Lxadmin Basics

Nhan Hoa Software Company

1 www.nhanhoa.com

THE BASICS

Accessing the Control Panel

There are several ways to access LXadmin:

http://yourdomain:7778 - You can access the control panel through any hosted

domain by putting :7778 at the end of the domain.

https://yourdomain:7777 - You can access the control panel securly using SSL

through any hosted domain by putting :7777 at the end of the domain.

http://192.168.0.1:7777 or https://192.168.0.1:7778 - You can access the

control panel through any IP address allocated to the server. This is useful when your

domain transfer has not yet propagated.

A window will appear. Enter your username and password and you should have successfully

logged in.

Default Login Information

If you have just installed the VPSLink CentOS 5 HostinABox/LXAdmin template, your

LXAdmin login information will default to the following:

Username: admin

Password: admin

You will be prompted to set a new administrator password for LXAdmin after you have

successfully logged in.

No changes will be made to the root password for your VPS - this information will only be

used to log in to LXAdmin.

Changing Your Password

Nhan Hoa Software Company

2 www.nhanhoa.com

To change your password, click client home and then on the top right corner, you will

see the password tab. Click on it and fill in your existing password and the new

password twice and click Update.

Add a DNS Template

You have to add a DNS template initially. DNS template is the DNS configuration which will

be copied to your domain's DNS when a new domain is created. For adding a DNS template,

you have to basically specify the primary and secondary nameservers for the domains you are

planning to create on this server. For instance: ns1.lxlabs.com and ns2.lxlabs.com . The name

is simply an identifier which will be used later when creating the domain.

For creating a new DNS template,

go to "Client Home"' page and under "Domains", click the "DNS Templates"'

icon

In the DNS Templates page, you can see the list of existing DNS templates. If you do not

have any existing DNS template, create a new DNS template by clicking the "Add DNS

Template"' tab on the top.

In the next page, enter the DNS information for the template:

Nhan Hoa Software Company

3 www.nhanhoa.com

Click the "Add" button and the new DNS template is created. You can see the new

DNS template in the list of DNS Templates

Click on the new DNS Template name to edit DNS records like NS, A, CNAME,

MX and TXT

Nhan Hoa Software Company

4 www.nhanhoa.com

Add a Reseller

Before you proceed to add a new Reseller, you have to add a new plan for the new

client/reseller

To add a new plan, click "Client Plans" icon

In the next page, click the "Add Client Plan" tab.

Here you can enter the plan details like:

Client Plan name)

Description of the plan

Number Of Clients allowed

Number Of Domains allowed

Disk Usage (in MB)

Number Of Subdomains allowed

Mail Disk Usage (in MB) limit

Nhan Hoa Software Company

5 www.nhanhoa.com

Number Of Autoresponders allowed

Number of Mail Accounts allowed

Number Of Mailing Lists allowed

Traffic (in MB per Month) limit

Maximum number of MySQL Databases

Maximum Number Of Domain Users

Ability to add more domains

Ability to set Disabled URL

Ability to Enable Ssl

Ability to Enable Statistics

Ability to Enable Cgi

Ability to Enable Php

Ability to Enable Asp.net (ignored On Linux)

Allow Scheduler Management or not

Allow Backup Scheduling or not

Allow Backing Up or not

Can Manage DNS or not

Once you have created the plan, go back to the "Client Home" page and click the

"Clients" button link

This page will list your existing customers and resellers. If you do not have any, click on

either the "Add Reseller" tab that you see on the top.

In the "Add Reseller" page, enter a name for your Reseller, password and email

address.

If you enable the "Send Welcome Message" check box, an email with the account

details will be sent automatically to the Reseller's email address.

Select the plan you have created earlier and click "Add" button.

