Here at Bobcares, we provide Server Administration and Maintenance services to cPanel/WHM server owners.

An error we sometimes see in cPanel servers is : Account Creation Status: failed

This is usually appended with various reasons for the error such as “A DNS entry already exists”, or “Unable to find an IP address” or “domain is already setup” or “USERNAME is a reserved username on this system”.

What is the error “Account Creation Status: failed” ?

When you create a new account or restore one from backup, cPanel performs a series of steps to bring register the account, and bring the domain online.

This includes creating a Linux user, creating domain entries in DNS, HTTP and Mail servers, binding an IP address, and more.

If any of those steps fail for a hundred different reasons, the account creation fails.

Today, we’ll look at the top few reasons for this failure, and the fixes for them:

Resolving “‘USER’ is a reserved username on this system”

This happens because the account username is the name of a system service.

For example, Amanda is a backup service in Linux servers, and if you try to create or restore a domain with the name “amanda”, you’ll see the error:

Account Creation Status: failed (XID tkybsw) “amanda” is a reserved username on this system.

To resolve this error, change the account username to something else. If you are restoring from backup, you can pass on custom parameters to the restore script.

If you are facing this error, and need help, click here to request expert assistance.

How to fix “This system already has an account named ‘USER'”

This error occurs due to 2 reasons:

• Old entries from the same account remains in the server.
• A domain with a similar name would have created the same username.

Three variations of this error are:

• A database owner with the name “USER” already exists
• Sorry, that domain is already setup (remove it from httpd.conf))
• A DNS entry for “DOMAIN” already exists. You must remove this DNS entry from all servers in the DNS cluster to proceed.

All these happen because the same account existed in the server earlier, and was not removed fully – possibly due to a server crash, or a disk corruption or improper migration.

To fix this, you’ll need to remove the domain names and accounts from cPanel configuration files and all individual services (Apache, MySQL, Named, etc.).

Things can get quite a bit tricky when editing service files. So tread carefully.

However, if you need help, our cPanel experts can fix this for you in an hour. Click here to go to our server administration services page.

Fixing “The MYSQL service is down.”

For cPanel to be able to register accounts, all services for hosting should be online. This includes DNS servers, Mail servers, HTTP servers and Database servers.

If any of the service is down or unresponsive, the account creation will fail.

If you are restoring to a non-operational server, make sure all services are started. If you are creating the account in a production server, make sure the server load is low, and all services are indeed online.

In case the load is high, wait for a while for the load to go down, and restart the services.

Persistent server loads or service errors might be caused by configuration errors or resource optimization issues.

If you need help, our cPanel experts are on standby 24/7. Click here to open a server administration request.

Conclusion

“Account Creation Status: failed” is a class of errors in cPanel & WHM servers. It is shown when cPanel scripts are unable to connect with services or if the target account already exists. Today we’ve seen the common causes for this error, and how to fix them.