How to Install cPanel/WHM on CentOS 7 [Step by Step]

Cpanel & WHM is a graphical interface to manage and host websites on a single server. It is one of the popular web hosting control panel which supported on CentOS, RHEL and CloudLinux. Cpanel & WHM requires a license to work and available to download the trial version for 15 days.

Cpanel & WHM is officially supported on CentOS 7. In this article, I'm going to discuss how to install cPanel & WHM 11.52 on CentOS 7 OS version.

Network Requirements

• The hostname should be a fully qualified domain name.
• Should have a valid IP address, subnet address, and default gateway
• Ethernet device with a static IP & hostname
• Disable OS Firewall

Hardware Requirements

1. Processor: 226 Mhz
2. RAM: Minimum 1GB ( 2GB recommended for smooth functioning)
3. Disk Space: Minimum 20 GB (40GB recommended for smooth functioning )

Before installation make sure the server meets all the pre-requisites.

Initial Pre checks

Check for the IP addr, subnet addr and gateway

The IP address allocated by the DHCP server cannot be used for Cpanel. So make sure we have a static IP with a proper subnet mask and default gateway.

Use ip or ifconfig command to check ip details.

# ifconfig
eth0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
inet 45.79.183.73 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 45.79.183.255
inet6 fe80::f03c:91ff:fef1:78d9 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x20<link>
inet6 2600:3c03::f03c:91ff:fef1:78d9 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x0<global>
ether f2:3c:91:f1:78:d9 txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet)
RX packets 38095 bytes 13241381 (12.6 MiB)
RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 41505 bytes 45527241 (43.4 MiB)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0

Check the OS, disk usage and RAM usage for the server

Our server is installed with CentOS 7.2, having a disk space of 20GB and around 1GB RAM. Please see the results of the hardware checks below:

OS version check:

# cat/etc/redhat-release

# cat /etc/redhat-release
CentOS Linux release 7.2.1511 (Core)
root@server1 [~]#

Disk usage check:

# df-h

Output
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/root 20G 5.9G 14G 31% /
devtmpfs 492M 0 492M 0% /dev
tmpfs 494M 0 494M 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 494M 14M 480M 3% /run
tmpfs 494M 0 494M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/loop0 662M 736K 627M 1% /tmp
tmpfs 99M 0 99M 0% /run/user/0

RAM usage check:

# free -m or cat /proc/meminfo

root@server1 [~]# free -m
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 987 336 275 12 375 607
Swap: 511 1 510

Step 1: Set hostname to a fully qualified domain

This is how we set the hostname for the server to a fully qualified domain name "server1.centos7-test.com" and confirm the hostname status once it is done.

# hostnamectl set-hostname server1.centos7-test.com --static
# hostnamectl status
Static hostname: server1.centos7-test.com
Icon name: computer-vm
Chassis: vm
Machine ID: 72863e389b584a4dab36fae7f3bffda2
Boot ID: 8bd4f714d7ba4ebf9d53f059d0a1fe8b
Virtualization: xen
Operating System: CentOS Linux 7 (Core)
CPE OS Name: cpe:/o:centos:centos:7
Kernel: Linux 4.1.5-x86_64-linode61
Architecture: x86-64
root@server1 [~]#

Step 2: Disable Firewall

It is recommended to disable the OS firewalls before the cPanel & WHM installations. First of all, we need to save the firewall rules and then stop the firewalld service. And make sure the service is disabled.

iptables-save > ~/firewall.rules
systemctl stop firewalld.service
systemctl disable firewalld.service

systemctl status firewalld.service
● firewalld.service - firewalld - dynamic firewall daemon
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/firewalld.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: inactive (dead)

Jan 09 06:50:28 server1.centos7-test.com systemd[1]: Stopped firewalld - dynamic firewall daemon.

