SysCP - Blog - SysCP 1.2

Status-report dev-meeting: we're getting closer

nospam@example.com (d00p) — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 16:23:43 +0200

Hello out there,

after a bit of dead animal, we're all set up for the next big step for our next release. What exactly will not be published yet - but it's gonna kick ass big time.

Besides checking all the tickets we closed the last few months, we're also going to re-check service-configuration files and add some minor enhancements to the Interface ;-)

Till then,

d00p

The new shell-installer - These are the features

nospam@example.com (d00p) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:42:52 +0100

Hello SysCP-Community,

as I told you in my last post, I'm currently working on a shell-installer for syscp which will setup and configure all services needed.
This works surprisingly good at the moment so I thought: Hey, let's break some barriers and do some more.

The shell-installer now handles

- full apache/apache2 configuration plus FCGI and SSL (for syscp-vhost and customers)
- full lighttpd configuration with fastcgi and also SSL (syscp-vhost completely, customers are missing some options)
- configuration of all needed services like postfix, courier, proftpd, bind and cron
- save installer-process for quick setup on another server with same settings

I hope we'll finish it this month but it would be awsome if some of you guys could test it on different distributions
so we know everything works out-of-the-box on many systems.

Just visit us in our irc-channel!

C ya,

michael / d00p

Installing SysCP - like stealing candy from a baby

nospam@example.com (d00p) — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 07:17:14 +0100

Hello SysCP-Community,

yesterday I started working on a little PHP SysCP Shell-Installer. This will make the syscp installation as easy as stealing candy from a baby for almost EVERYBODY. It will automatically create all necessary directories and files, run all the commands that you would have to run manually from the configuration-page and sets up SysCP so everything works out-of-the-box.

I hope I can do that as distribution independent as possible (configfiles differ sometimes) and I hope we can get even more users to use SysCP with offering this install-script.

Of course the standard install.php - routine still will be present and usable. Using the shell-installer is optional and not necessary to set up SysCP.

See ya folks,

Michael

Update: SysCP 1.2.19 released

nospam@example.com (Flo) — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 18:30:00 +0100

Hello SysCP-community,

today we are releasing the next version of SysCP. SysCP 1.2.19 contains several Bugfixes and some new features.

Especially the nasty bugs regarding the hardcoded Listen and the incomplete Zonefiles are now fixed. I'm really sorry about this, it's not clear how we could have overseen them.
The fix of the Listen-Bug requires some attention when you are updating your installation, because the Listen statement is now switched off by default. You have two options: Switch on the Listen statements again for the affected IP/Port combinations before cron_tasks.php is executed or restore your /etc/apache2/ports.conf.

Thanks to Michael Kaufmann (aka d00p) SysCP now features a complete Ticket System. Your customers could easily create support tickets which can be answered directly at the admin panel. It's quite self-explanatory, so just try to use it, it's great fun ;-) Please also have a look at the settings where you can change the behaviour according to your needs.

One little thing regarding PHP4: Because the php dev team has quit supporting PHP4, we decided not to go for PHP4 compatibility anymore. Therefore SysCP will only work with PHP5.

All changes included in this release are listed at https://www.syscp.org/milestone/1.2.19. As always you'll find the packages at http://files.syscp.org. Direct link to the tarball is: http://files.syscp.org/releases/tgz/syscp-1.2.19.tar.gz. Debian users will get it with their next apt-get upgrade.

Flo and the SysCP-team

More domain-comfort for admins and customers

nospam@example.com (d00p) — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 17:12:28 +0100

Hello SysCP-community,

what is more comfortable than easily adding domains? Exactly, easily adding a lot of domains ;-)

This is what we'll add to future versions of SysCP - a nice and easy way of importing domains using delimiter-seperated files.
But that's not all - what do you think - we're also adding the opposite: Exporting your domain-lists to a goodlooking sorted overview of your current domains on your system.

