a little easier to live with in this regard; what follows are my last mile tweaks.

While Plesk allows you to create a chrooted FTP user for a domain, it doesn’t have a front end for adding another, much less one constrained a particular subdirectory of that domain. Plesk’s configuration of ProFTPD chroots any user with a group of psacln. Via the shell, just useradd a new user with the desired home directory, use /bin/false for the shell so they can’t SSH in, and add them to group psacln. You’ll also need to make sure that the httpdocs directory is 751, not the default 750.

Plesk charges $49.00 to provide a GUI for SpamAssassin configuration. While I didn’t save any money doing this myself, maybe you will: here’s how to get SpamAssassin going with Plesk’s qmail implementation. If you have the Plesk SpamAssassin RPM installed (usually available in /root/swsoft), it provides a spammng command line utility for tweaking the SpamAssassin configuration. This utility appears to work without checking your license information: you can run /etc/init.d/spamassassin stop than spammng -c -C start. This restarts the spamd daemon with the proper command line flags for Plesk’s qmail install.

Going a bit further, try spammng -c -C -e –mailname “user@domain.com” start: this will enable SpamAssassin for the specified mailbox by editing the .qmail file in the relevant directory. For my install, this was /var/qmail/mailnames/domain.com/user. With these two bits of information, we can combine Plesk’s qmail with the default SpamAssassin installation without spending any cash. I have not yet figured out how to do this server wide (every incoming piece of mail is processed) or domain wide (every mail for a specific domain is processed). You?

In the .qmail file, Plesk writes the following:

| /usr/local/psa/bin/psa-spamc accept
| true
./Maildir/

psa-spamc is a shell wrapper around the SpamAssassin spamc utility and allows one argument: whether to “accept”/deliver mail that is flagged as spam based on the /etc/mail/spamassassin/ configuration, or whether to “reject” it. It’d be nice to have some granularity to say “reject everything over score 10”, but eh, not a biggie.

The last thing is to reteach the /etc/init.d/spamassassin startup script. Since we haven’t paid Plesk to fiddle with SpamAssassin, we have to teach our default install how to interact with Plesk’s qmail without their help. If you’ve started the spamd daemon from Plesk’s spammng, run the following to capture the startup configuration: ps auwx | grep spamd. You’ll get something along the lines of:

/usr/bin/spamd --username=popuser --daemonize --nouser-config --helper-home-dir=/var/qmail --max-children 5 --create-prefs --virtual-config-dir=/var/qmail/mailnames/%d/%l/.spamassassin --pidfile=/var/run/spamd/spamd_full.pid --socketpath=/tmp/spamd_full.sock

Open up /etc/sysconfig/spamassassin and make it look like:

SPAMDOPTIONS="-d -c -m5 -H /var/qmail --username=popuser --nouser-config
--virtual-config-dir=/var/qmail/mailnames/%d/%l/.spamassassin --socketpath=/tmp/spamd_full.sock"
SPAMD_PID=/var/run/spamd/spamd_full.pid

SPAMDOPTIONS is one line. Restart spamd with /etc/init.d/spamassassin restart and check Plesk’s qmail log at /usr/local/psa/var/log/maillog. If everything goes right, you should be able to send yourself a piece of mail and notice two things: spamd will process each incoming message and report the results and a .spamassassin directory will show up in the right domain and user directory under /var/qmail/mailnames/. Done.

Plesk’s licensing is annoying in other ways: I can only use 30 domains within my current install. Thankfully, domain aliases don’t count against this limitation and, with Drupal’s multisite capabilities, I can run any amount of domains on one code base with multiple databases. Unfortunately, this is a problem when it comes to logfiles and analysis: I’m not entirely sure if Apache’s ServerAlias is considered %v for split-logfile. Needs more testing before I can fully implement domain aliases.

====

• in order to process spammassassin the email we need a .qmail file like this:

bijoux# cat /var/qmail/mailnames/domain.com/user/.qmail
| /usr/local/psa/bin/psa-spamc accept
| true
./Maildir/

for every user.

to obtain this you can edit the file or you can try next command, to update .qmail file for specific user.

bijoux# /usr/local/psa/admin/bin/spammng -c -C -e --mailname user@domain.com start

• if you want to start SpamAssassin correctly at boot, put next lines in /etc/init.d/rc_local:

/etc/init.d/psa-spamassassin stop
/etc/init.d/spamd stop
/usr/local/psa/admin/bin/spammng -c -C start