Considering the switch...

Have reviewed your site in detail and have some questions about the product.

  1. Can I import from ensim?

I currently have ensim and recently had a problem while attempting to upgrade mysql to a more current version. I managed to screw up the upgrade without knowing it (broke php connections to mysql) and because ensim has this horrible method of updating sites via maintenance settings, when I ran the process I completely killed ensim because of the bad mysql install.

Ensim is really really integrated into the whole management of the server much more than I really am comfortable with, not to mention their support sucks on their forums.

I have purchased a clean server with no control panel on it and am planning on moving all of my sites off of ensim as soon as I can, so being able to automate this process somewhat with your control panel would be a great plus, but not mandatory as I can just rebuild the sites for the most part.

  1. How integrated is Interworx?

From question 1, how likely am I to break interworx if I upgrade and install software? If I want to upgrade mysql for instance, or php, or perl, or anything else for that matter how do these upgrades get propagated to the sites?

I use webmin for most of my server management tasks, so I don’t want to conflict with interworx while doing so.

Your system appears to be much much cleaner in its method of maintaining the server and itself than ensim ever thought of being so the integration is probably not as big of an issue with you as it is with ensim.

I’ve pretty much decided on getting interworx, but just want to know what’s ahead of me before I commit.

Thanks!

I’ll leave this for someone from Nexcess. I know 1.9 has a cPanel importer. Not sure if a enesim one is in the works or not.

I think you will like making the switch. Having worked with InterWorx for over a year now, I can say it is DEFFINITELY cleaner than any of the other CP’s out there I tried. It does lack some features, but I think the cleander interface is well worth it. (and they are adding new features all the time)

  1. How integrated is Interworx?

From question 1, how likely am I to break interworx if I upgrade and install software? If I want to upgrade mysql for instance, or php, or perl, or anything else for that matter how do these upgrades get propagated to the sites?

I use webmin for most of my server management tasks, so I don’t want to conflict with interworx while doing so.

Your system appears to be much much cleaner in its method of maintaining the server and itself than ensim ever thought of being so the integration is probably not as big of an issue with you as it is with ensim.

I’ve pretty much decided on getting interworx, but just want to know what’s ahead of me before I commit.

Thanks!

InterWorx uses it’s own instances of httpd, mysql, php so you don’t need to worry about breaking those. In general upgrading isn’t going to be a problem, but you will need to use tinydns instead of bind and qmail instead of sendmail or postfix and proftpd is the ftp server. Trying to replace one of them is asking for trouble :wink:

Tim

What features are you referring to?

I agree with you on the clean usable interface. Its more important to me than addons and or lots of bells and whistles or features that are not really used…

I like the fact that this product uses Horde and Fileman also.

InterWorx uses it’s own instances of httpd, mysql, php so you don’t need to worry about breaking those.

These are outside of the normal mysql server and php that the sites use?

Its also intersting to me that there is not much in the way of bug/problem reports on these forums, that’s pretty much all there is at ensim’s site…

agreed :slight_smile:

You will also find that they are very receptive to user feature requests.

I like the fact that this product uses Horde and Fileman also.

These are outside of the normal mysql server and php that the sites use?

That is corect they are separate installs inside the /home/interworx directory on the server. Even if you do something like upgrade to PHP 5 (which a lot of php scripts don’t work on) it won’t interfere with InterWorx since it still uses 4.x

Its also intersting to me that there is not much in the way of bug/problem reports on these forums, that’s pretty much all there is at ensim’s site…

Part of that is the fact that the software hasn’t been around as long, but it also has to do with the fact that the developers work hard to iron out the bugs before it becomes a final release. They test it, then they usually have a couple others test it, and then for a big revision like this one they had a release candidate.

It also helps that they use software (e.g. tinydns, qmail) that is generally considered more stable and secure than the competition.

If it’s not too premature, welcome to the InterWorx users’ “family” :slight_smile:

Yep, as I said, I’ve pretty much made up my mind.

After the problem I had with Ensim, which as I said I caused by screwing up the install of mysql and the Ensim product made much worse when I put it into maintenance mode, I got so irritated that I purchased a new server that day from EV1.

But if I had not had the problem I would have remained hostage to Ensim, so Iguess there is a silver lining on this particular cloud as I would have never begun to search for competing products, of course I already knew about plesk and cpanel.

