How to Install Vesta Control Panel on Linux

VestaCP

VestaCP is open source hosting control panel that provides many features to manage domains, DNS, mail, databases, cron jobs, backups and much more. On Linux systems, a control panel is a graphical user interface (GUI) that displays a simplified set of controls for your system.

Control panels are capable of installing, configuring, and updating common software packages and performing Linux system administration tasks.

1. Connect to your server as root via SSH

Communicating with your server is usually done using the secure shell (SSH) protocol. SSH encrypts all of the data transferred between the SSH client application on your computer and the server.

On Linux, you can use a terminal window. On Windows, there is no native SSH client, but you can use a free, open source application called PuTTY.

Enter the following into your terminal window or application. Replace the IP address with your server's IP address:

ssh root@serveripaddress

Note: If you recently rebuilt an existing server, you might receive an error message when you try to reconnect via SSH. SSH clients try to match the remote host with the known keys on your desktop computer, so when you rebuild your server, the remote host key changes. To reconnect via SSH, revoke the key for that IP address.

ssh-keygen -R serveripaddress

2. Update the system

The first thing you should do after connecting to your server is update the Linux distribution’s software. This applies the latest security patches and bug fixes to help protect your server against unauthorised access.

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

3. Set the Hostname

A hostname is used to identify your device in an easy-to-remember format. The hostname is stored in the /etc/hostname file.

Replace example_hostname with one of your choice.

hostnamectl set-hostname example_hostname

You can verify by running the command:

hostname

4. Download the VestaCP install script

Next, download the Vesta Control panel install script with the following command:

curl -O http://vestacp.com/pub/vst-install.sh

Now, you have downloaded the installation script on your server.

5. Run the installation command

To install the VestaCP, run the following command:

bash vst-install.sh

6. Login to VestaCP

After the installation is complete, VestaCP will provide you a link, username, and password to login to the panel. Now, go to browser and type the url, it will ask you for username and password. Fill these fields and you are into your Vesta Control Panel.

7. Configure VestaCP

Changing the admin password

Once logged in successfully, the first thing you want to do is change the admin password. Click the admin link at the top right corner of the dashboard. You can also change other settings through this page.

Configuring services

To view the services that are installed on the server, click the server link from the menu bar (extreme right). All the services are listed, with the first one being the VestaCP server itself. Hover the mouse over it to restart or configure VestaCP. You can configure, stop, and restart the rest of the services after hovering the mouse over them.

  • Change the Time Zone

PHP.INI Settings

You can change basic PHP settings. Navigate to configure Apache2, then configure php.ini. Change:

  • upload_max_filesize to 20M
  • post_max_size to 20M
  • max_execution_time to 300

Configuring the firewall

To configure the firewall, click the firewall link from the menu. All the firewall rules created during install time are listed. You can edit, delete, or suspend them according to your requirements. To add new rules, click the green plus icon and then choose the action, protocol, and port to add it.