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Managing Multiple Hard Drives with cPanel

Vanessa — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 19:13:59 +0000

If you have a server with single standalone drives, you may have considered the possibility of adding additional hard drives to provide more disk capacity to your system. Luckily, this is very easy to set up and use with cPanel.

First things first, I’ll assume that you already have the hard drive physically installed in your system. This guide will show you how to partition, format, and configure cPanel to use an additional hard drive, in the simplest way possible.

1. Partitioning the Disk

We’ll assume that the additional disk is supplementary to a system that already has an existing drive and OS installation. Therefore, the new disk will usually only need to be one single partition, unless you have different planned uses for it. If this is the second disk in your server, it’s going to be named either /dev/sdb or /dev/hdb, depending on what kind of drive it is. The last letter in the drive name will depend on how many other disks you have in your server, so see this article for a simple explanation on Linux drive mappings.

To find the new disk you added, use fdisk -l, which will list the disks active on your server. The additional disk should show up in the order that it’s physically configured inside the server:

Disk /dev/sdb: 250.0 GB, 250000000000 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30394 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

If you notice, the already-partitioned volumes also list the partition info. For example, this is what the output for the primary hard drive in my test server looks like, which is already set up with two partitions on the primary drive:

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 1 29884 240043198+ 83 Linux /dev/sda2 29885 30394 4096575 82 Linux swap / Solaris

The partition information is blank for the new disk, indicating that it has not been partitioned yet. If yours has already been partitioned and you want to keep that structure, you can skip this section and go straight to formatting.

From here, I want to create one partition which will be /home2 on this server, to provide additional capacity for users on this system. GNU parted is a simple command line utility to manage disk partitions, and I’ll use this to create a partition on my new hard drive:

parted /dev/sdb

Once in parted, type print free to show how much space is available to be partitioned:

Number  Start   End    Size   Type  File system  Flags
        0.00kB  250GB  250GB        Free Space

Since I’m only creating one partition, I use the parted mkpart command to specify the start and end space to occupy the whole disk:

(parted) mkpart Partition type? primary/extended? primary File system type? [ext2]? ext3 Start? 0kB End? 250GB

Then when I type in print, I see my new partition listed:

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags 1 0.51kB 250GB 250GB primary

Now, if you’re creating multiple partitions on the disk, do the same thing, but modify the start and end parameters to sequentially create your partitions. In the above example, that partition would have a device name as /dev/sdb1, since it’s the partition numbered 1 on disk /dev/sdb. If I had a second and third partition, they would be named /dev/sdb2 and /dev/sdb3, respectively.

Type quit to close the parted session.

2. Formatting and Configuring the Disk

Once you’ve created the partitions, you can format them easily with mkfs.ext[2|3], using the device name as the argument:

For ext3: mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb1
For ext2: mkfs.ext2 /dev/sdb1
For ext4: see this article or the ext4 wiki

Repeat this for all the partitions you created, which will be numbered started as /dev/. My example is using the first partition of the second SCSI hard drive, so the partition device name is /dev/sdb1 . You can also find the new partition names by running fdisk -l again to see the names of the partitions for the new disk.

I also prefer to set the reserved disk space for the root user, as by default this will be 5% of the total partition size. This means for my 250GB disk, about 12GB is being reserved, which is a bit excessive. I instead usually set this to 2500 blocks:

root@server [~]# tune2fs -r 2500 /dev/sdb1
tune2fs 1.39 (29-May-2006)
Setting reserved blocks count to 2500

TIP: You can also pass -m <%> to the mkfs.ext[2|3] commands to set the percentage for reserved disk space during formatting, which can of course be changed later with tune2fs

3. Labeling and Mounting the Disk

Now, you need to label the disk and add it to fstab. In my example, I want to label the disk as /home2, so I’d use the e2label command and pass the partition’s device name and my desired label as arguments:

e2label /dev/sdb1 /home2

This can be confirmed by typing e2label /dev/sdb1:

root@server [~]# e2label /dev/sdb1
/home2

In order to mount the partition, it needs a mount point, and to be added to the file system table. Since the partition will be mounted as /home2, I created a folder called /home2, and added the following to /etc/fstab:

LABEL=/home2 /home2 ext3 defaults,usrquota,noatime 0 0

The LABEL value would be set to the label you used in e2label. To find out more about the fstab file, see this article. Again, you need to repeat these steps for each partition you created.

After you do this, you can mount the new partitions normally:

mount /home2

4. Setting up cPanel

As far as setting up cPanel, there’s only one file you have to edit – /etc/wwwacct.conf.

HOMEDIR : The location where all new user home folders will be created (/home by default)
HOMEMATCH: Additional home directories that will also be used for new home directory creations – only takes one value, leaving blank disables.

