ISPConfig/Installation/Basis

This tutorial shows how to prepare a Debian 10 server (with Apache2, BIND, Dovecot) for the installation of ISPConfig 3.1, and how to install ISPConfig. The web hosting control panel ISPConfig 3 allows you to configure the following services through a web browser: Apache or nginx web server, Postfix mail server, Courier or Dovecot IMAP/POP3 server, MySQL, BIND or MyDNS nameserver, PureFTPd, SpamAssassin, ClamAV, and many more. This setup covers Apache (instead of nginx), BIND, and Dovecot.

Preliminary Note

In this tutorial, I will use the hostname server1.

example.com with the IP address 192.168.0.100 and the gateway 192.168.0.1.
These settings might differ for you, so you have to replace them where appropriate.
Before proceeding further you need to have a minimal installation of Debian 10.
This might be a Debian minimal image from your Hosting provider or you use the Minimal Debian Server tutorial to set up the base system.

All commands below are run as root user.
Either log in as root user directly or log in as your normal user and then use the command

$ su -

to become root user on your server before you proceed.

IMPORTANT: You must use 'su -' and not just 'su', otherwise your PATH variable is set wrong.

SSH server

If you did not install the OpenSSH server during the system installation, you can do it now:

# apt install ssh openssh-server

From now on you can use an SSH client such as PuTTY and connect from your workstation to your Debian 9 server and follow the remaining steps from this tutorial.

Text editor

We will use nano text editor in this tutorial. Some users prefer the classic vi editor, therefore we will install both editors here. The default vi program has some strange behavior on Debian and Ubuntu; to fix this, we install vim-nox:

# apt install nano vim-nox

If vi is your favorite editor, then replace nano with vi in the following commands to edit files.

Configure the Hostname

The hostname of your server should be a subdomain like "server1.example.com". Do not use a domain name without subdomain part like "example.com" as hostname as this will cause problems later with your mail setup. First, you should check the hostname in /etc/hosts and change it when necessary. The line should be: "IP Address - space - full hostname incl. domain - space - subdomain part". For our hostname server1.example.com, the file shall look like this:

# nano /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1       localhost.localdomain   localhost
192.168.0.100   server1.example.com     server1

# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
::1     localhost ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters

Then edit the /etc/hostname file:

# nano /etc/hostname

It shall contain only the subdomain part, in our case:

server1

Finally, reboot the server to apply the change:

# systemctl reboot

Log in again and check if the hostname is correct now with these commands:

# hostname
# hostname -f

The output shall be like this:

# root@server1:/tmp# hostname
server1
# root@server1:/tmp# hostname -f
server1.example.com

Update Installation

First, make sure that your /etc/apt/sources.list contains the buster/updates repository (this makes sure you always get the newest security updates), and that the contrib and non-free repositories are enabled as some required packages are not in the main repository.

# nano /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ buster main contrib non-free
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian/ buster main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security buster/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/debian-security buster/updates main contrib non-free

Run:

# apt update

To update the apt package database

# apt upgrade

and to install the latest updates (if there are any).

Change the Default Shell

/bin/sh is a symlink to /bin/dash, however we need /bin/bash, not /bin/dash. Therefore, we do this:

# dpkg-reconfigure dash
Use dash as the default system shell (/bin/sh)? <-- No

If you don't do this, the ISPConfig installation will fail.

Synchronize the System Clock

It is a good idea to synchronize the system clock with an NTP (network time protocol) server over the Internet. Simply run

# apt -y install ntp

and your system time will always be in sync.