Overview

This document describes the system requirements for your cPanel & WHM installation on a CloudLinux™ server. You can install cPanel & WHM on CloudLinux versions 6, 7, 8, or 9.

Before you install cPanel & WHM or cPanel DNSOnly®, make certain that your CloudLinux system meets all of our minimum requirements for new installations.

License

Each cPanel & WHM server requires its own license. If you do not already own a license for cPanel & WHM, you can obtain one for your server’s IP address. To obtain a cPanel & WHM license, visit the cPanel Store.

Networking requirements

Hostname

Your hostname must meet the following requirements:

• Be a registered and fully-qualified domain name.
• Does not match any of your server’s domains.
• Be a maximum of 60 characters in length.
• Resolves to a valid IPv4 or IPv6 address.

IP addresses

Your IP address must meet the following requirements:

• Be a valid IP address.
• Be a 1:1 NAT and NAT loopback configuration if your server resides in a NAT-configured network.

Ethernet device

You must configure your Ethernet device with a static IP address and fully-qualified hostname. The system attempts to detect and set the Ethernet device during the installation process.

Firewalls

The installer will attempt to open the necessary ports during the installation process. We recommend that you disable OS firewalls before you run the cPanel & WHM installation. When the installation process finishes, we recommend that you then configure a firewall with a third-party client such as APF or CSF.

To deactivate firewalls on CloudLinux 6, run the following commands:

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/etc/init.d/iptables save
/etc/init.d/iptables stop
/sbin/chkconfig --del iptables

To deactivate firewalls on CloudLinux 7, 8, or 9, run the following commands to deactivate the firewall, where ~/firewall.rules represents the firewall rules file:

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iptables-save > ~/firewall.rules
systemctl stop firewalld.service
systemctl disable firewalld.service

Utilities

Each version of CloudLinux has its own Network Manager requirements:

Hardware requirements

Hardware considerations

When you choose a server, consider the following questions:

How many sites do you plan to host?

Servers that host a large number of websites with associated email addresses and databases require more processing power, disk space, and RAM.

What kind of web hosting do you plan to do?

You can run cPanel & WHM with the minimum requirements in the table above. However, servers that host videos, music, or high-volume applications require more processing power, disk space, and RAM.

If you plan to host CPU-intensive applications on a virtual machine, we recommend that you evaluate your CPU load usage. You may need to assign additional CPU cores to satisfy the processing requirements of high-performance applications.

CloudLinux versions

WebPros International, LLC supports all of the official production release kernels for CloudLinux 6, 7, 8, and 9.

To install CloudLinux on a clean server, read the CloudLinux Installation Guide.

After you install CloudLinux, run the following commands:

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/usr/sbin/clnreg_ks
yum update

Convert existing servers to CloudLinux

In order to convert an existing server to CloudLinux, your server must meet the following requirements:

• The server runs AlmaLinux OS, Rocky Linux™, or CentOS.

• cPanel & WHM already exists on the server.

• You own an IP-address-based CloudLinux license.

To convert from AlmaLinux OS, Rocky Linux, or CentOS to CloudLinux, run the following commands:

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wget https://repo.cloudlinux.com/cloudlinux/sources/cln/cldeploy
sh cldeploy -i
reboot

For more information, read the CloudLinux documentation on converting existing servers.

CloudLinux licensing

You must obtain a CloudLinux license before you begin the installation process. This license allows you to run CloudLinux and to receive patches and updates.

• You can acquire the license from your provider or from the cPanel Store. If you purchase the license from the cPanel Store, you will automatically receive an IP address-based license.

• We grant this license based on the static IP address at which you installed the operating system (OS).

• If you purchase an IP address-based CloudLinux license, the cPanel & WHM installation process automatically installs CloudLinux.

CloudLinux 6 and 7

We do not recommend that you install cPanel & WHM on a CloudLinux 6 or CloudLinux 7 server. We will remove support for these OSes soon. For more information, read our cPanel Deprecation Plan documentation.

To install cPanel & WHM on your CloudLinux 6 or CloudLinux 7 server, run the following command:

cd /home && curl -o latest -L https://securedownloads.cpanel.net/latest && sh latest --force

Operating state

In Linux, the operating system possesses several levels of operating states. Each different level represents a system configuration and allows users to access different processes.

