• download, compile and install ruby
• download and install RubyGems and some gems like rails and mongrel

/scripts/installruby
At this time it will install the latest 1.8 ruby:
ruby -v
ruby 1.8.6 (2007-03-13 patchlevel 0) [i686-linux]
and the following gems (using rubygems-1.1.1):
gem list
actionmailer (2.1.0)
actionpack (2.1.0)
activerecord (2.1.0)
activeresource (2.1.0)
activesupport (2.1.0)
cgi_multipart_eof_fix (2.5.0)
daemons (1.0.10)
fastthread (1.0.1)
gem_plugin (0.2.3)
mongrel (1.1.5)
rails (2.1.0)
rake (0.8.1)
This should be enough for running ruby scripts, but if you want to use Ruby On Rails from within CPanel then you just have to complete this by running /usr/local/cpanel/bin/ror_setup. If you are interested to deploy RoR environments on CPanel you can do this from inside CPanel. For more information check out the CPanel docs.

You just have to run the following command as root on the server:
perl /root/rvadmin/uninstall.pl
if for some reason RVskin was installed in a different location, change the path accordingly.

To complete this, restart cpanel:
/etc/rc.d/init.d/cpanel restart

Login your server via SSH as root, and run the following commands:
rm -rf /var/netenberg/
rm -rf /usr/local/cpanel/whostmgr/docroot/cgi/fantastico/
rm -rf /usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/fantastico*
rm -rf /usr/local/cpanel/base/frontend/*/fantastico
rm -f /usr/local/cpanel/base/frontend/x/cells/fantastico.html
rm -f /usr/local/cpanel/whostmgr/docroot/cgi/addon_fantastico.cgi

Note: if you have installed fantastico in a different location than the default folder: /var/netenberg/, then you should replace the first line accordingly (this might be /opt/netenberg/, or /home/netenberg/, etc.).

/scripts/upcp

- or from inside WHM you run https://Server_IP_or_Hostname:2087/scripts2/upcpform

Have something else ready to do in the meantime as this will take a while depending on your internet connection speed and system resources. Once done you should be notified that the update is completed and see the new CPanel 11 interface.

Note: this will upgrade CPanel itself, and not apache/php or mysql; these updates can be done after that separately as shown in my older posts:

• Upgrading MySQL
• Upgrading Apache
• Upgrading PHP

It is a good idea to prepare your system for the CPanel11 upgrade:

1. Upgrade to Perl 5.8.8

We all know that CPanel depends heavily on perl as most of its internal scripts are written in perl. For this release it is recommended to run perl v5.8.8. CPanel made available an installer that we can use for this upgrade, and we can basically follow up the steps shown in my older post “CPanel Perl upgrade”

To check what is the perl version on your system, run perl -v:

perl -v
This is perl, v5.8.8 built for i686-linux

If you are running v5.8.8 you are all set, but if you have 5.8.7 or an older version proceed with the update:

wget http://layer1.cpanel.net/perl588installer.tar.gz
tar xfvz perl588installer.tar.gz
cd perl588installer
./install

After this is done, ensure that the perl modules are uptodate also:

 /usr/local/cpanel/bin/checkperlmodules

Watch for any potential errors and try to fix them before proceeding futher…

2. Verify perl modules

There are several perl modules that some peoples have seen problems on upgrading. Hopefully this will be solved soon, but just in case ensure that the following are running ok and are updated: YAML::Syck, File::Copy::Recursive, Compress::Raw::Zlib and Scalar::Util. You can update them manually (if for some reason they didn’t get done by the checkperlmodules script) using /scripts/realperlinstaller:

/scripts/realperlinstaller YAML::Syck
/scripts/realperlinstaller File::Copy::Recursive
/scripts/realperlinstaller Compress::Raw::Zlib
/scripts/realperlinstaller Scalar::Util

You need to do this only if you see errors with some modules caused by the perl upgrade.

3. Convert to maildir

In case you have not done it yet…(why not?) you should migrate your cpanel system to maildir/courier.
This can be done by running /scripts/convert2maildir. For more information on this see this post “CPanel MBOX to MAILDIR migration“.

/scripts/convert2maildir

This is highly recommended as v11 is the last CPanel version that will support mbox.

4. Third party modules like Fantastico

If you are using some third party modules like Fantastico, Rvskin, etc. check with their documentation if they are compatible with CPanel 11. If not, either upgrade them to the latest version or disable/uninstall them in order to prevent some possible functions to stop working or even CPanel itself to stop running.

Once you have done these steps you should be ready to proceed to a smooth CPanel upgrade.

Personally I don’t see any reason why to not do this as it will provide by far better performance and reliability on the mailboxes of the users (especially noticeable on big to huge mailboxes). The fact that Neomail will no longer function is not such a big deal since it was IMO the worse webmail they had in CPanel, and you can always use SquirrelMail or Horde.

Enough talk… how can we do this? We just run the convert2maildir script:

/scripts/convert2maildir
Mail Directory (maildir) Conversion System
maildir is not active, this system is using mbox

1) Backup all mail folders on this server
2) Restore a mail backup
3) Start maildir conversion process
4) Request Technical Support
*) Exit
Enter Selection---] 

I would definitely suggest to backup first the mailboxes using option 1. (if you don’t have a backup folder defined in cpanel you will need to do that first – so the script will know where to save the data). Once this is completed you can start the maildir conversion (using option 3). Depending on the size of your mailboxes this can take a long time to complete. You can watch the process by tailing the logfile that will be written by the script.

