Topic: Multiple Apache Instances for Control Panel

[webmasteroy]

Hello,

I am a fast learning linux noobie, I just setup a Ubuntu Server edition on an old PC on my LAN I got everything working (I.E. Apache2, PHP5, Perl, MySQL, ftp, Outgoing mailserver etc....) that mail server was a real b*tch I had to set it up to use gmail as a smart host.

So my current server configuration handles multiple users with symbolic links.

/var/www/user-administrator --> /home/administrator/www
/var/www/user-brandon --> /home/brandon/www
/var/www/user-neil --> /home/neil/www

I was looking up on vhost for this exact problem I am having, and I see what I have done isn't exactly how most people would have done it so I will probably fix up that structuring using vhosts later.

So what I am trying to do:

I am want to run a second installation of Apache as the root user. Now before you scream at me about that not being safe let me explain!

I plan on creating a Control Panel similar to Webmin or cPanel or Direct Admin. But this would use php as its engine. Now you can't execute certain commands like shell_exec("useradd -u....."); because Apache doesn't run as the root user and only root permissions can execute functions like that.

This is why I would like to install a separate installation of Apache on a port other than that of 80 maybe 5555 or something not used by other software that I might be using.

Please let me know if this is possible, I have searched the web for a while trying to find anything on this and I can't, so maybe I am going about this wrong.

As I said I am a newbie to this linux so maybe software like Webmin and cPanel do this totally different to my knowledge they use Shell Scripts or Perl or Python and I know Python and Shell Scripts can easily be run as a root user.

But I would like to have these functions be executed via php's shell_exec(); or exec(); commands.

Kind Regards,
Aaron

[James Blond]

There is already a tool in PHP which can do stuff like you want.
http://www.syscp.de/
I think it is easy to create such a panel by yourself. But why invent the wheel a second time?


A second thing, even when your run your apache NOT as root, you can put it into the wheel group and run commands with sudo.
But as all others I recommend you to run not apache as root.

at third why did you choose a windows apache forum for your questions?


If you still have a question please post again!

[webmasteroy]

I was just posting everywhere , I realize I shouldn't reinvent the wheel but I am working on my own web configuration, as such I want to use my own very simple panel.

(I can't find any free runs that actually work, properly.)

And I didn't realize this was a windows forum, I apologize I was just trying to post everywhere I could find that talked about apache.