Now in the "Clients" page, you should be able to see the new Reseller that you have

created:

Nhan Hoa Software Company

6 www.nhanhoa.com

MISCELLANEOUS

Select Your Preferred Site Statistics and Log Analysis Tool

There are 2 third party Log Analyzer tools available for LxAdmin - Webalizer and AWStats

You can choose either one of them for your customers to use from the LxAdmin Client

Management Control Panel

To select your preferred Log Analyzer tool, open the "Advanced" page from

Admin's Client Home page

Now click on the "General Settings" icon

Under the "Web Statistics Program" you will notice the drop down menu for

choosing Webalizer or AWStats

Nhan Hoa Software Company

7 www.nhanhoa.com

Choose either one of them and it will be enabled for all your clients.

c. Creating a domain account

Before adding a new Domain account, you have to create a Plan for the Domain account.

Step 1. Add a Domain Plan

Go to the "Client Home" page Click on "Domain Plans" icon.

In the next page, click the "Add Domain Plan" tab.

In the next page, enter the Plan requirements:

Enter a Plan name Enter a Description for the Plan Select an IP Address from the IP Pool Select a DNS Template from the list of DNS Templates

The Maximum Value on the right shows your current quota limit set by your

Administrator

Enter a Disk Space Usage Limit in MB Enter the maximum number of Subdomains allowed Enter the maximum Disk Space allocated for Mail usage Enter the maximum number of Auto Responders allowed Enter the maximum number of Mail Accounts allowed Enter the maximum number of Mailing Lists allowed

Nhan Hoa Software Company

8 www.nhanhoa.com

Enter the Traffic Usage Limit per month in MB Enter the maximum number of mySQL databases allowed Enter the maximum number of Domain users allowed Enter the maximum number of Addon Domains allowed Allow changing the logo or not Allow enabling SSL or not Allow enabling Statistics or not Allow enabling CGI or not Allow enabling PHP or not Allow enabling ASP.NET (will be ignored on a Linux server) or not Allow Scheduler Management or not Allow Back Up or not Allow DNS Management or not Enable Catchall - selecting "bounce" will bounce all emails sent to a non-existing

email address, which "postmaster" will forward emails that are sent to a non-

existant email address to the default postmaster email address

Now Click the "Add" button to create the new Domain plan. You can always edit the

Plan details from the Domain Plans page

You have now created a Domain plan, now lets proceed to create a Domain account

Step 2. Add a domain account

Go back to the "Client Home" page and click the "Domains" button

You will now be presented with the list of existing domain accounts. To create a new domain

account, click on the "Add Domain" tab on the top

Now enter the following information in the next page to create a domain account:

Domain name Password (twice for confirmation) Contact email address If you want to

send a Welcome email automatically to the user, enable the "Send Welcome Message"

check box. Select the Plan which you created earlier from the drop down list Now click the

"Add" button.

Note: While adding a domain, Lxadmin will automatically create a primary FTP user which

would be of the form domaincom .

Note for Windows servers: If your domain name starts with a digit, then an 'a' will be added

to the beginning, since windows won't allow creation of pure digit usernames. So if you add a

domain '888.com', the primary FTP user would 'a888com'. You can find your Primary FTP

user in the 'domain home' page itself, on the header for the second line of icons (the list of

Nhan Hoa Software Company

9 www.nhanhoa.com

icons for site ). Or you can find it in the 'information' tab on the right. You will be able to

login to this user using ftp, and password would be the CP password. The primary ftp user

password is always synced with the CP password, and if you change your CP password,

automatically the primary FTP user password is also changed.

The domain's document root would be /home/httpd/domain.com/httpdocs/www

You will now be able to view the newly added domain in the list of domains under the

"Domains" page.

d. Signing out

To sign out, click on the Logout button

3. UPLOADING A WEBSITE

a. Directory Structure

Lxadmin has the following Directory structure for a Domain account:

By default, there are 4 directories in each domain account's root directory. These are:

__backup __dirprotect cgi-bin

www

__backup contains backup related data __dirprotect contains protected data like Statistics cgi-bin contains .cgi files www All files including your index file which you wish to access via your website

must be placed in this directory.

b. Upload via FTP

To upload files to your domain, you can use an FTP client like FileZilla, CuteFTP, WS_FTP,

FlashFXP, etc.

The following will be the general format used by most FTP clients, though the interface could

be different among various FTP clients.

