Advanced Options: Pre-Installation

For cPanel & WHM version 11.30

Using this information, you can configure cPanel & WHM before it is installed.

Advanced partitioning

For flexibility in any *nix environment, we recommend a simple partition scheme.

Note: All of the following partitions are optional except / and swap.

Partition	Size	Partition Contents
/	40 GB recommended (20 GB minimum)	Base operating system
/boot	250 MB	Kernels, boot loader configuration file
/usr	16 GB recommended (8 GB minimum)	cPanel, Apache, Apache logs, and most applications
/var	16 GB recommended (8 GB minimum) Note: Allotting more disk space provides you with more database storage.	MySQL databases, cPanel configuration, system logs, and mail queue
/home	Grow to fill disk Note: Allotting more disk space allows you to host more accounts.	cPanel user accounts
/tmp	2 GB Note: We recommend creating a /tmp partition. You can use securetmp regardless of this setting.	Temporary files
swap	Twice the server's RAM	The amount of RAM overflow that the system can write to the hard disk.

Selecting a cPanel build type before installation

To select the build type before installing the cPanel and WHM interfaces:

1. Create the file /etc/cpupdate.conf using the command line interface.
   • This can be done using nano or your preferred text editor. Simply enter nano cpupdate.conf into your command line interface.
2. You can define your build type by defining the variable CPANEL. cPanel offers 4 build types to choose from: STABLE, RELEASE, CURRENT, and EDGE. To choose the build type, add 1 of the 4 following lines to /etc/cpupdate.conf.
   • CPANEL=stable
   • CPANEL=release
   • CPANEL=current
   • CPANEL=edge

The cPanel and WHM interfaces will be installed according to which of the 4 options you define in the configuration file.

Your build choice will also apply to automatic updates. For example, if you choose the stable build type, all future updates will install the newest stable build type.

Note: For more information regarding build types and auto-updates, please see the WHM Server Configuration documentation.

Configuring YUM before installing cPanel

It is possible to modify yum (Yellowdog Updater Modifier) prior to installing cPanel & WHM. However, because cPanel handles its own installation of services, you will need to exclude a number of packages.

To exclude these packages:

1. Open /etc/yum.conf with your preferred text editor in the command line interface.
2. Enter the following line:

Exclude= apache* bind-chroot courier* dovecot* exim* httpd* mod_ssl* mysql* nsd* perl* php* proftpd* pure-ftpd* spamassassin* squirrelmail*

Warning: Use only vendor-provided distributions when installing cPanel, as cPanel is only tested using these packages. Third-party repositories, such as RPMforge, can replace vital parts of the system and cause unexpected results.

Pre-installation configuration of cPanel & WHM settings

You can set the following parameters in /root/cpanel_profile/cpanel.config.

To set these parameters before installing cPanel & WHM:

1. Create a file called cpanel.config.
2. List the parameters and values you wish to configure, one per line, in the cpanel.config file.
   • These parameters are separated by an equals sign. For example: allowcpsslinstall=1
3. Place the resulting configuration file in the appropriate location (/root/cpanel_profile/cpanel.config).

