5.2.7. Vesta

Vesta — free control panel with open source code.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu. For more details, see official documentation.

1. Connect to the server via SSH with root privileges.
2. Download the installation script using any of the following methods:

   • cURL
   • Wget

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

   wget http://vestacp.com/pub/vst-install.sh

3. Run the downloaded script (the command already considers the recommendations mentioned above):

   bash vst-install.sh --nginx yes --apache yes --phpfpm no --named no --remi yes --vsftpd no --proftpd yes --iptables yes --fail2ban yes --quota no --exim yes --dovecot yes --spamassassin yes --clamav yes --softaculous yes --mysql yes --postgresql no

4. Answer the installer's questions and wait for it to finish.

After installation, use an address like https://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:8083 to access the control panel, where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx — IP address of your server. The login and password will be displayed in the terminal window and sent to the email address specified during the installation process.

1. In the upper right corner, click "admin":
2. In the "Language" field, select the desired language and click "Save" at the bottom of the page:

1. Switch to the "WEB" tab and click ➕:
2. Enter the site details and click "Add":
   • "Domain" — domain of the site being added.
   • "IP address" — IP address from the list of available addresses.
   • "DNS Support" — disable.
   • "Mail Support" — disable.
3. If the domain was pointed to VPS, check the site in your browser. You should see the following placeholder:

The files for the added site should be placed in the /home/admin/web/example.com/public_html directory, where admin — directory of the user under whose account the site was added, and example.com — name of the domain specified when adding the site.

By default, there will be two files in the site directory:

1. Index file with automatically generated placeholder.
2. The robots.txt file.

1. Switch to the "WEB" tab, hover over the desired site, and click the green "EDIT" button:
2. Enable "SSL Support", enable "Lets Encrypt Support", in the "SSL Home" field, leave public_html and at the bottom of the page, click "Save":
3. If everything goes well, the message "Changes have been saved" will appear:On the "WEB" tab, next to the site, you will see the note "SSL support: Lets Encrypt":In the site settings, the fields "SSL Certificate", "SSL Key" and "SSL Certificate Authority / Intermediate" will be filled in with the data of the connected certificate:

Once the certificate is connected, you can start configuring the site itself to work with the secure protocol. You can set up a redirect to HTTPS by placing an .htaccess file with the following content in the root directory of the site:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R,L]

1. Switch to the "DB" tab and click ➕:
2. Enter the database details and click "Add":
   • "Database" — name of the database. A prefix with the panel user login is automatically added to the name.
   • "User" — database user name. A prefix with the panel user login is automatically added to the name. The specified name together with the prefix must not exceed 16 characters.
   • "Password" — database user password. Can be generated automatically using the "generate" button.
   • "Type" — "mysql".
   • "Host" — "localhost".
   • "Charset" — "utf8".
   • "Send login credentials to email address" — email address to which the database connection details will be sent.

To open the created database in phpMyAdmin, click "PHPMYADMIN" on the "DB" tab and enter the database username and password:

1. Switch to the "MAIL" tab and click ➕:
2. Specify the mail domain, set the necessary parameters, and click "Add":
   • "Domain" — mail domain.
   • "Antispam Support" — enable to check all messages for spam.
   • "Antivirus Support" — enable to check all messages for viruses.
   • "DKIM Support" — enable to configure DKIM. ⚠️ DKIM support is set automatically if a domain of the same name has been added to the DNS system in Vesta. Otherwise, you need to additionally get a DKIM public key.
3. After creating a mail domain, click "Back" or go to the "MAIL" menu from the first item, hover over it with the cursor and click "ADD ACCOUNT":
4. Enter the details of the mailbox you are creating:
   • "Domain".
   • "Account".
   • "Password".
   • "Send login credentials to email address".
   • All data for further connection will be displayed on this page in an additional block. Description of the block with access data located on the right:
     • "Username" — login for authorization.
     • "Password" — password for authorization.
     • "IMAP hostname" — server address for IMAP. You can use its IP address as the server address.
     • "IMAP port" — port for connecting via IMAP.
     • "IMAP security" — encryption type for IMAP.
     • "IMAP auth method" — authorization method.
     • "SMTP hostname" — server address for SMTP. You can use its IP address as the server address.
     • "SMTP port" — port for connecting via SMTP.
     • "SMTP security" — encryption type for SMTP.
     • "SMTP auth method" — authorization method.
     • "Webmail URL" — address of the mail client. You can use the server's IP address instead of the specified domain in the URL.
   • Click on the "Add" button after successfully filling in all the fields.
5. Check the connection to the server using the built-in webmail client or any other mail client.
6. Configure the domain MX records to point to the IP address of VPS for further acceptance of messages to mailboxes located on the server.