Domain/Host Name or IP Address: example.com or 192.168.0.2 Username: examplecom Password: password Port: 21

Remote Path: /www/

Nhan Hoa Software Company

10 www.nhanhoa.com

c. Upload using File Manager

To upload files to your domain using the inbuilt File Manager of LxAdmin, click the domain

name from the "Domains" page (in the "Clients Home" page).

In the next page, click on the "File Manager" icon.

This is the File Manager for your domain account, using which you can create new

files/directories, edit existing files, rename files/directories, change permissions of

files/directories, upload files from external servers via HTTP and FTP, Zip a directory, etc.

Nhan Hoa Software Company

11 www.nhanhoa.com

4. E-Mail

a. Creating email addresses

To create a new email address for your domain account, click the domain name from the

"Domains" page (in the "Clients Home" page).

In the next page, under "Mail", click the "Add Mail Account" button

In the next page, enter: the username for your new email address password Disk Space

limit, Maximum number of Autoresponders, whether to allow logo change or not

Click the "Add" button to create the new email address.

Nhan Hoa Software Company

12 www.nhanhoa.com

You can now view the list of email addresses created in the "Manage Mail" page under your

domain.

b. Setting a catch-all address

A catch-all email address is used to receive emails that are sent to a non-existant email

address. You can either bounce back emails sent to non-existent email addresses or you can

"catch" the emails to a default [email protected] email address

To configure Catchall for a domain account, click the domain name from the "Domains"

page (in the "Clients Home" page). Then click the "Configure Catchall" icon

You can select between "Bounce" or "postmaster" to either bounce all emails or to catch

them to default postmaster email address.

c. Setting up a forwarder

To setup a forwarder email address which lets you forward incoming emails to another email

address, click the "Mail Forwards" icon

In the next page, click the "Add Mail forward" tab on the top

Nhan Hoa Software Company

13 www.nhanhoa.com

Enter the email address (under your domain) that you wish to forward and then the email

address to which you want the emails to be forwarded. Click the "Add" button to create the

mail forwarder address.

Note: Mail forwards are virtual email addresses, where mail coming to the address is directly

forwarded to the address/script specified here. Please note that a mail account is not created at

all, and thus no mail gets stored on the server. If you want to store mails too, you have to

create a proper mailaccount and then add forwards from inside it. The Forward To can be a

mail address, which would mean that mails coming to the address is transparently sent to it.

d. Setting up an auto-responder

To setup an auto-responder which lets you automatically send a pre-defined email message to

the sender as a reply to their email,

click the "Manage Mail" tab under your domain name page (from "Client Home" > "Domains")

You should be able to see your list of email addresses here.

Click on the email address for which you wish to setup the auto-responder.

Now click "Autoresponders" button under "Mail Functions"

Now click "Add Autoresponder" tab on the top

Nhan Hoa Software Company

14 www.nhanhoa.com

In this page, enter a name for the Autoresponder, a subject and the pre-defined message.

Click the "Add" button to create the new responder

Now go back to the "Mail Account Home" of the above email account.

Select the "Autoresponder name" from the drop down list. Click the "Update"

button

Now go back to the "Mail Account Home" and click the "Enable Autoresponder" button

to enable the new autoresponder

e. Setting up MX records

To setup MX Records for your email accounts incase you have a different mail server,

go to the "Domains" page under "Client Home" and click your domain name.

Now click the "Manage DNS" icon

Nhan Hoa Software Company

15 www.nhanhoa.com

In the next page, "Delete" the existing MX record entry from the list of DNS records,

if you need to add a new MX record.

Now click the "Add MX" tab on the top to continue

In the next page, select a "Priority" for the mail server and enter the hostname of

the mail server. Click "Add" to create the new MX record. You can now see the new MX record in

the main DNS records list

f. Accessing Webmail

To access Webmail, login to the Webmail installation in the following format:

http://webmail.yourdomain.com

You will be asked to login before you can access your Webmail account

5. MySQL databases

a. Creating/Removing databases

To create a new database,

Nhan Hoa Software Company

16 www.nhanhoa.com

go to the "Domains" page under "Client Home" and click your domain name.

Now click the "MySQL Databases" icon

In the next page, click on the "Add MySQL Database" tab on the top

In the next page, enter the database name and password (twice for confirmation). Click "Add" to create the new database.

