I recently purchased a V.P.S because one of my websites started to grow, I went for an unmanaged package to try things out before I deployed my website to the world.

I decided to try free web control panels because I didn’t want to pay an extra licensing fee for others, so I first installed Ispconfig 3 but it was very buggy so I decided to uninstall and try out ZPanel which was also too buggy for my liking and their forum was hard to use because they changed all their thread URLs, so if you get 404s from search engines then this is the reason.kloxo installation problems

Then I installed Kloxo to administer my new V.P.S, the installation on my CentOS 5 32bit Standard was fine but a few things still needed tweaking after the installation.

I have successfully set up Kloxo and I am using WordPress Multisite without any glitches so far, this tutorial isn’t exclusively for WordPress Multisite and can be used to configure Kloxo to a working state.

I am using CentOS 5, 32bit Standard and my version of Kloxo is 6.1.12 stable.

If you are having problems with Kloxo after installing it like I did, then you should read on as I have a number of fixes listed.

Here’s a list of things that didn’t work automatically, you can view the solutions below.

  1. DNS didn’t resolve after Kloxo install
  2. after adding a domain as admin it didn’t root, I got the default Apache Server screen
  3. Email wasn’t sending, Kloxo installs qmail
  4. ftp wasn’t connecting
  5. configure wildcard DNS for WordPress Multisite on Kloxo

Disclaimer: you should have a fair knowledge of working with SSH and its commands before attempting to use this guide though I hope it will work for you because it did for me. I take no responsibility for any misconfiguration/downtime should you encounter any, the purpose of this tutorial is to only serve as a pointer for those who wish to use it.

DNS Problems with Kloxo

First thing you have to do to make your domain point to your VPS is, add the new name servers at your domain registrar, here’s how to do it for GoDaddy and 123reg/Webfusion.

To point your domain to your VPS from reseller club, you’ll need to login as a reseller and then, find the domain you want to point, click on child name servers, you’ll get a pop-up screen asking you to insert the hostname and IP address of your server. Add the desired host names i.e. ns1.example.com followed by an IP address i.e. 192.168.1.2 (this’ll be your VPS IP). You’ll need to add two host names both can be the same IP address but different host names, click save and now click on nameservers and add those two host names that you created in the child name servers.

So the above again (to point domain name from resellerclub to VPS) :

  1. Login to reseller club
  2. find the domain you want to host on your VPS
  3. click on child name servers
  4. add two hostnames (ns1.example.com, ns2.example.com) one after the other with the IP address of VPS and click save on each row
  5. Close the pop-up window and click on name servers for the same domain
  6. now add the host names that you just created as name servers, click on update name servers.

It usually takes 48 hours to propagate because of DNS caching, though if it is the first time you change the nameservers then it can be instant but don’t hold your breath just incase.

You’ll now need to add a domain via your Kloxo admin panel, when you try to add a domain name for the first time you’ll get a warning message which will say ‘you need to configure your DNS template’, make sure to do that.

If you have correctly set up the DNS template in Kloxo, you’ll notice that even if it has propagated your domain still won’t resolve. This is because for some reason bind doesn’t start automatically, well in my case it didn’t.

You can check the status of bind via SSH and see if bind is running by issuing this command:

# service named status

If your installation was like mine you’ll see that bind is turned off. To fix this DNS problem you will need to login as root via SSH and run the following command:

# service named start

Now try the bind status command (as above) again now you’ll see that it is on and you should, if your name servers have propagated properly be able to browse to your domain name and see a splash page, it was the Apache splash screen in my case and not the default Kloxo page. To fix this issue either restart Apache or carrying reading.

Apache Test Page Instead of Website

So now that you have configured your domain and DNS, you are faced with another problem which is, when you go to your domain name through your browser you can see the Apache test page and not your uploaded files or the Kloxo test page.

If you have added your domain as Kloxo admin then you’ll face this problem, but if you add a client (customer) user first then add the domain name as the newly created user, it should root properly. If you do all that correctly you will be able to see the Kloxo test page, what happened in my case was that even when I uploaded my website files I still couldn’t get rid off the Kloxo test page. So I had to reboot the server which can be done via your control panel or to reboot your CentOS server via SSH issue the following:

# /sbin/reboot

After the restart you should be able to view your uploaded website.

Email Not Sending with Kloxo

So now that the website was running I needed to send emails using Kloxo, well via an email client (RoundCube/Horde) through Kloxo CP.

I couldn’t even log in to email accounts, after a few searches I found a way to make qmail work with Kloxo, make sure you have created email addresses and have tested it by logging in to see if it has worked before you try this!

Initially I got an error when I tried to login to my webmail via RoundCube: connection to storage failed.

First back up the old and then copy the service and then restart qmail. (Command below)

To resolve this issue, run the following via SSH:

# mv /etc/rc.d/init.d/qmail /etc/rc.d/init.d/qmail.bck
# cp -f /usr/local/lxlabs/kloxo/file/qmail.init /etc/rc.d/init.d/qmail
# service qmail restart

Ftp Problems with Kloxo

Though there is an online file manager with Kloxo, you’ll definetly want to use Ftp, however when I added a ftp user I couldn’t connect as there is a known bug using ftp with Kloxo after a fresh install. I first got a connection refused error and then after the fix it returned a permission denied error. Here’s what you’ll have to do to fix it.

Via SSH run the following:

#yum -y downgrade pure-ftpd
#sh /script/upcp
#sh /script/cleanup
#yum -y update
#service xinetd restart

This should resolve your ftp problem if it doesn’t you will need to login into Kloxo admin Panel and re-enter or change the password for the same user and that should do it.

Wildcard DNS for WordPress Multisite

If you are going to be using wildcard subdomains on a WordPress multisite installation then you will need to add a wildcard (*) sub domain to your DNS records, however in Kloxo the process is a little different.

To configure subdomains as wildcard (*) you will need to add a server alias in Kloxo, usually you will add a wildcard DNS record in CPanel etc but in Kloxo you will need to add a server alias instead of manage DNS.

The server alias option is located under the extra section, to find it you will need to click on the domain you want to add an alias for, then look for server alias under extra. Then in the empty field just add an asterisk (*) and click on add, and kloxo will do the rest for you and now should be able to use wildcard subdomains for your WordPress multisite using Kloxo. So here are the instructions again if the above is a little complicated.

  1. click on the domain you want to use
  2. click on extra
  3. find server alias
  4. in the empty field add and asterisk (*)
  5. click add.

I hope you found this tutorial useful to trouble shoot your Kloxo CP problems and please let me know how you get on and if you have any other tips.