Parameter	Description	Type (Acceptable Values)	Default Value
account_login_access	Specify who can access a user's cPanel account. owner in this case indicates an account's reseller.	Comma Delimited String (owner_root, owner, user)	owner_root,owner,user
allow_server_info_status_from	IP addresses or hostnames that are allowed to view the /server-info and server-status pages.	Comma Delimited String (192.168.0.1, host.example.com)	Not Applicable
allowcpsslinstall	Allow cPanel users with a dedicated IP address to install SSL hosts.	Boolean (1, 0)	1
allowparkhostnamedomainsubdomains	Allow cPanel users to park subdomains of the server's hostname main domain.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
allowparkonothers	Allow users to park domains on top of domains owned by other users.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
allowperlupdates	Allow Perl updates from RPM-based Linux vendors.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
allowremotedomains	Allow users to create parked/addon domains that resolve to other servers.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
allowresellershostnamedomainsubdomains	Allow resellers to create accounts with subdomains of the server's hostname main domain.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
allowunregistereddomains	Allow the creation of parked/addon domains that have not been registered.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
alwaysredirecttossl	Always redirect users to the SSL/TLS ports when visiting example.com/cpanel, example.com/webmail, etc.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
anon_data_optout	Send anonymous usage data to cPanel.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
apache_port	The port on which Apache listens for unsecured HTTP connections.	Integer	80
apache_ssl_port	The port on which Apache listens for secured (SSL/TLS) HTTP connections.	Integer	443
autocreateaentries	Automatically create A entries for registered nameservers when creating a new domain.	Boolean (1, 0)	1
awstatsbrowserupdate	Allow users to update AWStats from cPanel.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
awstatsreversedns	Allow AWStats reverse DNS resolution.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
bind_deferred_restart_time	The time (in seconds) dnsadmin will wait before restarting bind.	Integer	0
blockcommondomains	Prevent users from adding common Internet domains.	Boolean (1, 0)	1
check_zone_syntax	Check zone file syntax when saving and synchronizing zones.	Boolean (1, 0)	1
cookieipvalidation	Validate IP addresses during cookie-based authentication attempts.	String (disabled, loose, strict)	strict
coredump	Allow WHM, webmail, and cPanel to create core dumps for debugging purposes.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
cpaddons_adminemail	The default administrative contact for cPAddon moderation-related email.	String (user@example.com)	Not Applicable
cpaddons_autoupdate	Automatically updates cPAddons.	Boolean (1, 0)	1
cpaddons_max_moderation_req_all_mod	Maximum number of moderated requests a user may have at any time.	Integer	99
cpaddons_max_moderation_req_per_mod	Maximum number of moderated requests per addon a user may have at any time.	Integer	99
cpaddons_moderation_request	Alert the cPAddons administrator of pending moderation requests.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
cpaddons_no_3rd_party	Prevent users from installing addon scripts that are not provided by cPanel.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
cpaddons_no_modified_cpanel	Prevent users from installing cPanel addon scripts that have been modified.	Boolean (1, 0)	1
cpaddons_notify_owner	Notify resellers when their users have cPAddon installations that need to be updated.	String (Allow users to choose, always, never)	Allow users to choose
cpaddons_notify_root	Notify the cPAddons administrator when users have cPAddon installations that need to be updated.	Boolean (1, 0)	1
cpaddons_notify_users	Notify cPanel users when their cPAddon installations need to be updated.	String (Allow users to choose, always, never)	Allow users to choose
cpredirect	Specify where to redirect users who access example.com/cpanel, example.com/whm, etc. without SSL.	String (example.com)	Not Applicable
cpredirectssl	Specify where to redirect users who access example.com/cpanel, example.com/whm, etc. with SSL.	String (SSL Certificate Name, example.com)	Not Applicable
cpsrvd-domainlookup	Allow usernames to be determined from the account 's domain name when no username is given.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
cpsrvd-gzip	Compress cPanel & WHM interface pages using gzip compression to conserve bandwidth.	Boolean (1, 0)	1
default_login_theme	The theme you wish to display when users reach the cPanel login screen.	String (mobile, cpanel)	cpanel
defaultmailaction	Forwarding destination for a new account's default address.	String (blackhole, fail, localuser)	localuser
disable_compiled_dnsadmin	Use an uncompiled version of dnsadmin.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
disableipnscheck	Allow nameservers to use shared IP addresses.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
disablequotacache	Disable disk quota display caching.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
discardformmailbccsubject	Silently discard FormMail-clone requests with a bcc: header in the subject line.	Boolean (1, 0)	1
disk_usage_include_sqldbs	Include databases in disk usage calculations. This option requires MySQL 5+.	Boolean (1, 0)	1
dnsadmin_log	Log dnsadmin requests to /usr/local/cpanel/logs/dnsadmin.log.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
dnsadmin_verbose_sync	Enable verbose DNS zone syncing. Do not use this option on a production server.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
dnsadminapp	DNS request management application.	String (dnsadmin, auto-detect SSL)	undef
dnslookuponconnect	Resolve each client's IP to a domain name when they connect to a cPanel service.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
dumplogs	Delete access logs after stats are run.	Boolean (1, 0)	1
email_account_quota_default_selected	Select which option to be preselected in the interface when a user accesses the email accounts feature.	String (unlimited, userdefined)	userdefined
email_account_quota_userdefined_default_value	The value that will automatically appear in the quota box when creating a new email address.	Integer (Maximum value of 2048)	250
emailpasswords	Send passwords in plain text by email when creating a new account.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
emailusers_diskusage_critical_contact_admin	Notify the admin or reseller when an account has reached "critical" disk usage.	Boolean (1, 0)	1
emailusers_diskusage_critical_percent	The percentage of disk space that must be used for it to be considered in a "critical" state.	Integer or Undef	90
emailusers_diskusage_full_contact_admin	Notify the admin or reseller when an account has reached "full" disk usage.	Boolean (1, 0)	1
emailusers_diskusage_full_percent	The percentage of disk space that must be used for it to be considered in a "full" state.	Integer or Undef	98
emailusers_diskusage_warn_contact_admin	Notify the admin or reseller when an account has reached "warn" disk usage.	Boolean (1, 0)	1
emailusers_diskusage_warn_percent	The percentage of disk space that must be used for it to be considered in a "warn" state.	Integer or Undef	80
emailusers_mailbox_critical_percent	The percentage of disk space that must be used by an email account to be considered in a "critical" state.	Integer or Undef	90
emailusers_mailbox_full_percent	The percentage of disk space that must be used by an email account to be considered in a "full" state.	Integer or Undef	98
emailusers_mailbox_warn_percent	The percentage of disk space that must be used by an email account to be considered in a "warn" state.	Integer or Undef	80
emailusersbandwidthexceed	Email users when they exceed their bandwidth.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
emailusersbandwidthexceed70	Email users when they have used 70% of their bandwidth.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
emailusersbandwidthexceed75	Email users when they have used 75% of their bandwidth.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