After setting up and creating mailboxes, it is recommended to set up SPF and DKIM records for them. The SPF record must be created independently, depending on the settings of the Vesta panel itself. In most cases, an IP address is used, and a record like this may be suitable:

v=spf1 a mx ip4:xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx ~all

Instead of xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, use the IP address of VPS.

Getting a DKIM public key:

1. Connect to the server via SSH with root privileges.
2. Execute the command:

   export VESTA=/usr/local/vesta/

3. Execute the command to get the DKIM public key:

   /usr/local/vesta/bin/v-list-mail-domain-dkim-dns admin example.com

   In command:

   • Instead of admin — username under which the mail domain was created in the Vesta control panel.
   • Instead of example.com — mail domain for which you need to get a DKIM signature.
4. Copy the mail._domainkey record line from the previous command's result. It will look something like this:

   RECORD            TTL         TYPE      VALUE
   ------            ---         ----      -----
   _domainkey        3600   IN   TXT      "t=y; o=~;"
   mail._domainkey   3600   IN   TXT      "k=rsa; p=MIGfMA0GCSqGSIXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX+FsN/9YOMojgLhwMzGDFOFZccPzxiXtRlZ0ek5CXLXgeQY+3HhQmCeJFz5RHykb84s/UGQFf/UyWUJS9o3BTpkWbgC9C4zqYvKTklMI511CEACfm+e07mOdfXjst31p9DP/TkQIDAQAB"

5. Add new record for the domain with the following data:
   • "Subdomain" — mail._domainkey. If the record is added for a subdomain, add the subdomain name to the string.
   • "Type" — "TXT".
   • "Data" — the VALUE string for the mail._domainkey record from the output of the previous command. In the example above, this was the string:

     k=rsa; p=MIGfMA0GCSqGSIXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX+FsN/9YOMojgLhwMzGDFOFZccPzxiXtRlZ0ek5CXLXgeQY+3HhQmCeJFz5RHykb84s/UGQFf/UyWUJS9o3BTpkWbgC9C4zqYvKTklMI511CEACfm+e07mOdfXjst31p9DP/TkQIDAQAB

1. Connect to the server via SSH with root privileges.
2. Install the Bind DNS server for your OS:

   • CentOS
   • Debian/Ubuntu

   yum install bind bind-utils -y

   apt-get install -y bind9

3. Add to Vesta's configuration file in any of the following ways:
   • Or edit the file manually:

     nano /usr/local/vesta/conf/vesta.conf
     After opening the editor, you need to add the following line:
     DNS_SYSTEM='bind9'

   • Or add a line to the file with the command:

     echo "DNS_SYSTEM='bind9'" >> /usr/local/vesta/conf/vesta.conf

4. Check the DNS service in Vesta panel.

1. Create child NS for the registered domain and point them to the IP address of VPS.
2. Open Vesta Control Panel.
3. Switch to the "DNS" tab and click ➕:
4. Fill in the fields and click "Add":
   • "Domain" — domain for which child NS were created.
   • "IP address" — IP address of VPS.
5. On the "DNS" tab, click "Edit" in the domain row that will be used as NS:
6. In the "Template" field, select "child-ns" and click "Save":
7. Go to the "Packages" menu:
8. Edit the default template by clicking the "Edit" button next to the template named "default":
9. At the bottom of the page, in the "Name Servers" fields, specify the previously created child servers and click "Save":
10. All domains added to Vesta control panel will be configured to these NS by default. Previously added domains will need to be configured manually.