Basics

This is a common error when dealing with command line software that uses MySQL:

error while loading shared libraries: libmysqlclient.so.14: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Usually this simple command will correct the problem:

cp /usr/lib/mysql/libmysqlclient.so.14 /usr/lib

To find out what packages are installed, you can run a list:

pear list-all

To update the PEAR repositories:

pear channel-update pear.php.net

To install a package, for instance, XML_RPC:

pear download XML_RPC
pear install XML_RPC

Note on installations: you don’t always have to download the module first, but, on dedicated server environments where /tmp is mounted noexec, you may need to download the module first and then move the archive into another directory and install it manually.

If you don’t know the specific name of a PEAR module you want to install, you can search for it:

pear search <name>

To show your PEAR configuration variables:

pear config-show

To change variables:

pear config-set variable_name <value>

Packaged in with cPanel 11 is a new Ruby installer that will seamlessly install and integrate Ruby in your system and cPanel.  To install, simple run this command:

/scripts/installruby

Once this is installed, you can test that it is functional by running:

ruby -v

If you’re more old-fashioned or are running a version of cPanel that does not have the installer, you can  find a manual installation tutorial here.

A new feature in cPanel 11/x3 is the PEAR module installer that allows users to install their own PEAR modules locally in their account.  I’ve heard that a lot of servers with existing PHP installations have had problems getting this to work, and instead are prompted with this error:

X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.3
Content-type: text/html

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING in /usr/local/cpanel/base/frontend/x3/module_installers/live_install.html on line 8

/usr/bin:/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/bin

As far as I know there are two causes for this problem:

1.  /usr/bin/php is missing or is not compiled with PEAR or CLI.  Some servers have a CGI and CLI binary installed, so you’ll need to symlink /usr/local/bin/php to /usr/bin/php:

ln -s /usr/local/bin/php /usr/bin/php

2.  Your PHP installation is compiled without CLI support (–disable-cli), which is common when compiling PHP as a CGI binary or for suPHP.  If you have an installation with CLI enabled you will need to link that binary to /usr/bin/php, otherwise compile a second copy with the command line interface enabled.

There are some cases where you may want to disable stats programs from running for certain users. To do so, open up their user file in /var/cpanel/users and add these lines:

STATGENS=WEBALIZER,AWSTATS,ANALOG
skipanalog=0
skipawstats=1
skipwebalizer=0

Of course, 1=yes and 0=no, and if the stats program is not enabled in the server it won’t run at all, regardless of whether it is enabled for a specific user.

A buildup of spam and trash in user accounts can occupy several gigs worth of space. To easily remove spam and trash from your users’ accounts, you can use the following commands:

Maildir/Courier-IMAP:

rm -rf /home/*/mail/*/*/.spam/*
rm -rf /home/*/mail/.spam/*
rm -rf /home/*/mail/*/*/.Trash/cur/*
rm -rf /home/*/mail/*/*/.Trash/new/*

CPPOP:

rm -rf /home/*/mail/*/*/spam
rm -rf /home/*/mail/spam
rm -rf /home/*/mail/INBOX.Trash
rm -rf /home/*/mail/*/*/INBOX.Trash

To delete the cPanel trash folders:

rm -rf /home/*/.trash/*

Sometimes cPanel can be late with pushing out critical updates for third-party software. At the time of this writing, cPanel’s latest release of ClamAV is 0.91 which was determined to have a major security exploit, so all users are encouraged to update to 0.92. This upgrade guide assumes that you used cPanel’s plugin installer to successfully run ClamAV on your system.

cd /usr/local/cpanel/modules-install/clamavconnector-Linux-i686
wget http://freshmeat.net/redir/clamav/29355/url_tgz/clamav-0.92.tar.gz
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/clamav/clamav-0.92.tar.gz.sig
tar -xvzf clamav-0.92.tar.gz
wget http://missysadmin.com/files/clamav/install2
chmod 755 install2

You’ll need to check the 2nd and 3rd line in the install2 script to make sure they match the old and new versions of ClamAV.  To find the old version, run clamd –version.

AVV=0.92
AVVOLD=0.91.2

From here, just run ./install2 and let the installation run. You can confirm the upgrade by calling the binary with the version switch:

root@server [~]# clamd –version
ClamAV 0.91.2/5186/Wed Dec 19 22:38:25 2007

At this point it’s also a good idea to uncheck the ‘install and keep updated’ box for ClamAV in WHM.

Perl 5.8.8 has a lot of improvements over 5.8.7, and is highly recommended for use on cPanel 11.  Upgrading is simple:

wget http://layer1.cpanel.net/perl588installer.tar.gz
tar xfvz perl588installer.tar.gz
cd perl588installer
./install

Log in as root

su postgres
psql -d template1 -U postgres
alter user postgres with password 'newpassword';
\q

Then as root run ‘passwd postgres’ and reset the password there as well in order to enable the login from command line.