Welcome to today’s article on how to install and configure Sentora web hosting panel build on solid foundations of ZPanel by the original team to provide a robust open-source web hosting control panel for small to medium ISPs. This tool was created to simplify the general administration of web hosting, and to give you easy management of clients websites and data.
You can use Sentora add-ons store to install third party themes, modules, and other localisations. Sentora can be a perfect alternative to commercial offerings such as Cpanel, DirectAdmin and Plesk for the both small and medium ISPs in search for a cost effective, and highly customizable platform.
We are performing this installation on a fresh Ubuntu 22.04 Linux system with the following hardware configuratons.
- RAM
$ free -h
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 3.7Gi 524Mi 2.9Gi 1.0Mi 284Mi 3.0Gi
Swap: 0B 0B 0B-- CPU
$ lscpu
Architecture: x86_64
CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bit
Address sizes: 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
Byte Order: Little Endian
CPU(s): 2
On-line CPU(s) list: 0,1
Vendor ID: GenuineIntel
Model name: Intel Xeon Processor (Skylake, IBRS)
CPU family: 6
Model: 85
Thread(s) per core: 1
Core(s) per socket: 2
Socket(s): 1
Stepping: 4- Disk space
$ df -hT
Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
tmpfs tmpfs 382M 748K 381M 1% /run
/dev/sda1 ext4 38G 3.6G 33G 10% /
tmpfs tmpfs 1.9G 0 1.9G 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs tmpfs 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock
/dev/sda15 vfat 253M 142K 252M 1% /boot/efi
tmpfs tmpfs 382M 0 382M 0% /run/user/0In addition, the following open ports should be open and available for use by Sentora web hosting solution.
- 20 & 21 : FTP
- 25 (TCP) : SMTP
- 53 (TCP & UDP) : DNS
- 80 (TCP & UDP) : HTTP
- 110 : POP3
- 143 : IMAP
- 443 (TCP & UDP) HTTPS
Prepare environment
Login to your Ubuntu system and set correct hostname.
sudo hostnamectl set-hostname hosting.computingforgeeks.netEdit /etc/hosts file and map accordingly.
$ sudo vim /etc/hosts
167.235.68.2 hosting.computingforgeeks.netIn your DNS server, configure an A record mapping to the DNS name
Update and upgrade existing packages.
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -yReboot if needed.
[ -f /var/run/reboot-required ] && sudo reboot -fInstall Sentora on Ubuntu
Login to your server and begin the installation of Sentora and Server Management panel. Let’ start with the downloading of the script that automates installation of Sentora on Ubuntu.
wget http://sentora.org/install -O sentora-installer.shLaunch and execute the script using bash commands shown below.
bash sentora-installer.shThe installation process should begin immediately, it starts by checking if the setup requirements are satisfied.
....
############################################################
# Welcome to the Official Sentora Installer v.2.0.1 #
############################################################
Checking that minimal requirements are ok
Detected : Ubuntu 20.04 x86_64
Ok.
-- Installing wget and dns utils required to manage inputs
Selecting previously unselected package dnsutils.
(Reading database ... 37699 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../dnsutils_1%3a9.16.48-0ubuntu0.20.04.1_all.deb ...
Unpacking dnsutils (1:9.16.48-0ubuntu0.20.04.1) ...
Setting up dnsutils (1:9.16.48-0ubuntu0.20.04.1) ...
...Provide the sub-domain for Sentora panel , if it was set correctly earlier this is just to confirm and hit <Enter>.
=== Informations required to build your server ===
The installer requires 2 pieces of information:
1) the sub-domain that you want to use to access Sentora panel,
- do not use your main domain (like domain.com)
- use a sub-domain, e.g panel.domain.com
- or use the server hostname, e.g server1.domain.com
- DNS must already be configured and pointing to the server IP
for this sub-domain
2) The public IP of the server.
Enter the sub-domain you want to access Sentora panel: hosting.computingforgeeks.netIt will detect your public server IP address, if not correct update to continue with the installation.
The public IP of the server is 167.235.68.2. Its local IP is
For a production server, the PUBLIC IP must be used.
Enter (or confirm) the public IP for this server: 167.235.68.2It will attempt DNS resolution from hostname provided to its IP address. If everything is ok proceed with the installation of Sentora.
OK: DNS successfully resolves hosting.computingforgeeks.net to 167.235.68.2
All is ok. Do you want to install Sentora now (y/n)? yNext you need to provide Contact details as asked by the installer.
# -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--- Please Enter vaild contact info for the Sentora system admin or owner below:
Enter Full name: Josphat Mutai
Enter admin email: j[email protected]
Enter Phone Number: +25499999999
Enter Street Address: Nairobi
Enter City, State or Province: Nairobi
Enter Postal code: 00606
Enter Country: KenyaAfter few seconds or minutes Sentora should be up and running on Ubuntu Linux.
...
Daemon run complete! (13:54 11th Mar 2024 UTC)
-- Installing Logrotate
chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on /etc/resolv.conf
# -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--- Updating Admin contact Info...
mysql: [Warning] Using a password on the command line interface can be insecure.
mysql: [Warning] Using a password on the command line interface can be insecure.
--- Done Updating admin contact info.
# -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--- Restarting Services
Restarting mysql...
Restarting apache2...
Restarting Postfix...
Restarting Dovecot...
Restarting CRON...
Restarting Bind9/Named...
Restarting Proftpd...
Restarting ATD...
--- Finished Restarting Services....At the end, Sentora access details such as URL, Username, and Password are printed in the screen. You will also get important MySQL database user passwords.
########################################################
Congratulations Sentora has now been installed on your
server. Please review the log file left in /root/ for
any errors encountered during installation.
Login to Sentora at http://hosting.computingforgeeks.net
Sentora Username : zadmin
Sentora Password : ZBMDckceVJO5zTy2
MySQL Root Password : zFrG8OB92CenLuYN
MySQL Postfix Password : JZNsisMJBXSeBtEP
MySQL ProFTPd Password : 2GOO5egKpl7ZfT8U
MySQL Roundcube Password : 0aD8wW621y13M5MA
(theses passwords are saved in /root/passwords.txt)
########################################################
Restart your server now to complete the install (y/n)? yAccess to passwords printed out in the screen at later stage is also possible. The contents are stored in root user home directory and named passwords.txt.
$ cat passwords.txt
Server IP address : 167.235.68.2
Panel URL : http://hosting.computingforgeeks.net
zadmin Password : B4wyi2w4yHBC2tU3
MySQL Root Password : VoEJ3BmkLfOszBuG
MySQL Postfix Password : S7xwwjOeP3mSWtjH
MySQL ProFTPd Password : WGc7wRgZ8ogYWXW1
MySQL Roundcube Password : PFtCsDhZRVwsfW3yAccess Sentora on web dashboard
Visit your server on the web browser at http://serverfqdn. Input admin username and password provided after the setup process.
General overview of Sentora web hosting panel.
To apply Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate for the sub-domain used by Sentora, navigate to Domain Management –> Sencrypt SSL
Select “Lets Encrypt” under “Create a new domain SSL cert”.
Choose the domain from the list and “Encrypt” to get SSL certificate configured for the domain.
Expiry details will also be provided for the certificate in use (Let’s Encrypt).
Load the Sentora page on https to confirm if the certificate is valid.
Read the official Sentora Documentation to get a deeper understanding of its products and pricing.