Note: Please note that the user for the a mysql database is the same as the mysql db, and also

that the domains name is always prefixed at the beginning. So if you add a 'string' mydb, to a

domain 'domain.com', the actual database would be domainco__mydb, and user also would

be domainco__mydb

So to access the database domainco__mydb, you have to use the same user

domainco__mydb, and the password you have supplied.

b. Adding users to a database

Please note that the user for the mySQL database is the same as the mySQL database name

So if your database is called: domainco__mydb, then the user also would be

domainco__mydb.

c. Changing database passwords

To change the password of a database,

go to the "Domains" page under "Client Home" and click your domain name Now click the "MySQL Databases" icon

You will see the list of databases under your domain here. Click on the database

name to continue.

Nhan Hoa Software Company

17 www.nhanhoa.com

In the next page, enter the new password (twice) and click "Update" button to

change the password

d. Accessing PHPmyadmin

To access phpmyadmin,

go to the "Domains" page under "Client Home" and click your domain name. Now click the "MySQL Databases" button

You will see the list of databases under your domain here. Click on the database

name to continue.

In the next page, click on the "Phpmyadmin" tab on the top

This will open "phpmyadmin" in a new page

6. File Manager

a. Navigating

To access the File Manager,

Nhan Hoa Software Company

18 www.nhanhoa.com

click the domain name from the "Domains" page (in the "Clients Home" page).

In the next page, click on the "File Manager" icon

This is the File Manager interface for your domain account. You can click on the directory

names to navigate and click on the file names to open the File editor window.

b. Copying

To copy files in the File Manager,

open File Manager (see 6a) and select the file that you want to copy.

Now click the copy button.

Nhan Hoa Software Company

19 www.nhanhoa.com

You will notice that the file icon has changed now

Now navigate to the directory where you want to paste the copied file. Click the "Paste"

button to paste the file in the new directory.

c. Moving

To move files between directories in the File Manager,

open File Manager (see 6a)

select the file that you want to move.

Now click the "Cut" button. You will notice that the file icon has changed now

Now navigate to the directory where you want to move the file. Click the "Paste"

button to move the file in the new directory.

d. Deleting

To delete a file in the File Manager,

open File Manager (see 6a) select the file that you want to delete. Click the "Trash" button to delete that file.

Nhan Hoa Software Company

20 www.nhanhoa.com

e. File permissions

To change the file permission of a file,

open File Manager (see 6a) under the "Perm" colum, click the existing permission link

This will open the file permission editor.

Now click the corresponding checkbox to adjust the file permission as you require. If you

enable the "Change Permission Recursively" checkbox, it will set the new permission for

all files under that directory.

f. Modifying Files

Nhan Hoa Software Company

21 www.nhanhoa.com

To modify a file in the File Manager,

open File Manager (see 6a) and click on the file name. This will show you the file contents (coding).

Now click the "Edit" button on the top to edit the contents of the file.

Edit the coding as required and click the "Update" button to save the changes to the

file.

7. FTP Accounts

a. Creating FTP accounts

To create a new FTP account (other than the default account):

go to the "Domains" page under "Client Home" and click your domain name. Now click the "FTP Users" icon

Now click the "Add FTP User" tab on the top.

You will have to enter a username for the FTP account, password (twice for confirmation)

and then select the virtual directory that you would like the new user to access (the directories

outside won't be accessible to this user)

Nhan Hoa Software Company

22 www.nhanhoa.com

To select the virtual directory, you can click on the folder icon, browse the folder and click

the "select" link to choose it.

Then click the "Add" button to create the new FTP account

b. Modifying / Deleting FTP accounts

To modify an FTP account,

open the FTP Users page (see 7a) and click on the username of the FTP account

You can enter a new password or modify the path here.

Nhan Hoa Software Company

23 www.nhanhoa.com

To delete an FTP account, select the username and click the Delete button

c. Creating FTP accounts for subdomains

To create an FTP account for a subdomain, when creating an FTP account in the FTP Users

page (see 7a), enter the virtual directory parameter of the subdomain.

