hello, colleagues

our company has wish for begin of hosting.
Hosting can be shared for the present.

we have
1. RHEL with apache 1.3., php5, mysql4.1, proftpd, and CommunigatePro as a mail-server
1. Solaris8 with BIND.

Now our system permits to create automatically dial-up accounts and optionally mailboxes and homepages as http://domain.tld/~login/ for them. upload of user's homepages availables within the FTP (authenticated through LDAP).

i have some questions about Vmin and its compatibility with our system.

1
for example: i am planning install Vmin into RHEL and control using Vmin of virtual hosts, DNS, FTP and mail-accounts.
I want to deny access to whole system for webusers (owners of virtual-servers). Is it really?

i know that shared-hosting has many problems for hosting company but we are beginner and we can allow ourself the shared hosting only.

2
what are Your recommendations about this?

thanks

Hi Ildar,

A few comments:

1. RHEL with apache 1.3., php5, mysql4.1, proftpd, and CommunigatePro as a mail-server

RHEL is fine, Apache 1.3 is fine, PHP5 is fine, MySQL 4.1 is fine, and ProFTPd is fine. You won't be able to use the install.sh to automatically setup and configure your system, however, as the install.sh currently expects a bit more standard components (basically, it wants a standard OS install of one of the supported operating systems--any outside packages are going to cause trouble with the install.sh). The standalone .wbm or .rpm packaged modules will work fine, however.

CommunigatePro is not supported and almost certainly never will be. I know it is a very well-regarded mail server with a lot of dedicated users, but we're trying to keep our application stack reasonably low-cost, and CommunigatePro is not low-cost (200 users==$4550). It's pricing structure is definitely better suited for enterprise customers than ISPs and hosting providers, who often have thousands of mailbox users. So, managing your mail users will not be possible with Virtualmin.

Solaris8 with BIND.

Also fine. You can drop Webmin on it, setup Cluster Slave Servers from the Virtualmin server to the Solaris server and your zones will automatically be managed on the Solaris box (you'll also need a BIND server on the RHEL box, but that can be done with a single command and a couple of clicks in Webmin).

i know that shared-hosting has many problems for hosting company but we are beginner and we can allow ourself the shared hosting only.

Shared hosting is fine for a large percentage of websites. Nothing wrong with it--it's a very efficient use of power, cooling, and hardware. Sensitive data should be carefully handled in shared hosting, and possibly dedicated or virtual dedicated servers should be considered for that sort of thing, but even that can be reasonably well-protected with appropriate permissions and public key encryption (for credit card data, for example). Even PHP will be locked down extremely tightly as of this week, when I roll out our mod_fcgid support.

what are Your recommendations about this?

It's hard to say. We can't do anything for you with CommuniGate Pro, and a lot of our automated configuration isn't going to work on your system...Maybe Virtualmin GPL is the way to go for you, in your current configuration--a lot of the benefits of Virtualmin Professional may not be necessary for you at this time. The GPL version lacks Script Installers, some of the Spam/AV features (which you couldn't use anyway), the Virtualmin Framed Theme (which is a pretty cool thing), and a few other niceties.

If you were willing to switch from CommuniGate to another mail server (Postfix is my recommendation, but we support Sendmail and qmail too), you could then manage everything with Virtualmin and the picture would look a lot more clear.

hi, Joe

much more thanks for Your quick reply

> CommunigatePro is not supported and almost certainly never will be
i understood it after unsucessful search in the list of third-party modules for Webmin. CommunigatePro is relatively commercial - anybody can download it and use it, but any mail will contain banner about producer-company. my friends use it too (in contract of us)

after install Webmin/Usermin/VirtualminGPL and play i understand that these tools are very-very flexible for admins, users, and developers too.

> Maybe Virtualmin GPL is the way to go for you
okay! i continue my playing with Webmin-family tools

>> If you were willing to switch from CommuniGate to another mail server
this is unreal way