This is just a little bit of candy but i think it's pretty useful for some of you guys :) Hope you'll like it ;-)

Well guys, that's it for today, c ya

Michael

// Small add by EleRas: This will most likely be merged to be released in 1.2.20 (not 1.2.19)

Introducing log-feature for SysCP

nospam@example.com (d00p) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 17:49:58 +0100

Hello SysCP-community,

today I want to introduce the new logging feature for SysCP 1.2.x (not (yet) in trunk)

I thought about how I was looking through logfiles hours and hours these days because I couldn't detect what was wrong and why some services weren't working properly. End of story: a colleague changed some settings without informing me and all the log-reading has been done for nothing.

Such thing shouldn't happen, cause for some of us, time is money. The new logging feature logs setting-changes and keeps you informed of what's going on in your SysCP and who did what and where (depending on the log-level). Logs can be saved to the system-log, a specific file, or to the syscp-database. Even cronjob-actions can be logged (to prevent huge logs we allow this only for one run - you then have to enable cron-logging again). You can even specify more than one log-type and e.g. log to the system-log and the database.

It might also be possible - in later version - to define in which cases the main-admin will be informed via e-mail (e.g. IP/Port changed). Maybe some of you have great ideas to improve this new feature for the upcoming releases.

hf,

Michael

SysCP needs YOU for translation

nospam@example.com (d00p) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 10:19:33 +0100

Hello SysCP-community,

as you can propably guess by the topic, we have lots of new language-file entries that need to be translated as the newer versions of SysCP brought you some nice features :)

It would be awsome if the ones who can would help translating because we apparently do not speak all used languages. It's pretty easy, just grab the language files from the current svn-trunk, use english.lng.php as base and easily add and translate the missing parts.

A more detailed manual on howto do the translation can be found here. If you have any questions, just visit us on IRC or post in the forum.

Thanks in advance for helping us make SysCP available for a wider audience.

Greetings,

Michael

I came - I saw - I coded: This is what happend :)

nospam@example.com (d00p) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 19:09:21 +0100

Hello SysCP-community,

my name is Michael, I'm using SysCP for at least two years now and finally decided to join the community three weeks ago.

After a few days on the forum - and of course trying to help as good as i could - EleRas decided to give me a nice custom-title: HelpDesk.
Well, pretty cool eh?

EleRas and I were talking on IRC and I thought: Hey, why not do something you really know about and code, find bugs, etc. And so I did. I started my own svn-branch and tried to contribute as good as i could. I now also have the rights to change tickets and because I was very bored at work, I decided to clean up the ticket-system so the devs have less work and can concentrate on the real bugs ;-)

I then started a new enhancement for SysCP - you might know about it from the forum - the SysCP Support Ticket Mod. I think this is a very nice enhancement for such a great system-controlpanel and I hope it's going to make its way into 1.2.19.

Whatelse happened? Well, let's just say a lot. I contributed some bugfixes and of course some tiny enhancements

e.g.
• make webalizer quiet
• have more than one "files" or "commands" section in the configfiles-area
• have more than one ip/port combination for a domain
• etc.

I hope you - and of course the main developers - like them :-)

C ya,

Michael

(Small add by EleRas: I'll soon merge all his changes to trunk ;) )

Update: SysCP 1.2.18 released

nospam@example.com (Flo) — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 17:30:00 +0100

Hello SysCP-community,

as the last release includes some nasty bugs we are releasing a new version of SysCP now. It contains the follwing bugfixes:

Safemode will be added again to vhosts at cron_tasks, formtoken is now correctly inserted into all admin_customer-scripts, so editing/adding a customer won't end with "The request seems to be compromised." and the installer now sets the mysql-access-hosts correctly.

These are all nasty bugs, so I'm sure all of you will update. But I also want to state, that with the safemode not being inserted in the vhosts your server might have a big problem, when safemode isn't activated globally. Therefore consider SysCP 1.2.17 insecure (1.2.16 isn't affected though) and update immediately if you're already using it!

As always you'll find the packages at http://files.syscp.org. Direct link to the tarball is: http://files.syscp.org/releases/tgz/syscp-1.2.18.tar.gz. Debian users will get it with their next apt-get upgrade.

