Server Setup & Configuration – cPanel / WHM

Steps to Install CPANEL on your VPS or Dedicated Server

Make sure that your VPS server has enough resources to be able to run cPanel. Minimum of 512 MB of memory to run Cpanel (1GB is recommended).

Before installing Cpanel, its good to setup a basic clean compile environment and get your server up to date with the latest patches and software updates.

[root@server1 /]#  yum install selinux coreutils binutils make dialog gcc gcc-* glib*
[root@server1 /]#  yum install libexi* libjpe* libpng* gifl* freetype curl curl-* xmlrpc
[root@server1 /]#  yum upgrade kernel*
[root@server1 /]#  yum update

Once you got the basics, time to install Cpanel/WHM:

[root@server1 /]#  cd
[root@server1 /]#  wget http://layer1.cpanel.net/cpanel-universal-install.sea
[root@server1 /]#  chmod 700 ./cpanel-universal-install.sea
[root@server1 /]#  ./cpanel-universal-install.sea

(The above will take you 30 minutes to an hour or so to finish)

After you have the base install done, it would be a good idea to run the ‘checkperlmodules’ a couple of times at least until it runs clean without trying to compile new modules so that you get all the required Perl modules you need to run Cpanel properly installed on your server:

[root@server1 /]#  /scripts/checkperlmodules

(Typically needs to be run about 3 times till it runs clean)

Once you have Cpanel installed, connect to WHM and go through the initial setup wizard to setup your server hostname, licensing, DNS servers, IP addresses, etc:

http://(your server primary IP):2086/

That’s the basic rundown!

At this point, you will have a basic copy of Cpanel installed but it won’t be configured or optimized and your system won’t have any security hardening, configurations, or optimizations either. To do that properly, you will have another couple hours of work ahead of you if you are experienced (a couple of days if you aren’t) to get things fully setup and working properly the way they should.