My quandry was whether or not I was just going to do it all in webmin with the virtualmin module, but I started thinking that I’d rather use a company with a support system in place and a paid for product that gets me that support. Heck at $50 bucks minimum for a support ticket with Ensim, its a no brainer to just buy the annual package from InterWorx and be done with it.

And for the life of me I still can’t figure out what ensim had to do to all of my sites after I upgraded mysql, there is just too much dark and mysterious stuff going on with that produce for me to be comfortable. I’m pretty sure that if it was not packaged up with servers at EV1 and elsewhere they would not sell any copies of it. And certainly a user perusing the forums at Ensim would not come away very impressed, heck a search of the word “problem” on their forums turns up 500 or more threads:>).

Heck, they only have one moderator that attempts to answer any support problems on the forums and he won’t pursue any actual discussion or attempts to assist in getting the problem resolved, meaning his responses are limited to just answering your questions in as short of a response as possible. And there was not one single other poster on their forum that even attempted to help either which I thought was pretty wierd. This guy kept referring to the instructions and did I not follow the instructions, heck I searched all over and could not find the instructions, and he never linked to them until I asked him if I needed a “secret decoder ring” to find them and there they were burried in the release notes of all places. And while I was going through all of this, another poster asked specifically where he could find them and his post went unanswered until I responded to him after I finally beat it out of them…

Little bit of venting there, but as I said, if it had not happened I’d still be an ensim slave…

Glad I never used Ensim :slight_smile: The only other things I’ve used are Webmin and cPanel. I just plain don’t like cPanel.

<begin sarchasm>Sounds like you’ve had a lot of fun. </sarchasm>

I talked to one of the developers and he says an Enesim importer is something talked about but not (yet) started.

If you’re looking for a data center I recommend taking a look at sagonet.com They’ve been great to me and a lot of other people.

InterWorx does not have a lot of documentation yet, but what what there are can be found on the Support link above. Plans are in place to dramatically increase them in the near future.

If you ever have any questions, post them here and someone (an InterWorx developer or one of the rest of us) will respond. Sago also has an InterWors forum.

Have a goo day

Tim

Actually, EV1 has been pretty dang good at everything aside from the selection of control panel software.

I’ve had great support from them, but if anything ever turns then I certainly won’t waste time switching.

On the ensim import, I would certainly recommend it, importing competing control panels would be very high on my priority for development of InterWorx if I was them.

I would plan on having this set up by the time I post my “thank you ensim” post on ensims forums thanking them for all of their problems they caused me and forcing me to find InterWorx.

In addition, InterWorx needs to do something about getting high placement on the search engines, I would have never found them on the search engines. Thank goodness for hotscripts.com. Search terms (web hosting control panel software).

CMI, so you don’t like the “industry’s leading control panel”. :>)

I think Cpanel and Ensim and Plesk all have a bad case of bloatware…

Is scheduled backups on the development list?

They already have a cPanel import in the new 1.9 and I suspect the others are on the way.

As for advertizing, it’s something they are working on. They are sponsors for HostinCon2005 and have ads in a couple industry magazines.

Is scheduled backups on the development list?

Or is it just disabled on the demo?

Also, the only piece of software that I’ve got installed on this new server that comes with InterWorx is proftpd, do I need to uninstall it before installing InterWorx?

Does it install those in the default directories?

I plan on running the script install…

Bluesin,

The only thing preventing us from starting work on the Ensim converter is an actual Ensim backup to test with. :slight_smile: So if you’re willing to be a beta tester, please create a full backup of your Ensim managed site and submit a trouble ticket at:

https://secure.interworx.info/support/helpdesk/

with information on how we can access the backup file.

Thanks,
Socheat

No problem…

Do I actually have to uninstall bind? Or can I just set it up to not start?

Some errors from the install script…

Are they important?

