If you are certain WHM and cPanel haven't been installed on your server yet, and that you do have an active license for it, you will need to install it.
First, make sure the server itself is as pristine as possible. If you've had another control panel or other similar software installed, you may have problems installing cPanel. If you've just gotten your server details from your host NOC, then it's probably ready for cPanel right now.
To install WHM and cPanel, you will need to log into your server as root first. Once you are at the shell prompt, type the following to begin the installation process:
mkdir /home/cpins
cd /home/cpins
wget http://layer1.cpanel.net/latest
sh latest
Note that this process is the same for all supported operating systems. The installer will figure out what hardware and software you have and install the appropriate files.
This will create a directory to hold the installation files and then fetch the latest cPanel installer script and run it. The script itself will take care of everything else.
As you can see, the script will warn you about not trying to run this installer if cPanel is already installed, as it will wipe out your existing configuration files. Press Ctrl+C if you want to quit the installer before the installation begins. After it starts, you should not interrupt it for any reason or you may end up with an unstable system.
The actual installation process, once begun, can take quite a while, so you may want to go get some coffee or tea while you're waiting. You won't be required to enter any information at all during the installation, so you might as well relax. The time it takes for the installation to complete depends on how fast your server is. Low-end hardware like a Celeron or Sempron will obviously take longer than a dual Xeon or dual Opteron server. The listed time to finish the install (10 to 70 minutes) is fairly reasonable.
During the installation process, the install script downloads and installs critical files and services needed to run both WHM and cPanel. When the process finishes, hopefully without any errors, you will be returned to the root shell prompt.
If you get any errors during the installation, or if the installation fails, contact your host or cPanel license provider for assistance.
Even if your host has installed WHM and cPanel for you, they may not have finished the process for you. You need to access WHM and check before doing anything else.
Accessing WHM may be familiar to you if you had a reseller account with another web host before obtaining your own server. If you were a reseller, you accessed WHM to manage your client's cPanel accounts. Even so, you'll be shocked at the wealth of features in WHM that you only have access to when logged in as the user root.
To access WHM securely, access the main IP address of your server like this in your web browser: https://111.111.111.111:2087/ or https://111.111.111.111/ securewhm.
You will probably get a warning about the server SSL certificate. If so, accept the certificate and continue. You will then be prompted to log in. To access WHM as the server administrator, you log in as the user root and use the same root password you used to access your server via SSH earlier.
If you have problems accessing your server using the secure method above, you can access it without SSL/TLS like this: http://111.111.111.111/whm or http ://111.111.111.111:2086/. This is not recommended unless you simply cannot get into WHM securely because it is possible for hackers to intercept insecure communications between your computer and your server. The username and password are for the same as the secure login method: the user is root and the password is your server's root password.
Once you log in, you will either be greeted by the main WHM screen with lots of text in the sidebar and icons in the center, or by a screen that is mostly empty, except for some writing in the sidebar on the left:
Welcome to Web Host ManagerŪ!
It appears this is your first time using Web Host ManagerŪ. This wizard
will guide you through setting up your server.
If you see the full WHM screen, then your installation is complete, and you can skip to the next section.
If you see the Welcome text mentioned earlier, click the Next button to be shown the cPanel license agreement. You should read this agreement, and then you must click the I Agree button at the bottom of the agreement if you want to continue using WHM and cPanel.
The screen will change once you accept the license agreement, and you will be asked to fill out some information. Note that you won't need to actually make any changes to this section right now if you don't want to, but you will need to revisit this screen by clicking Basic cPanel/WHM Setup at the top of the WHM sidebar once you've finished the installation process.
These details will be used by the server to contact users in case of downtime.
Depending on which version of WHM and cPanel you have installed as well as what operating system/hardware you are using, the options in this basic setup section may be slightly different or rearranged.
The Server Contact E-mail Address will be the address e-mail is sent to, when there are problems with the server (the server is overloaded, services fail and need to be restarted, etc.). Exactly what kinds of warnings you will get via e-mail depend on what you set in the Contact Manager Keep in mind that this e-mail address will automatically appear in every account's DNS zone on this server . Therefore, make sure this e-mail address is a real e-mail address that you check regularly, but one that you don't mind the public having.
The Server Contact Pager Address is an e-mail address where the server can contact you if there is a problem. Note, the server cannot handle SMS messages, so your provider must provide a standard e-mail gateway for your pager or cell phone. What you are contacted about this way depends on the settings in the Contact Manager.