Step 3: Disable Selinux

Modify the SELINUX parameter to disabled in /etc/selinux/config and reboot the server.

cat /etc/selinux/config

# This file controls the state of SELinux on the system.
# SELINUX= can take one of these three values:
# enforcing - SELinux security policy is enforced.
# permissive - SELinux prints warnings instead of enforcing.
# disabled - No SELinux policy is loaded.
SELINUX=disabled
# SELINUXTYPE= can take one of these two values:
# targeted - Targeted processes are protected,
# minimum - Modification of targeted policy. Only selected processes are protected.
# mls - Multi Level Security protection.
SELINUXTYPE=targeted

Step 4: Install Perl

cPanel is programmed in Perl language. Hence, we need to install Perl prior to the cPanel installation if it isn't installed in the server before.

yum install -y perl

Step 5: Download and Install cPanel/WHM

We need to download the cPanel installation script into the /home directory and run the script from there.

cd /home
curl -o latest -L https://securedownloads.cpanel.net/latest
sh latest

This is how we download and install the cPanel installation script from our server's home directory.

The script can take half an hour or more to complete the installation procedures.

Installation log:

2016-01-07 07:15:51 227 ( INFO): cPanel install finished in 32 minutes and 14 seconds!
2016-01-07 07:15:51 964 ( INFO): Congratulations! Your installation of cPanel & WHM 11.52 is now complete. The next step is to configure your server.
2016-01-07 07:15:51 964 ( INFO):
2016-01-07 07:15:51 964 ( INFO): Before you configure your server, ensure that your firewall allows access on port 2087.
2016-01-07 07:15:51 964 ( INFO): On RHEL, CentOS, and CloudLinux systems, execute /scripts/configure_firewall_for_cpanel to accomplish this.
2016-01-07 07:15:51 964 ( INFO):
2016-01-07 07:15:51 964 ( INFO): After ensuring that your firewall allows access on port 2087, you can configure your server.
2016-01-07 07:15:51 964 ( INFO):
2016-01-07 07:15:51 964 ( INFO): 1. Open your preferred browser
2016-01-07 07:15:51 964 ( INFO):
2016-01-07 07:15:51 964 ( INFO): 2. Type https://45.79.183.73:2087 in the address bar
2016-01-07 07:15:51 964 ( INFO):
2016-01-07 07:15:51 964 ( INFO): 3. Enter the word root in the Username text box
2016-01-07 07:15:51 964 ( INFO):
2016-01-07 07:15:51 964 ( INFO): 4. Enter your root password in the Password text box
2016-01-07 07:15:51 964 ( INFO):
2016-01-07 07:15:51 964 ( INFO): 5. Click the Login button
2016-01-07 07:15:51 964 ( INFO):
2016-01-07 07:15:51 964 ( INFO): Visit http://go.cpanel.net/whminit for more information about first-time configuration of your server.
2016-01-07 07:15:51 964 ( INFO):
2016-01-07 07:15:51 964 ( INFO): Visit http://support.cpanel.net or http://go.cpanel.net/whmfaq for additional support
2016-01-07 07:15:51 964 ( INFO):
2016-01-07 07:15:51 964 ( INFO): Thank you for installing cPanel & WHM 11.52!
2016-01-07 07:15:51 835 ( WARN): !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Step 6: Allow ports on firewalld

After completing the installation procedures, we need to ensure that server allows the required service ports (2087/2086) in the firewall.

firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-port=2087/udp
success
firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-port=2086/udp
success
firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-port=2086/tcp
success
firewall-cmd --zone=public –add-port=2087/tcp
firewall-cmd --reload

If your server has enough resources, then it is always advised to disable the OS firewall and configure CSF/APF to ensure better security and allow all required cPanel service ports by default. I would recommend to go with CSF for a cPanel server.

CSF Installation steps:

wget http://configserver.com/free/csf.tgz
tar -xzf csf.tgz
cd csf & ./install.cpanel.sh

Access the WHM via the URL

You can access WHM using the URL https://server-hostname:2087 or http://server-hostname:2086

After accessing the URL mentioned above, you can put your username as root and its password to login.

Read through the terms and conditions & accept the license agreement.

Now you can do your initial configuration steps one by one as below:

1. Setup Networking
2. Setup IP address
3. Nameservers
4. Services
5. Setup quotas

Visit cpanel whm for more information about the first-time configuration of your server.

Now you will have your WHM ready to use!!!

I believe this article will be a great help for you guys! Thank you for referring to this. I would appreciate your valuable comments for further improvements.