Cannot find a package matching yum-conf
No actions to take
InterWorx-CP needs to remove some packages that may conflict
The following packages will be removed (if they exist)
STATUS: - bind
STATUS: - redhat-config-bind
STATUS: - sendmail
STATUS: - postfix
STATUS: - exim
STATUS: - mutt
STATUS: - fetchmail
STATUS: - redhat-lsb
STATUS: - mdadm
Is this ok? (Y/n): y
STATUS: Removing conflicting packages
error: package bind is not installed
error: package redhat-config-bind is not installed
error: package sendmail is not installed
error: package exim is not installed
warning: /etc/postfix/main.cf saved as /etc/postfix/main.cf.rpmsave
STATUS: Conflict resolution complete
STATUS: Installing MySQL server
Gathering header information file(s) from server(s)
Server: DAG - RedHat Enterprise 3ES
Server: InterWorx-CP - Generic
Server: InterWorx-CP - RedHat Enterprise 3ES
Finding updated packages
Downloading needed headers
Cannot find a package matching mysql
Cannot find a package matching mysql-server
Cannot find a package matching mysql-devel
No actions to take
mysqld: unrecognized service
error reading information on service mysqld: No such file or directory
STATUS: Installing the Apache webserver
Gathering header information file(s) from server(s)
Server: DAG - RedHat Enterprise 3ES
Server: InterWorx-CP - Generic
Server: InterWorx-CP - RedHat Enterprise 3ES
Finding updated packages
Downloading needed headers
Cannot find a package matching httpd
Cannot find a package matching httpd-devel
mod_ssl is installed and is the latest version.
No actions to take
httpd: unrecognized service
error reading information on service httpd: No such file or directory
STATUS: Performing a YUM update to bring the system up to date
Gathering header information file(s) from server(s)
Server: DAG - RedHat Enterprise 3ES
Server: InterWorx-CP - Generic
Server: InterWorx-CP - RedHat Enterprise 3ES
Finding updated packages
Downloading needed headers
Resolving dependencies
…Unable to satisfy dependencies
Package webalizer needs gd-devel, this is not available.
STATUS: Installing InterWorx-CP
Gathering header information file(s) from server(s)
Server: DAG - RedHat Enterprise 3ES
Server: InterWorx-CP - Generic
Server: InterWorx-CP - RedHat Enterprise 3ES
Finding updated packages
Downloading needed headers
Resolving dependencies
…conflict between djbdns and caching-nameserver
STATUS: Rebuilding system disk quotas
STATUS: (ignore errors regarding: ‘Old file not found’)
quotacheck: Scanning /dev/hda3 [/] done
quotacheck: Checked 8286 directories and 145938 files
quotacheck: Old file not found.
quotacheck: Old file not found.
mount: can’t find /home in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab
quotacheck: Mountpoint (or device) /home not found.
quotacheck: Can’t find filesystem to check or filesystem not mounted with quota option.

STATUS: Setting server time / syncing BIOS
27 Feb 20:33:12 ntpdate[26567]: step time server 18.72.0.3 offset -4071.832706 sec
Starting ntpd: [ OK ]
-=-=-=-=-= ALL DONE! THANK YOU! FOR USING InterWorx-CP =-=-=-=-=-

Type: ‘iworx-cp-install.sh :D’ to send the InterWorx Team
your distro & operating system name if you like

(It makes them happy)

Also, check out http://interworx.info for news, updates
and of course help!

-=-=-=-=-= ALL DONE! THANK YOU! FOR USING InterWorx-CP =-=-=-=-=-

[root@server2 root]# sh iworx-cp-install.sh :smiley:
iworx-cp-install.sh: line 161: status_print: command not found
/usr/sbin/sendmail: No such file or directory
[root@server2 root]#

In addition, where is it? There is no home/interworx directory…

Doing a locate interworx or locate iworx finds nothing on the system…

Could you please open a support ticket here:
https://secure.interworx.info/support/helpdesk/

Some of those errors need to be dealt with, and it’d be best if we could get remote access to the server.

Thanks,

Paul

Paul, done, In addition I put the link in that ticket to the ensim backup file…

Thanks!

So welcome in the iworx world :slight_smile:

About the schedule backups :
Yet interworx CP does not allow you to schedule a backup, but You may test to create an interworx-cp backup by using a cron job with this command :


/home/interworx/bin/php -c /home/interworx/etc backup.php --domain=domain.tld --siteworx

(not sure it works)

It should allow you to do a full siteworx account backup for the domain.tld (–domain=thedomainehere.tld)

I don’t know a way to create a full backup of all siteworx account in one shot and even if I knew it I wouldn’t do it, as the backup process (gzip) take a lot of cpu usage, so it really better to not backup all siteworx account in one shot :slight_smile:

Pascal

Socheat told me that a backup COULD be CRONed, and this looks a lot like the command he had me run when I beta tested fromthem several months ago. I didn’t have to specify the config file though.

Socheat, care to chime in here and clairify?

I also used it several months ago but don’t remember the exact command :\

This command is what there is in “ps -axf” when you launch a full siteworx backup

So Paul , Socheat ?

Pascal