Install DirectAdmin on Amazon AWS A-Z Guide

Introduction

This guide shows you how to install and configure DirectAdmin on Amazon EC2.

Prerequisites

Active AWS Account.
AWS Security Group open on ports 80,995,143,465,53,2222,443,35000-35999,110,1194,993,22,21,25,53,587
Basic Linux knowledge
DirectAdmin License

Lunch EC2 instance

Login to AWS Console.
Go to EC2 Dashboard, and click the "Lunch Instance" button.
Choose a CentOS 7 (AMI).
Choose any Instance Type that suits your needs, add storage, configure Security Group, and then launch your server.

Installation

To begin, log in to your AWS EC2 server via SSH

Update your CentOS and install some basic programs.

sudo yum -y update
sudo yum -y install nano wget perl

Enable SSH for root account
```
sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config
```
Set PermitRootLogin yes Set AllowTcpForwarding no

Edit this the authorized_keys to allow login via the root account:
```
sudo nano /root/.ssh/authorized_keys
```
Then delete the lines at the beginning of the file that say COMMAND…. until you get to the words ssh-rsa.

Finally, restart SSH
```
sudo service sshd restart
```
Set your hostname

Assume you are using the domain hosting.xyz, and you want your server hostname set to server1.hosting.xyz:
```
hostnamectl set-hostname server1.hosting.xyz
```
Check if the /etc/hostname shows the hostname:
```
nano /etc/hostname
```
We also edit /etc/hosts to make the hostname point to the server IP:
```
nano /etc/hosts
```
then add xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx server1.hosting.xyz at the end where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is your server public IP.

AWS will reset the hostname every time the server reboots, so we need to fix this:
```
nano /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg 
```
and add preserve_hostname: true below the syslog_fix_perms.

Then reboot the server
```
sudo reboot
```
Activate Quotas

On CentOS 7, xfs is used by default and Quotas are not activated, so you need to enable them manually:
```
nano /etc/default/grub
```
add quota options rootflags=usrquota,grpquota into the end of GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX line, it will look like this:
```
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="rd.lvm.lv=centos/swap vconsole.font=latarcyrheb-sun16 ... rootflags=usrquota,grpquota"
```
Make a backup:
```
cp /boot/grub2/grub.cfg /boot/grub2/grub.cfg.back
```
Generate a new configuration file:
```
grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
```
Restart the server; the root directory will be mounted with the required options. We can check by running this command
```
mount | grep '/'
```
You will see something like below:
```
/dev/xvda1 on / type xfs (rw,relatime,attr2,inode64,usrquota,grpquota)
```
Add network eth0:0 By default, AWS EC2 use private IP for eth0; to install DirectAdmin, we need to use the public IP:
```
nano /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0:0
```
Enter the following content
```
DEVICE=eth0:0
BOOTPROTO=none
ONPARENT=yes
IPADDR=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
ONBOOT=yes
```
Where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is your AWS Public IP, then restart the network
```
/etc/init.d/network restart
```
If you wish to you IPv6, set your eth0 like below:
```
IPV6INIT="yes"
IPV6ADDR=2600:1f16:xxxxxxxxxxxx
```
Setup DirectAdmin
```
echo 1 > /root/.lan
wget http://www.directadmin.com/setup.sh
chmod 755 setup.sh
./setup.sh
```
And follow the instructions. Note when you asked for the network, enter eth0:0.

Configuration

Since EC2 runs on a LAN/NAT and is behind the firewall, we need to configure it.

Enable LAN
```
nano /usr/local/directadmin/conf/directadmin.conf
```
Add this value lan_ip=yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy where yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy is your AWS Private IP.

Link the Private IP to your Public IP using the DA Linked IP feature:
- Add the LAN IP to DA's IP manager. Don't assign it to any Users or Domains.
- View the details of the external IP: Admin Level -> IP Manager -> Click the public/external IP.
- Link the internal IP to the external IP: Select the LAN IP from the drop-down.
- Only select Apache; do not select DNS.
Then, restart DirectAdmin
Open ports for FTP If you use ProFTPD, edit it's configure file:
```
nano /etc/proftpd.conf
```
Add after PassivePorts: MasqueradeAddress xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is your AWS Public IP Add rule to the iptables:
```
iptables -I INPUT -p tcp --dport 35000:35999 -j ACCEPT
```
```
nano /usr/libexec/iptables/iptables.init
```
add $IPTABLES -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 35000:35999 -j ACCEPT below the ftp section, like this:
```
#########################
# ftp
$IPTABLES -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 21 -j ACCEPT
$IPTABLES -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 35000:35999 -j ACCEPT
```

Conclusion

Your DirectAdmin is now operational on CentOS, hosted on Amazon AWS EC2.