emailusersbandwidthexceed80	Email users when they have used 80% of their bandwidth.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
emailusersbandwidthexceed85	Email users when they have used 85% of their bandwidth.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
emailusersbandwidthexceed90	Email users when they have used 90% of their bandwidth.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
emailusersbandwidthexceed95	Email users when they have used 95% of their bandwidth.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
emailusersbandwidthexceed97	Email users when they have used 97% of their bandwidth.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
emailusersbandwidthexceed98	Email users when they have used 98% of their bandwidth.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
emailusersbandwidthexceed99	Email users when they have used 99% of their bandwidth.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
exim-retrytime	Time in minutes that Exim will wait between mail server queue runs.	Integer	60
extracpus	The load average above the number of CPUs at which the log file process will be suspended.	Integer	0
file_upload_max_bytes	The maximum file size in megabytes that can be uploaded to the server.	Integer (Between 1 and 10240 or Undef)	Undef
file_upload_must_leave_bytes	The minimum amount of disk space in megabytes a user must have to upload a file.	Integer	5
ftppasslogs	Include the password in the FTP raw log file.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
htaccess_check_recurse	The maximum number of directories deep to look for .htaccess files when .htacceses checks are performed. Values above 100 are discouraged.	Integer	2
ignoredepreciated	Receive warnings about deprecated features in future versions of cPanel & WHM.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
interchangever	The version of Interchange you wish to use.	String (5.0, 4.8, 4.9, disable)	disable
jaildefaultshell	Use a jailshell as the default shell for new accounts.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
keepftplogs	Keep FTP log files at the end of the month.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
keeplogs	Keep log files at the end of the month.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
keepstatslog	Keep the stats log (/usr/local/cpanel/logs/stats_log) between cPanel restarts.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
loadthreshold	Minimum load average that will make the server status appear red.	Integer, Float, or Undef	2
logchmod	Apache log file's chmod value.	Integer	0640
maxcpsrvdconnections	The maximum number of requests that the cPanel service daemon will serve at one time.	Integer (Maximum value of 16384)	160
maxemailsperhour	The maximum number of emails each domain can send per hour.	Integer or Undef	Undef
maxmem	The maximum amount of memory a cPanel process can use before it is killed.	Integer (Minimum value of 128)	128
mysql-version	Specifies the major version of MySQL that the mysqlup script should install.	String (4.0,4.1,5.0,5.1)	5.0
nativessl	Use native SSL support when possible.	Boolean (1, 0)	1
nosendlangupdates	Prevent language file changes from being sent to cPanel.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
numacctlist	Number of accounts per page to display in the List Accounts feature.	Integer or Undef	30
php_max_execution_time	The maximum amount of time in seconds a PHP script is allowed to run before it is killed.	Integer	90
php_post_max_size	The maximum size in megabytes that cPanel will allow for a PHP POST request.	Integer (Maximum value of 2047)	55
php_register_globals	Enable PHP register globals. This feature is deprecated in PHP as of PHP 5.3.0.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
php_upload_max_filesize	The maximum file size in megabytes that users are able to upload via PHP.	Integer (Maximum value of 2047)	50
phploader	The PHP loader you wish to use.	String (none, ioncube, sourceguardian, oldsourceguardian)	none
popchecktimes	The number of times per hour users are allowed to check mail using POP3.	Integer	0
popfloodcheck	Attempt to prevent POP3 connection floods.	Boolean (1, 0)	1
proxysubdomains	Enable proxy subdomains to automatically redirect unconfigured cPanel, webmail, webdisk, and WHM subdomains to the correct port.	Boolean (1, 0)	1
proxysubdomainsfornewaccounts	Automatically enable proxy subdomains for new accounts.	Boolean (1, 0)	1
proxysubdomainsoverride	Allow users to create cPanel, webmail, webdisk, and WHM subdomains that override proxy domains that were generated automatically.	Boolean (1, 0)	1
publichtmlsubsonly	Prevent users from creating subdomains outside their public_html directory.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
referrerblanksafety	Only allow cPanel & WHM to execute functions if the browser provides a referrer.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
referrersafety	Only allow cPanel & WHM to execute functions if the browser-provided referrer matches the destination URL.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
remotewhmtimeout	The time to wait in seconds for connections between this server and remote WHM servers before timeout.	Integer (Minimum value of 35)	35
repquota_timeout	The maximum amount of time in seconds you wish to allow the server to spend fetching disk usage and quota information.	Integer	60
requiressl	Require SSL for remote logins.	Boolean (1, 0)	1
resetpass	Allow cPanel users to reset their passwords via email.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
rollback	Enable our build archiving and restoration facility.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
rotatelogs_size_threshhold_in_megabytes	The threshold in megabytes above which cpanellogd will rotate log files.	Integer (Minimum value of 10)	300
showwhmbwusageinmegs	Show bandwidth usage in megabytes by default in WHM.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
skipanalog	Disable Analog stats.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
skipawstats	Disable AWStats	Boolean (1, 0)	0
skipboxcheck	Disable mailbox usage warnings.	Boolean (1, 0)	1
skipboxtrapper	Disable BoxTrapper spam trap.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
skipdiskcheck	Disable disk space usage warnings.	Boolean (1, 0)	1
skipformmail	Disable FormMail-clone CGI	Boolean (1, 0)	1
skiphorde	Disable the Horde webmail client.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
skiphttpauth	Disable HTTP authentication for cPanel & WHM.	Boolean (1, 0)	1
skipmailman	Disable Mailman	Boolean (1, 0)	0
skipnotifyacctbackupfailure	Prevent warnings from being sent to users when a backup has an error.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
skiproundcube	Disable Roundcube	Boolean (1, 0)	0
skipspamassassin	Disable SpamAssassin	Boolean (1, 0)	0
skipspambox	Disable the SpamAssassin spambox	Boolean (1, 0)	0
skipsqmail	Disable Squirrelmail	Boolean (1,0)	0
skipwebalizer	Disable Webalizer stats	Boolean (1, 0)	0
skipwhoisns	Disable whois lookups for the nameserver IP manager.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
statsloglevel	The amount of debugging information you wish to include in /usr/local/cpanel/logs/stats_log. Larger numbers indicate more debugging information.	Integer (Between 1 and 10)	1
tcp_check_failure_threshold	The number of times ChkServd TCP check must fail before a notification is sent and the service is restarted.	Integer or Undef	3
urchinsetpath	The path to your Urchin installation.	String (/path/to/Urchin)	Not Applicable
use_apache_md5_for_htaccess	Use MD5 encoded passwords in Apache htpasswd files.	Boolean (1, 0)	1
use_information_schema	Enable INFORMATION_SCHEMA for MySQL.	Boolean (1, 0)	1
use_safe_quotas	When enabled, quotas are disabled, adjusted, and re-enabled when changed.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
useauthnameservers	Ignore configured nameservers for new domains that are already registered and using authoritative nameservers.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
usemailformailmanurl	Add the mail. prefix for Mailman URLs.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
usemysqloldpass	Use old style (MySQL 4.0) passwords for MySQL passwords.	Boolean (1, 0)	0
xsrftokens	Require security tokens for all cPanel interfaces.	Boolean (1, 0)	0