The subdomain's path will be:

/home/httpd/domain.com/httpdocs/subdomains/subdomainname

8. Site Backup

a. Creating backups

To create a backup of your domain account,

go to the "Domains" page under "Client Home" and click your domain name. Now click the "Backup Home" icon

In the next page, enter a "Backup File Initial String" which will be prefixed to the backup

file name. Click "Backup Now" button to start the backup process.

Nhan Hoa Software Company

24 www.nhanhoa.com

The backup process will start in the background now. You will receive a mail at your contact

email when it is completed.

The backup file will appear in the __backup directory of your client area. You can access it

by clicking on the 'File Manager' Tab on the top, which will show you the list of backup files

completed.

b. Storing backups

To store backup files in a remote FTP server, you have to configure the remote FTP server

first.

In the "Backup Home" page (see 8a), click the "FTP Configuration" tab on the top.

Enter the remote FTP server details here and enable the "Upload files to Remote Server"

option and save the configuration.

Nhan Hoa Software Company

25 www.nhanhoa.com

From now on, when you backup files, it will be uploaded to the remote server. To change

back to the local drive, uncheck the "Upload files to Remote Server" option and save the

configuration.

c. Restoring a site from a backup

To restore an account from a backup file,

9. Miscellaneous Features

a. Site Statistics

There are 2 third party Log Analyzer tools available for LxAdmin - Webalizer and AWStats

Since either one of them can be enabled at a time, you will be able to use Webalizer or

AWstats as set by your Administrator.

To view Web Statistics of your domain, click on the "Show Stats" icon

This will open your Statistics page.

You can also protect the Statistics page from the public. To protect the Statistics page,

click on the "Stats Page Protection" icon

Enter a username and password for the protected Stats Page user account.

Nhan Hoa Software Company

26 www.nhanhoa.com

You can use this login for accessing your Statistics pages

b. Error handlers

Using Error handlers, you can manage and display error pages for your domain. To get

started, click on the "Error Handlers" icon.

You can set custom error pages for the following types of errors: 400: Bad Request 401:

Authorization Required 403: Forbidden 500: Internal Server Error 404: File Not Found

To set the custom error page for an error type,

upload the custom error file to your account select the corresponding Error type and enter the virtual path to the custom error file.

You can also click on the "browse" icon to select the file.

Update the changes to start using custom error pages.

c. Directory password protection

Nhan Hoa Software Company

27 www.nhanhoa.com

To password protect a directory, click on the "Protected Directories" icon.

Enter a name for the "Auth" entry, and enter the virtual directory path that you want to protect. You can click on the "browse" icon and select the path.

Add the new entry and click on the "Auth" entry name from the list

Now click on the "Add Dirprotect user" tab on the top

Enter the new username, password and click "Add"

Now you can use this user account for accessing the password protected directory. You can add more user accounts if you wish the same way.

d. Scheduler/Cron Job

To add a new scheduler/cron job, click on the "Schduled Tasks" icon

Nhan Hoa Software Company

28 www.nhanhoa.com

To receive email reports of cron job results, you can update your email address in the

next page

click on the "Add Scheduled Task" to create a new cron job entry

Now enter the cron tab details including the time interval (minute, hour, date, day of

the week, month) and the command to run.

Nhan Hoa Software Company

29 www.nhanhoa.com

Click the "Add" button to create the new cron job entry. Your cron job will run during

the scheduled time and will send you email reports after it is completed. Click on the scheduled task name to edit the cron command

e. Site Redirection

To redirect a website, click on the "Redirects" button

There are two kinds of redirection. You can either redirect a local address to another local

address or you can redirect a local address to remote address.

To redirect a directory to another location, click on the "Add Local Redirection" tab.

Enter the virtual location of directory name which you need to redirect to an existing location.

Then select the Redirected location by clicking the "browse" button.

Click the "Add" button to create the new redirection.

To redirect a directory to a remote location, click on the "Add Local Redirection" tab.

Enter the virtual location of directory name which you need to redirect to an remote

location. Enter the remote location URL path

Nhan Hoa Software Company

30 www.nhanhoa.com

Click the "Add" button to create the new redirection.