Again, but with a twist: control panel

Frederik Denkens · External Since: Jun 26, 2006 Posts: 3

Hi colleagues,

We've successfully been doing Unix/Linux based hosting for many years
now in a rather 'manual' environment whereby a bunch of custom made
scripts/interfaces are used to manage all provisioning etc. Our growth
however makes it difficult to keep on using this way of working. In the
mean time our customers are becoming more and more demanding on having a
'control panel' so they can self-manage things like DNS and Email. So we
are looking for kind of 'control-panel'.

Ideally, the solution should be quite 'lightweight' and doesn't try to
do too much (like Plesk and things), but is even rather limited. Also it
would be multi-server capable.

I didn't find anything yet on the Debian control panel list and neither
on the web. The only solution up to know is in my opinion a custom solution.

We are also seeking a similar solution for Windows based hosting.

Thanks for your input!

Frederik.

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Steve Kemp · External Since: Nov 25, 2004 Posts: 380

On Thu Jul 05, 2007 at 17:10:28 +0100, Gavin Westwood wrote:

> If you do find something, I would appreciate if you point me in that
> direction. If you would be interested in working with me find others and
> to develop this (maybe as a Sourceforge project), I would also be
> interested in hearing from you.

Everybody who starts down this path soon realizes that it is an insane
amount of work. Especially if you don't have good abstraction in
place.

For the moment I've worked on some simple automation scripts which
are console-based:

http://vh.cvsrepository.org/

(Exim4 + Apache2 + Webalizer + MySQL.)

Something like that, but more flexible, would be a good starting
point. Once the core functionality was implemented in shellscripts/
applications then the GUI wrapper could be added reasonably easily.

Failing that you could do worse than look at this wiki page:

http://wiki.debian.org/HostingControlPanels

Steve
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Debian GNU/Linux System Administration
http://www.debian-administration.org/

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Thomas Goirand · External Since: Apr 09, 2005 Posts: 161

Steve Kemp wrote:
> On Thu Jul 05, 2007 at 17:10:28 +0100, Gavin Westwood wrote:
>
>> If you do find something, I would appreciate if you point me in that
>> direction. If you would be interested in working with me find others and
>> to develop this (maybe as a Sourceforge project), I would also be
>> interested in hearing from you.
>
> Everybody who starts down this path soon realizes that it is an insane
> amount of work. Especially if you don't have good abstraction in
> place.

Watching our 60 000 lines of code, and knowing that we are about to
rewrite all from scratch (well, not exactly from scratch as we can still
read our current code), because it's becoming a messy code after 5
years, I couldn't agree more.

Also, I found it VERY silly to try to start from scratch a new project
alone, on your side, when there are lot's of projects out there were you
could contribute.

Thomas

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Turbo Fredriksson · External Since: Apr 16, 2004 Posts: 142

I haven't followed the thread, but self-manage DNS and Email gaught
my eye...

Have a look at http://phpqladmin.com (if you haven't already).

>>>>> "Frederik" == Frederik Denkens <fdenkens RemoveThis @ilibris.be> writes:

Frederik> Thanks for all responses. It is clear that what I'm
Frederik> looking for doesn't exist, but we are now considering
Frederik> moving to a custom developed solution. Probably
Frederik> externally developed as we have a budget for it.

Frederik> Regards,

Frederik> Frederik.

Frederik> Gavin Westwood wrote:

Frederik Denkens wrote:

<snip>In the mean time our customers are becoming more and more
Frederik> demanding on having a 'control panel' so they can
Frederik> self-manage things like DNS and Email. So we are looking
Frederik> for kind of 'control-panel'.

Frederik> Ideally, the solution should be quite 'lightweight' and
Frederik> doesn't try to do too much (like Plesk and things), but
Frederik> is even rather limited. Also it would be multi-server
Frederik> capable. <snip>

Frederik> Hi Frederik.

Frederik> I've been looking for something very similar and not
Frederik> been able to find a solution, so I've come to the
Frederik> conclusion that I need to find others who have this
Frederik> problem and work together to create a package or
Frederik> packages to fit the needs of small ISPs running Debian.

Frederik> My thought was to create control panels that are
Frederik> abstracted from the servers themselves (e.g. for mail
Frederik> the server could be Exim or Postfix or Qmail, etc) to
Frederik> allow a consistent method of managing the servers. This
Frederik> would require some duplication of effort to make the
Frederik> available options be able to be set for all the
Frederik> different common implementations of servers on Debian,
Frederik> but would probably make the front end easier to
Frederik> develop...

Frederik> If you do find something, I would appreciate if you
Frederik> point me in that direction. If you would be interested
Frederik> in working with me find others and to develop this
Frederik> (maybe as a Sourceforge project), I would also be
Frederik> interested in hearing from you.

Frederik> Thanks

Frederik> Gavin

Frederik> --

Frederik> Gavin Westwood Solutium

Frederik> http://hosting.solutium.co.uk - quality, affordable
Frederik> web hosting.

Frederik> http://www.solutium.co.uk - IT Services and Support.

Frederik> --

Frederik> Frederik Denkens Zaakvoerder / Commercial Manager
Frederik> iLibris bvba

Frederik> fdenkens RemoveThis @ilibris.be http://www.ilibris.be

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