Server Contact AIM Address is the screen name or AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) username where you can be contacted if there is a problem with your server. Again, contact is governed by the Contact Manager settings.
AIM Username is the AIM username the server itself should log into in order to contact you via that messaging service. You may need to set up a special AIM username for the server. You can do this by clicking the word here in the item description.
AIM Password is the password of the AIM account you want the server to log into when there is a problem in order to AIM you. This password is stored in plaintext on this screen, so don't use a password you use for any other service and especially make sure it is not the server root password.
The Server Contact ICQ item is the ICQ number (another instant messaging service also owned by AOL) you can be reached at in case of an emergency with the server. What you get contacted about depends on the settings in the Contact Manager.
ICQ ID allows you to set the ICQ number the server should log into in order to send you a message via the ICQ instant messaging service.
ICQ Password is the password for the ICQ ID number the server will use to contact you. Again, this password is stored in plaintext on this screen, so be careful with what password you use.
You can set up a default cPanel theme and a default home directory for all your accounts.
The Default cPanel Theme setting allows you to specify which theme you want all new accounts to use by default. This setting can be changed at the time of account setup. Oddly, this item is not a drop-down box of choices. You need to manually type in the name of the default theme as it appears in the List Installed cPanel Themes item in the Themes section of WHM . The default is x, which is cPanel Inc.'s own theme, updated automatically with cPanel, so it generally will offer access to new features and content before third-party themes, which may take a while to update. If you don't know what to choose, x (X-Skin) is a good default choice.
The Default Home Directory is the name of the directory where you would like to store cPanel users' accounts including their mail, web, and FTP-related files. Typically, the default entry of /home is fine. If you have more than one hard drive or prefer that users' home directories get stored elsewhere, enter the directory name here prefixed with a forward slash (/). Entering a name here will not create that directory; it will be up to you to do so. /home is automatically created on all cPanel servers. Also, this is just the default directory. If you have more than one home directory, you can switch accounts manually between directories at any time. However, it is generally not a good idea to move an account to a different home directory unless you absolutely have to do so. This is because some web scripts require specifying the absolute path on the server to some content and if you switch the user from /home to /home2, those scripts will break until the user edits them.
The Home Directory Prefix lets WHM know what directories are home directories by specifying part of the name that every home directory will contain. This item should not contain a forward slash. The default is home and that is fine under most circumstances. Keep in mind that whatever you type here will act as a wildcard selector, matching any directory with those letters in it. For example, if the prefix is home then a directory with the name home2 or homersimpson is considered a possible location for additional user accounts. If you don't put any value in this box, WHM won't look for other home directories. This item cannot be more than a single value.
These basic settings are related to networking.
Minimum UID allows you to set a number under which new Linux users will not create new user accounts. In Linux, every new account and group gets assigned a unique number. Don't type anything into this box unless you know what you are doing because setting this number too low will cause very serious problems on your server.
Main Shared Virtual Host IP will be automatically set to the first IP address set up on this server. You can switch it to any other IP address bound to this server if you wish. Don't try to set the IP address to 127.0.0.1 (localhost) or any IP address not publicly bound to this server or no one will be able to access the accounts you set up. The main shared IP address is the one on which all new accounts that do not have a dedicated IP address specified will be bound to. You may not set this to more than one IP address. If you want resellers to use a different IP address for their shared accounts, you can set that up in the Reseller Center
The Alternate Main Ethernet Device item allows you to specify which Ethernet controller is the public one (the one connected to the Internet). You can leave this blank if you wish, but if you try to add additional IP addresses to this server and that process fails even though you've entered it correctly, you probably need a different interface listed here. Most common are eth0, eth0:1, and eth1, but you should ask your host NOC what interface you should be using.
The basic setup of WHM has options to set up the server's current hostname and up to four default nameserver.
Hostname displays your server's hostname. People who are new to the world of dedicated servers are often confused about the concept of a hostname. A hostname is a unique name for the server itself. When set up properly, you can access your server via one of its bound IP addresses or the hostname. A hostname always looks like a subdomain or what is more properly called a Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN). That is, it has three parts like this: servername.domain.com. It should be a real domain, something that you personally own or have control over. It should also never match the name of an existing subdomain in that domain. You could call your server powerful.myhostingcompany.com so long as you own the myhostingcompany.com domain name. You won't be able to use "powerful" as a subdomain, though, so choose carefully.