Once this is finshed you should be all set and CPanel script has converted all the existing mbox files to maildir format, installed a compatible exim maildir version, and also installed and started courier-pop/imap. All done .

Note: mail will not be delivered during the conversion, it will be instead queued until the conversion is complete and then delivered.

• Enhanced Security
  • cPHulk Brute Force Detection
  • Public Key Authentication
  • Host Access Control
  • Enhanced XSS Protection
• New Features
  • Getting Started Wizard
  • Integrated Help
  • Web Disk Access
  • Email User Filters
  • Exim Spam filtering as an ACL at SMTP level
• Improved Design
  • Faster Loading cPanel interface
  • Faster, Easier Account Theme Switching
  • 10 Included Interface Styles
• Improved Branding
  • Increased Language and Character Set Support
  • Enhanced Branding for Resellers
• cPanel Plugins
  • Ruby on Rails Support
  • PHP Configuration Editor
  • Perl, PHP, and Ruby Module Installer
  • Better OS Integration
• EasyApache
  • New and improved Easyapache* installer
  • Apache 2.X.X and PHP 5 support.
    *Available in Stage 2 of cPanel 11 release

Full release notes can be found here.

In my opinion the most important addition is the inclusion of Apache2 (finally!). Some peoples might also like the Ruby on Rails support and easy installation of new ruby gems as it was before with php and perl modules.

Is it worth it to upgrade? I would say yes, but we need to prepare for the upgrade first… and this is the reason of this series of articles to help you upgrade smoothly to CPanel v11:
- Preparing for cPanel 11
- Upgrading to cPanel 11

1. Check if auditd is indeed running.

If auditd has not been explicitly stopped on a rhel3 system you will have it running. You can check it out by running:

service audit status

and if you get something like:

auditd (pid xxx) is running...

then you have it running.

Also you can see in the list of running processes if auditd appears:

ps -ef | grep auditd

2. Stop the auditd service

You can stop the auditd daemon by running:

chkconfig audit off
service audit stop

The first command should prevent the service from starting again on system reboot and the last one stops the active service.

3. Removing the audit module

You would think that this was it… and what was the reason for this post? to show how you can stop a service? Nope… there is more. Actually you might see problems on systems even with the auditd daemon not running but with the kernel module still loaded. In this case where we are now, we still have the audit kernel module running and doing ‘its work’ . You can check this with:

lsmod | grep audit

trying to remove the kernel module:

rmmod audit

will give a busy error (as the module is still in use)… Who is using still using it? Well on default rhel3 systems cron and atd are still using it. So in order to remove it we need first to stop those services:

service crond stop
service atd stop
rmmod audit

Now the module should no longer be loaded and you can check that out with:

lsmod | grep audit

4. Prevent the audit module from loading again

If we don’t do this step when we start back the cron service we will load back the audit kernel module.

echo "alias char-major-10-224 off" >> /etc/modules.conf

This will prevent the module to load again. And now we can restore the services that were running back:

service crond start
service atd start

(start only the ones you had running – most certainly cron, but atd might not be needed on all systems).

5. Remove existing audit.d logs

You might want to remove the audit logs as this can be a huge amount of useless information:

rm -Rfv /var/log/audit.d/
rm -fv /var/log/audit 

List of commands used:

service audit status
chkconfig audit off
service audit stop

service crond stop
service atd stop
rmmod audit
lsmod | grep audit

echo "alias char-major-10-224 off" >> /etc/modules.conf
service crond start
service atd start

rm -Rfv /var/log/audit.d/
rm -fv /var/log/audit

Now the reason for this post is not to bring attention to the new look of CPanel site, but to announce the changes that we will soon see on the CPanel/WHM interface on our servers. They are working on a new theme called Evolution that you can already see it in action on CPanel demo site:
http://demo.cpanel.net
There are rumors that this will replace the old cpanel theme X, and many peoples will not be very happy if X will no longer be available in the next versions of CPanel. We can expect to see Evolution soon take over our CPanel in the next release.

The exim configuration for this:

/etc/exim.conf:
hostlist relay_hosts = lsearch;/etc/relayhosts :
localhost

What is antirelayd? antirelayd is a daemon that checks /var/log/maillog for pop3/imap logins and keeps track of valid ones for use with smtp relaying. It manages the /etc/relayhosts file automatically so if you are trying to add a static IP in that file it will be cleaned up by antirelayd.
So how can we whitelist some IP and add it permanently to the allowed hosts to relay mail using the server? Well this is very simple but not documented properly (you can easily see this if you are looking into the file /usr/sbin/antirelayd that is just a perl script). So all you have to do is create a file (if no such file exists) called alwaysrelay in /etc and add the IPs you always want to be allowed to relay outgoing mails on the server. Normally /etc/alwaysrelay will not exist, but if it does just edit the file and append the needed IPs.

/etc/alwaysrelay
192.168.0.100
192.168.0.101

and add each IP on a separate line. After this either restart antirelayd or wait for a little while and it will automatically include these IPs in /etc/relayhosts and they will not be cleaned any more (permanent relay).

The same result can be achieved by creating a different file (for ex. /etc/staticrelay) and including it in the exim configuration (in the relay_hosts config similar to /etc/relayhosts). This file will be manually maintained and not cleaned up by antirelayd so the result is the same. Choose the method that you prefer (either antirelayd or exim.conf)…