This short post is a response to the question I received from one reader that wanted to know how to remove completely from his Cpanel server Fantastico.
Why would you want to do that? (assuming you have it already installed, it means you have a license also). Well, maybe the datacenter installed it by default and you don’t need Fantastico on your server; or maybe you just have a broken install and want to start fresh and remove it first. Regardless why you would want to do this, here are the steps you need to follow to completely remove Fantastico:

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.).

Lately I have seen that on all new server deployed by some major datacenters they fail to install Fantastico even if they state that the license for Fantastico is included with their CPanel package (seen on ThePlanet last week on a new server for example). Why would they do that? I assume that their automated installation scripts are not updated after Fantastico installation method has changed (but this was several months ago). Anyway this is not at all a big issue and as long as they have licensed the server IP (as they have in all the situations I have seen), the installation is very simple.

Here is a what needs to be done… SSH to your server and enter following commands:

cd /usr/local/cpanel/whostmgr/docroot/cgi
wget http://www.netenberg.com/files/free/fantastico_whm_admin.tgz
tar -xzpf fantastico_whm_admin.tgz
rm -rf fantastico_whm_admin.tgz

Now go to WHM, login as root and follow the link WHM -> Add-Ons -> Fantastico De Luxe WHM Admin (one of the lasts entries depending on your setup). There you complete the installation by following the online screens. If you will receive a license error and you are sure that your package includes Fantastico, then contact your datacenter technical support and have them license the server IP.

This of course if you want to allow your users to use Fantastico. If you don’t need Fantastico, then better don’t install it, even if you have it included in your CPanel package. Try to install on any server only the things that you need and use, and leave the others disabled or even better not installed.