When the hostname is set up properly, you will be able to access WHM using the server hostname rather than the main IP address if you prefer. You should make sure that the hostname properly resolves to this server. This means that you will have to set up an A record in the DNS zone for the domain name you are using for the server hostname. Note, changing the hostname in this area doesn't actually reset the real server hostname; you will need to do that by using the Hostname feature under the Network Setup section of WHM once installation is finished.
The Primary, Secondary, Third, and Fourth Nameserver items all do the same basic thing: Set up the nameservers that this server will use by default. You must define at least two, and you can optionally set up to four. Type the name of the nameservers you want to use in the appropriate boxes (ns1.domain.com, ns2.domain.com, etc.) and then click the Assign IP Address button next to each entry, one at a time. This should assign the nameserver an IP address from your server (unless it is already set up to point to another IP address). The box that pops up will display the nameserver's assigned IP address. Once it does that, you can close it and click the Add an A Entry for this Nameserver button, and WHM will set up a DNS zone if needed for this IP address or add an A record to an existing domain on the server if needed. You will need to log into your registrar for the nameservers you want to use and point these nameserver addresses to the IP addresses that WHM just displayed for each one. How you set this up at your registrar differs, so you should discuss the matter with your domain registrar if you are unclear what to do.
This is followed by DNS related Time to Live values.
Domain Time to Live (TTL) def.ines how much time (in seconds) DNS servers will cache the domain host lookup information before checking for changes and re-caching it. The default value is OK, but shorter times will cause the local DNS server to check for changes more often. Shorter values may also increase the load on the local DNS server process, since it must re-cache information more often. If you're not certain what value would be good, leave this set to the default value. All new accounts created will use this domain TTL value when the DNS zone is set up.
Nameserver Time to Live controls the default setting in seconds that nameserver values will be cached.
Master Nameserver is a depreciated setting that will probably be removed altogether at some point. It allows you to set up a master and slave relationship between multiple DNS servers. Don't bother with this feature. If you want to use a separate master nameserver (instead of one DNS server for each server you own), you will want to use the DNS Clustering feature in WHM's Cluster/Remote Access section.
In WHM you can enable or disable an alias for cgi-bin scripts. You can also change the style in which you receive your Apache logs.
The CGI Script Alias setting allows you to set the default for cgi-bin directory creation. If this item is set to y, then every new domain and subdomain will have a cgi-bin directory created so the user can use CGI scripts (like Perl scripts). Setting this to n will turn off the CGI feature by default for new accounts. You can change this setting for each account you set up.
The Apache Access Log setting can be set to combined or access. This changes what is reported in Apache raw logs. Generally, you'll probably want the added information that combined provides.
After making the necessary changes remember to click Save.
After you have finished working with the basic cPanel and WHM settings, click the Next button in the WHM sidebar to continue to the next installation step. Don't forget to come back to the Basic cPanel/WHM Setup later if you've skipped any important settings.
This will start a process on the server that will set up disk quotas on the server so that WHM can keep track of how much disk space each user is using. This process may take a while.
Thankfully, you don't have to watch the display until the process is finished if you don't want to. You can click Next in the sidebar at any time, and the quota setup will be completed in the background while you work. Just don't reboot the server in the middle of this process.
Now you can choose to set up the local DNS server on this server. cPanel uses a program called Bind to serve DNS information about the domains on this server. Generally, you will want to set up the nameserver process.
This should not take long. Once finished, click Next Step in the WHM sidebar to continue with setup.
Now you will want to specify at least two off-server, working DNS servers. Typically, your host NOC can provide you with this information. If you don't have anything else, you can set this to two IP addresses from your own server. However, for security reasons this isn't a good idea, and it is thus best if you can avoid it.
Specify at least two different IPs and then save the changes and click Next Step in the sidebar to continue with setup.
Since every cPanel server comes with MySQL (a database server) set up, you will need to set a root (master) password. Don't confuse the root user password with the MySQL root password. They are, and should always be entirely different. It is unlikely you will ever need to remember this password unless you plan to connect to the MySQL as root. Even if you do decide to do so later, you can change the MySQL root password again at any time. Make it long and random. Include upper and lower case letters and numbers, but do try to stay away from extended characters and symbols, or phpMyAdmin may not be able to connect to the MySQL server.
Type the password into the box, save the changes and then click Finish in the sidebar to finish the installation process. Congratulations on the successful setup of your server!