Change the operating state

To change the OS’s runlevel for CloudLinux 6 perform the following steps as the root user:

1. Open the /etc/inittab file with a text editor.

2. Locate the following line:

   id:5:initdefault

3. Change the number after id: to the runlevel that you wish to set. For a complete list of runlevels, read linfo.org’s Runlevel definition documentation.

4. Save your changes.

To change the OS’s runlevel for CloudLinux 7, run the following command as the root user, where TARGET.target represents the operating state target:

systemctl set-default TARGET.target

For a complete list of targets, visit freedesktop.org’s systemd.target article.

Disable SELinux

You must disable SELinux to make your system compatible with cPanel & WHM.

To disable SELinux security features, use one of the following methods:

• Use the graphical interface to disable SELinux while you configure your operating system, and then reboot the server.

• Edit the /etc/selinux/config file to set the SELINUX parameter to disabled, and then reboot the server. The contents of the /etc/selinux/config file should resemble the following example:

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  # This file controls the state of SELinux on the system. # SELINUX= can take one of these three values: # enforcing - SELinux security policy is enforced. # permissive - SELinux prints warnings instead of enforcing. # disabled - No SELinux policy is loaded. SELINUX=disabled # SELINUXTYPE= can take one of these two values: # targeted - Only targeted network daemons are protected. # strict - Full SELinux protection. SELINUXTYPE=targeted

  Important:

  Make certain that the number sign (#) does not precede SELINUX=disabled. If a # precedes this configuration option, the system ignores the option.

Perl installation

Perl must exist on your server before the installation script for cPanel & WHM can run successfully. If Perl does not exist during installation, the cPanel & WHM installer attempts to install Perl via the yum -y install perl command.

• If you see errors during this step of the installation process, read our Troubleshoot Your Installation documentation.

• For more information about Perl on your server, and which versions of Perl ship with specific operating systems, read our Guide to Perl in cPanel & WHM documentation. cPanel & WHM servers use multiple Perl environments.

Filesystems

When you install your operating system (OS), we recommend that you use the XFS® or ext4 filesystems.

Partitions

Inodes

In Linux, an inode is a filesystem object that contains the owner, permissions, and other important metadata. Every file, image, directory, email, and symbolic link on your server requires an inode.

• On average, files on webservers are usually smaller than on other types of servers. Therefore, we recommend that you allocate more than the default number of inodes on your server’s partitions.

• If you install everything on a single partition, the base cPanel & WHM or cPanel DNSOnly installation requires at least 1,000,000 inodes, plus at least 50,000 inodes per cPanel account that you plan to host.

Virtual environments

cPanel products support the following virtual environments with the following restrictions:

• KVM — No additional restrictions.

  Note:

  If you use a Linux bridge on a KVM server, you may experience problems with multicast routing.

  • These problems affect the server’s ability to resolve nodes on the network. For example, IPv6 Stateless Address Autoconfiguration (SLAAC) addresses may drop off intermittently, or the server may experience problems when it attempts to find the router.

  • To resolve this issue, set the multicast_router system knob value to 2. For more information, read the CentOS-virt mailing list thread.

• Linux Containers — cPanel & WHM requires additional configuration to run inside a Linux Container. For more information, read our Linux Containers documentation.

• Linux-VServer — No additional restrictions.

• Microsoft Server® 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Server 2012 Hyper-V — cPanel only supports the drivers and configurations that Microsoft® provides.

• OpenVZ — CloudLinux is not compatible with OpenVZ.

• Oracle VM VirtualBox, VirtualBox OSE — No additional restrictions.

• QEMU — No additional restrictions.

• SmartOS — cPanel & WHM detects this virtual environment and reports as functional, but we do not officially support it.

• Virtuozzo™ — CloudLinux is not compatible with Virtuozzo.

• VMware® Server, VMware ESXi™ Server — No additional restrictions.

• Xen, XenEnterprise™, XenExpress™, XenServer™ — No additional restrictions.

Compatible browsers

We specifically test cPanel & WHM with certain browsers to ensure compatibility. Other browsers will likely function, but may appear differently or experience issues with certain features.

We develop and test cPanel & WHM to function with the latest versions of the following browsers:

• Chrome™ (MacOS®, Microsoft® Windows®, Linux)

• Firefox (MacOS, Windows, Linux)

• Microsoft Edge (Windows)

• Safari® (MacOS)

Mobile versions of Firefox, Chrome, and Safari are also compatible with cPanel & WHM.