The /etc/wwwacct.conf file

The /etc/wwwacct.conf file contains the most basic setup instructions for cPanel & WHM. This information includes the hostname, nameservers, and some other important information for cPanel servers. Once cPanel & WHM is installed, you can find and edit most of this information in the Basic cPanel & WHM Setup (Main >> Server Configuration >> Basic cPanel & WHM Setup) interface. You can find an example of /etc/wwwacct.conf below:

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You can find a list of all of the parameters you must include in your /etc/wwwacct.conf file below. You must include all of the following parameters in your /etc/wwwacct.conf file, even if you do not wish to specify a value for a parameter.

Key	Value
ADDR	Your server's default IP address.
CONTACTEMAIL	The system administrator's email address. This address is used when sending notifications of account creation/termination, service status information, and several other events.
CONTACTPAGER	The SMS number at which you wish to receive notifications.
DEFMOD	The default cPanel theme to use.
ETHDEV	The default ethernet device. This should normally be eth0 on Linux servers, unless the server is running Virtuozzo.
HOMEDIR	The path to the default home directory.
HOMEMATCH	A string used to determine whether a partion should be used as a home directory for new accounts. (e.g. A value of users would match system mounts of users, users1, users3, etc.)
LOGSTYLE	The Apache log format to use. This value should always be combined.
MINUID	The minimum UID of cPanel created accounts. This defaults to 500 if this setting is not set.
NS* or *NS(2-4)	Nameservers to add to DNS zones by default. If you do not configure at least NS and NS2, account creation will fail.
NSTTL	The default TTL (time to live) for DNS zones.
SCRIPTALIAS	Defines whether a /cgi-bin/ directory should be aliased on account creation.