So, if you want to specify the partition/folder that all users are set up on, edit the HOMEDIR value and leave HOMEMATCH blank. If you specify a value for HOMEMATCH, cPanel will pick the partition based on which one has the most free space available.

For example, if you specify “home” for HOMEMATCH, it will configure users in the following locations:

/home
/home* (/home2, /home3, etc)
/anythingwith/home
/usr/home

Additional Resources:

Tutorial: Adding Additional Hard Drives in Linux

cPanel Wiki: Disk Drive Management (WHM)

10 Free Monitoring Solutions to Consider

Vanessa — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 21:54:39 +0000

Server and network monitoring can be crucial to a host’s success. I mean, how embarrassing is it when your customers are aware of downtime before you are? You don’t have to pay big bucks or spend loads of time setting up monitoring for your server. We’ve compiled a list of free monitoring solutions you can use to guarantee minimal downtime for your users, and show customers how reliable your service is!

Monitoring Software

With a software option, you’d basically be setting up a server to act as a monitor, or installing software on your PC. Here are some free and open-source software solutions that we’ve used:

Nagios

Nagios is considered one of the best free server/network monitoring tools in the industry. It’s highly customizable and hundreds of plugins are available for it, not to mention that you can easily write your own plugins as well. The only downfall is that the setup can be tricky, and for most setups you need to install the nagios client (NRPE) on the monitored server.

Munin

Munin is a plug and play monitoring software mostly for network performance analysis. On a cPanel server, you can install this easily via WHM > Plugins.

Monitorix

Monitorix is a free, lightweight monitoring application similar to Nagios and Munin

PHP ServerMon

Monitors multiple services across multiple servers, allowing each to have its own custom notification settings.

Server Monitor

PHP-based monitoring software allowing monitoring for multiple ports on a server, and provides details uptime reports

Here is a nice list of a few more: http://sixrevisions.com/tools/10-free-server-network-monitoring-tools-that-kick-ass/

Hosted Solutions

A hosted monitoring solution is a service offered and maintained by another provider, so you don’t have any software to install or configure. You’d generally sign up with the provider and use their control panel to manage your monitored sites. Here are the ones we’ve tested and recommend:

mon.itor.us

Mon.itor.us is a relatively new monitoring service that promises FREE monitoring forever, for external and internal hosts. When you sign up, you get free access to reports and uptime statistics, as well as widgets you can add to your site. At the time this article was written, this service is still in beta but is rapidly improving and is considered very reliable.

247WebMonitoring

This is a 100% free monitoring service that provides a wide range of flexible features for up to 5 sites at intervals of 15, 30, and 60 minutes. Features include content monitoring, pie charts, email/SMS notifications, maintenance mode, and an easy to use control panel. Site also includes a demo showing the service’s easy of use.

SiteUptime

The free plan provides monitoring for one site at 30 or 60-minute intervals for HTTP, POP3, SMTP, and FTP, from multiple locations. Low-cost upgrade options are also available: http://www.siteuptime.com/compare.php

Pingdom

The free plan includes monitoring for one site and up to 20 SMS alerts, with free unlimited email alerts.

Uptime Spy

A more advanced monitoring service that will monitor an unlimited number of resources from several geographic locations at 1,5,15,30, and 60-minute intervals. Features include advanced reporting and statistics, and unlimited notifications.

11 Ways to Free Up Disk Space on a cPanel Server

Vanessa — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 19:05:00 +0000

I’m sure that most of you have been to the point where one or more of your servers start to fill up as you get more customers. The server’s performing just fine, but there’s one problem…you’re out of disk space! Here are a few simple tricks to freeing up disk space on your cPanel server to help maximize your server’s potential.

1) Delete user cPanel and Fantastsico backups

If you have the backup feature in cPanel enabled, chances are your users are storing the backups on the server instead of downloading and removing them. On larger servers, this can account for a lot of disk space usage. You may want to consider warning your users ahead of time that backups will automatically be removed from the server after a certain period of time or on certain dates. You can mass-delete all user cPanel backups on the server with this command:

for user in `/bin/ls -A /var/cpanel/users` ; do rm -fv /home/$user/backup-*$user.tar.gz ; done

To remove Fantastico backups:

rm -rfv /home/*/fantastico_backups

2) Move your backups offsite

Similarly to above, if you’re using the cPanel Backup System and are storing your backups locally on the server, you could be using twice as much space as you need to. Consider mounting a backup server to your hosting server and storing the backups there (there is an option to mount external media in WHM > Configure Backups) or using an alternate method of backing up your server that doesn’t involve storing the backups locally. While local backups may be convenient at times, they tend to be useless when a server failure occurs.

