Wondering how to Install DirectAdmin in ec2? We can help you.

Here, at Bobcares, we assist our customers with several AWS queries as part of our AWS Support Services.

Today, let us see how to perform the installation of DirectAdmin.

How to install DirectAdmin in ec2?

Today, let us discuss about the prerequisites and installation procedure followed by our Support Techs.

Prerequisites to Install DirectAdmin in ec2

• Active AWS Account.
• AWS Security Group open on ports 80,995,143,465,53,2222,443,35000-35999,110,1194,993,22,21,25,53,587
• Basic linux knowledge
• DirectAdmin Licnese

Launch EC2 instance

• Firstly, login to AWS Console.
• Then, go to EC2 Dashboard, and click “Launch Instance” button.
• Choose an CentOS 7.
• Choose any Instance type that suit your needs, add storage, configure Security Group then lunch your server.

Installation steps

First and foremost, login to your AWS EC2 serevr via SSH.

• Firstly, update your CentOS and install some basic programs.

sudo yum -y update
sudo yum -y install nano wget perl

• Then, enable SSH for root account.

sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Set PermitRootLogin yes
Set AllowTcpForwarding no

Edit this the authorized_keys to allow login via root account

sudo nano /root/.ssh/authorized_keys

Then delete the lines at the begining of the file that say “COMMAND….” until you get to the words ssh-rsa

Restart SSH

sudo service sshd restart

• Set your hostname 

Assume the domain is hosting.abc, and you want your server hostname set to server1.hosting.abc

hostnamectl set-hostname server1.hosting.abc

Check if the /etc/hostname shows the hostname

nano /etc/hostname

We also edit /etc/hosts to make the hostname point to the server IP

nano /etc/hosts

then add xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx server1.hosting.abc at the end where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is your server public IP

AWS will reset the hostname everytime the server reboot, so we need to fix this.

nano /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg

and add preserve_hostname: true below the syslog_fix_perms

Then reboot the server

reboot

• Activate Quotas

By default, AWS EC2 use private IP for eth0, to install DirectAdmin, we need to use the public IP

nano /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0:0

Enter the following content

DEVICE=eth0:0
BOOTPROTO=none
ONPARENT=yes
IPADDR=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
ONBOOT=yes

where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is your AWS Public IP, then restart the network

/etc/init.d/network restart

If you wish to you IPv6, set your eth0 live below:

IPV6INIT="yes"
IPV6ADDR=2600:1f16:xxxxxxxxxxxx

• Finally, setup DirectAdmin

echo 1 > /root/.lan
wget http://www.directadmin.com/setup.sh
chmod 755 setup.sh
./setup.sh

Configuration of DirectAdmin in ec2

Since EC2 runs on a LAN/NAT and behind the firewall, we need to do some configuration.

Let us see the configuration steps followed by our Support Techs.

Enable LAN

Run the below command

nano /usr/local/directadmin/conf/directadmin.conf

Add this value lan_ip=yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy where yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy is your AWS Private IP

Link the Private IP to your Public IP using the DA Linked IP feature.

Add the LAN IP to DA’s IP manager. Don’t assign it to any Users or Domains.

View the details of the external IP: Admin Level -> IP Manager -> Click the public/external IP.

Link the internal IP to the external IP: Select the LAN IP from the drop down.

Only select Apache, do not select DNS

Then, restart DirectAdmin

Open ports for FTP

If you use ProFTPD, edit it’s configure file:

nano /etc/proftpd.conf

Add after PassivePorts: MasqueradeAddress xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is your AWS Public IP

Add rule to the iptables

iptables -I INPUT -p tcp --dport 35000:35999 -j ACCEPT

nano /usr/libexec/iptables/iptables.init

add $IPTABLES -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 35000:35999 -j ACCEPT below the ftp section, like this

#########################
# ftp
$IPTABLES -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 21 -j ACCEPT
$IPTABLES -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 35000:35999 -j ACCEPT

[Couldn’t complete any of the above? We are here to help you]

Conclusion

In short, today we discussed about the steps followed by our Support Techs to install DirectAdmin in EC2.