Flo and the SysCP-team

Update: SysCP 1.2.17 released

nospam@example.com (Flo) — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 19:00:00 +0100

Hello SysCP-community,

today we are releasing the next version of SysCP. EleRas and I attended 24c3 over the last four days and we got quite productive, so here's the result:

This release features many bugfixes and new features. The biggest features we're introducing are: mod_fcgid, mod_log_sql, the support of dovecot, building real zonefiles, ips/ports with own vhost containers, reorganized and enhanced settings, wizard-style configuration, and much more. You can find the complete overview on http://www.syscp.org/milestone/1.2.17. At this place I also want to hint to our blog (http://blog.syscp.org) where we noted everything we did the last days.

Due to changes in the style the cronscript works you have to take care when updating: There isn't one big cronscript anymore. Instead you have to call scripts/cron_tasks.php and scripts/cron_traffic.php whenever you want to process tasks or calculate the traffic. This enables you to configure your system in a more flexible manner, e.g, you could calculate the traffic more than once a day if you want. Please change your /etc/cron.d/syscp accordingly. The complete file can be found in your panel, just click on "Configuration".

You'll find the packages at http://files.syscp.org. Direct link to the tarball is: http://files.syscp.org/releases/tgz/syscp-1.2.17.tar.gz. Debian users will get it with their next apt-get upgrade.

I also want to hint to our new snapshot service, which provides you with checkouts of the svn trunk. You'll find them at http://snapshot.syscp.org. Use the debian repository like the stable one, upgrading from stable to testing is just as simple as replacing the line in your sources.list with http://debian.snapshot.syscp.org/.

We wish you a happy new year,
Flo and the SysCP-team

MySQL access host - was: 127.0.0.1 or localhost?

nospam@example.com (Flo) — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 20:01:01 +0100

Hello out there,

crowds are gettings smaller down here in the hackcenter at 24c3 but we are still here and coding for eternity (or so... :-P)

I just committed a patch that allows you to specify more than one host as access host from which your mysql users might access their accounts on the mysql server. This hopefully fixes now all the problems many of you had with localhost vs 127.0.0.1 - now you could just add both (which will also happen automatically if you're just trying to add one of them).

Greets, Flo

Just learned ;)

nospam@example.com (EleRas) — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 16:38:51 +0100

Heyho,

Coming from the Ruby on Rails Security - Talk and just implemented one thing we should block in SysCP, too: Cross-Site Request Forgery.

From changeset 1353 onwards, every important form (adding, editing, deleting, ...) you'll get will have a one-time-token. The token we gave the form is stored inside the database and compared to the one the user send in. If those don't match, your request will be cancelled and you will be logged out.

That's it for now - SysCP is a bit safer ;)

So long,
Florian

Apache2-directory-style configs

nospam@example.com (Flo) — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 15:23:18 +0100

Good morning everyone ;)

4th and last day of 24c3, still sitting in the hackcenter coding for you, even after very little sleep :-)

I just implemented apache2-directory-style configs, so SysCP is now also capable of creating single files for every vhost or diroption. Just specify a directory instead of a filename at the fields in admin_settings and you're ready to go. (You'll most likely want to enter /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/ here, at least if you're using etch)

That's it for now.
Greets, Flo

Crashing cronjobs

nospam@example.com (EleRas) — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 20:02:28 +0100

Hey again,

After a short lose of internet-connectivity, another bigger change:
Our cronscript is splitted into cron_tasks.php, cron_traffic.php and cron_traffic_report.php since some SVN-versions. In every script the same cronscript-header including the functions, creating database-connection etc was written. Now this is moved to a seperate file for easier maintenance. At the same time, I switch to another check if the old script died: checking the pid. This idea was proposed by wese in our forums. I only extended his patch to check some conditions where we really need to have the old lockfile.

I also changed the intending to tabs again, flo and I find this more useful and flexible.

So long,
EleRas

Patched through...

nospam@example.com (Flo) — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 16:20:54 +0100

Hello everybody out there,

now we're changing roles: EleRas is patching and I'm the secretary :)
He just integrated duergner's Create-Email-Address-Patch into trunk, enhanced by an option to switch it on/off, disabled by default.

The patch adds an option at the add-email-account interface where you can specify an email address to which the password of the newly created account should be sent. Additionally a random password will be created in the case you left the field empty. This can be quite useful if you want to create an email account for a friend or business partner or so...

Greetings from 24c3!
Flo