3) Delete cPanel File Manager temp files

When users upload files in File Manager within cPanel, File Manager creates a temp file that may or may not get removed upon upload. You can remove these files using this command:

rm -fv /home/*/tmp/Cpanel_*

4) Move or archive logs

Most of the server’s logs are stored in /var/log, which can get rather large on more populated servers. You can change the length of time and frequency of the log rotation in /etc/logrotate.conf, and enable compression to save additional space (at the expense of CPU when the logs are being gzipped). If you want older logs, consider creating a cron job to periodically transfer them to a backup or log server so they aren’t taking up space on your hosting server.

5) Remove cPanel update archives

Cpanel and EasyApache updates tend to leave behind files that you probably don’t need. The following can be deleted or moved to a backup server to free up a little bit of space:

/usr/local/apache.backup*

/home/cpeasyapache (actual name may vary depending on cpanel version)

6) Clean up Yum files

Yum updates leave package cache files on the server. You can clean up all unneeded yum files by running:

yum clean all

7) Remove pure-ftp partials

When your users upload files to the server via FTP when your server runs pureFTP as an FTP daemon, the FTP server creates temporary files starting with .pureftpd-upload* that get renamed the the actual filename when the upload completes. If the upload doesn’t complete, these files are left on the server. You can find and delete these by running:

locate .pureftpd-upload | xargs rm -fv

*If you don’t run an updatedb regularly, you might want to do so before running this command

8) Decrease the reserved disk space

By default, Linux reserves 5% of the disk space from each partition for the root user, so root can still log in even if the disk is full. You may have noticed when running a df that you may be using 900GB out of a 1TB drive, but only have 50GB available…that’s because the other 50GB is reserved.

For larger drives, you really don’t need the whole 5%. I would recommend setting this value down to 2500 blocks so you can utilize more of the disk space. You can do this with tune2fs:

tune2fs -r 2500 /dev/sda1

You’ll want to probably man the tune2fs command before you use it for other options on setting the reserved space for your partitions.

9) Remove unneeded accounts

If you have a larger churn rate you probably have some user accounts laying around on your server that you don’t need. Check out WHM > List Suspended Accounts (or ls /var/cpanel/suspended) and look for suspended accounts that you may be able to remove from the server to free up space. You can terminate accounts in WHM > Terminate an Account or using the command /scripts/killacct (y/n indicating whether to save the DNS records)

10) Check for contrabands

As a hosting provider you should have a Terms of Service that specifically tells your customers what they can (or rather cannot) store on your server. Most hosts have specific rules about the hosting of non-website-related backups and copyrighted material, but don’t pro actively scan their servers for it. It wouldn’t hurt to run a few locate commands to find common files associated with copyright violations, like .mp3, .avi, .exe, etc, and have your customers remove them from the server. I once cleared over 300Gb of space on a server just by having customers remove contraband files from the server. On top of that, you’re also preserving the integrity of your business from a legal standpoint.

11) Consider a larger server

Some of your customers may have a legitimate need for large amount of disk space, and therefore you may be unable to keep the disk space usage on your server at a reasonable level. A lot of hosting providers have alternate servers that are more “low key” but have huge disk storage volumes to accommodate customers that have larger sites. You might want to consider investing in a server that will be less populated and only the users that occupy a large amount of space.

Adding Services to Chksrvd for Monitoring

Vanessa — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 15:00:22 +0000

Chkservd is the service in cPanel that checks to make sure that services are running, then restarts them if necessary. It’s also responsible for the ‘Service Manager’ section in cPanel, which is also an interface where added services can be easily checked on and off.

Service files are in /etc/chkserv.d/

To add a new service, create a line in ”’/etc/chkserv.d/chkservd.conf’” in the same format as the others:

service:1
1 means the service should be enabled, 0 means it’s off.

In ”’/etc/chkserv.d”’ each service has its own file. Create a file called as the name of the service you are monitoring. The contents of the file are in the format of:

#SERVICE = PORT, SEND, RESPONSE, RE-START COMMAND

There are two ways that cPanel checks services with chkservd:

*Connection-based monitoring – By default, cPanel will try to connect to the service’s specified port, issue a command, and if a response is received within 10 seconds it will consider the service to be online. For instance, FTP:

service[ftpd]=21,QUIT,220,/scripts/restartsrv_ftpserver

*Process-based monitoring – cPanel will check for a specific process to determine whether it is online. For instance, named:

service[named]=x,x,x,/scripts/restartsrvr_bind,named,named|bind

If you have more than one restart command, you can separate them with semicolons in order of preference that they should be run. Output of these commands will be logged to the chkservd.log

After you’ve created the service’s configuration file, restart chkservd:

/etc/init.d/chkservd restart

You should then see the service listed in WebHost Manager in the ‘service manager section’

Chkservd logs are in /var/log/chkservd.log. Checks are done every 8 minutes, and everyone online service gets a +, offline services get a -. If the service is determined to be offline, the restart command(s) specified in that service’s chkservd configuration file is issued and the output is logged.