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Trying Out OpenPanel

April 26th, 2008

Installing OpenPanel on Debian

Installing openpanel on bart:

E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
bart111:/home/sideshow-bob# apt-get install openpanel
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
openpanel is already the newest version.
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:  libgmime-2.0-2 libsieve2-1
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 80 not upgraded.
3 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 0B of additional disk space will be used.
Setting up openpanel-mod-amavis (0.9.0-1) ...
Stopping Postfix Mail Transport Agent: postfix.
Starting Postfix Mail Transport Agent: postfix.
Stopping ClamAV daemon: clamd.
Starting ClamAV daemon: clamd .
Stopping amavisd: (not running).
Starting amavisd:   The value of variable $myhostname is "bart111", but should have been  a fully qualified domain name; perhaps uname(3) did not provide such.  You must explicitly assign a FQDN of this host to variable $myhostname  in amavisd.conf, or fix what uname(3) provides as a host's network name!(failed).
invoke-rc.d: initscript amavis, action "restart" failed.
dpkg: error processing openpanel-mod-amavis (--configure): subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Setting up openpanel-mod-dnsdomain (0.9.0-1) ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of openpanel: openpanel depends on openpanel-mod-amavis; however:  Package openpanel-mod-amavis is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing openpanel (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing: openpanel-mod-amavis openpanel
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
bart111:/home/nelson# /etc/init.d/openpanel start
Starting opencore-ssl: opencore-ssl.
Starting authd: com.openpanel.svc.authd.
Starting swupd: com.openpanel.svc.swupd.
Starting opencore:  com.openpanel.svc.opencore.
bart111:/home/nelson# 
bart111:/home/bart# opencli[opencli]% update user openadmin password=blahblah% Object not updated: (4098) 49:Error updating system user's password: User not in paneluser group\\n[opencli]%   

Homer: Doh!

Don't know why, but it wouldn't work with "ldap" in /etc/nsswitch.conf, so I removed them and it worked. :-) OpenPanel looks pretty darn good! Its GPL, the term OpenPanel is trademarked, and some of the interface artwork is only licensed for use with openpanel. I'd rather be using Tango anyway.

First Impressions

They've done a good job with this, but as I start work on a similar project, I'm going to try to work more within the confines of existing setups, rather than reinventing the wheel.

The interface is beautiful. It appears to be inspired by Apple's Server Admin, which I've used in the past and while I found it slow to perform over common internet connections, I found it quite intuitive.

Here's a list of packages that were installed within the openpanel meta package:

ii  openpanel                               0.9.0-1               meta
ii  openpanel-authd                         0.8.13-1              authd
ii  openpanel-cli                           0.9.0-1               cli
ii  openpanel-core                          0.9.0-1               core
ii  openpanel-coreval                       0.9.0-1               cli
ii  openpanel-gui                           0.9.0-1               gui
ii  openpanel-mod-amavis                    0.9.0-1               Openpanel module to manage amavis
ii  openpanel-mod-apache2                   0.9.0-1               Configurue the apache2 webserver
ii  openpanel-mod-awstats                   0.8.14-1              Configure awstats per (sub) domain
ii  openpanel-mod-dnsdomain                 0.9.0-1               Bind 9 administration
ii  openpanel-mod-domain                    0.9.0-1               Domain node
ii  openpanel-mod-ftp                       0.9.0-1               FTP service
ii  openpanel-mod-iptables                  0.9.0-1               Iptables Firewalling
ii  openpanel-mod-lima                      0.8.13-1              LIMA mailinglist service configuration modul
ii  openpanel-mod-mysql                     0.9.0-1               MySQL database module
ii  openpanel-mod-networking                0.8.20-1              Openpanel network configuration module
ii  openpanel-mod-postfixcourier            0.9.0-1               Mailserver configuration module
ii  openpanel-mod-softwareupdate            0.8.18-1              Software update module
ii  openpanel-mod-ssh                       0.9.0-1               SSH login service
ii  openpanel-mod-user                      0.9.0-1               User management module
ii  openpanel-ssl                           0.8.1-1               SSL remote access handler for openpanel
ii  openpanel-swupd                         0.8.10-1              swupd

I don't think it likes my openvz network interface as the networking page is disabled, and I can't find any apache controls, even though the apache module is installed (note - when I installed the openpanel package, it removed worker and installed prefork).

Here's a screenshot:

This will go well with RoundCube, don't you think?

Under the hood of OpenPanel

It looks like the opencore codebase is comprised of c++, using the xmlrpc protocol to communicate with its other components. This is good and bad for me, because I was impressed by the m0n0wall author Manuel Kasper's paper on the next generation of m0n0wall which was going to use c++ and xml-rpc. Its bad because I don't know c++! :-( I feel that a management system like this doesn't really need to be super duper efficient, so I'd be comfortable working with any of the popular interpreted languages, like perl, python, php or ruby.

There is something called authd which I've never heard of before, and I'm already confused. The openadmin user is stored is nss files (shadow, passwd, group) - and there are plenty of authentication, authorization, and session management systems out there already.

From a process and open file perspective, here's what's going on in my setup:

bart111:/home/otto# lsof | grep opencore
opencore-  9929     nobody  cwd    DIR       0,22     4096          2 /
opencore-  9929     nobody  rtd    DIR       0,22     4096          2 /
opencore-  9929     nobody  txt    REG       0,22   455052     190409 /var/opencore/bin/opencore-ssl
opencore-  9929     nobody  mem    REG      254,0              190409 /var/opencore/bin/opencore-ssl (path dev=0,22)
opencore-  9929     nobody  mem    REG      254,0              188063 /var/cache/nscd/passwd (path dev=0,22)
opencore-  9929     nobody  mem    REG      254,0              202259 /usr/lib/libz.so.1.2.3.3 (path dev=0,22)
opencore-  9929     nobody  mem    REG      254,0              194130 /lib/libdl-2.7.so (path dev=0,22)
opencore-  9929     nobody  mem    REG      254,0              194056 /lib/libc-2.7.so (path dev=0,22)
opencore-  9929     nobody  mem    REG      254,0              201804 /usr/lib/i686/cmov/libcrypto.so.0.9.8 (path dev=0,22)
opencore-  9929     nobody  mem    REG      254,0              201805 /usr/lib/i686/cmov/libssl.so.0.9.8 (path dev=0,22)
opencore-  9929     nobody  mem    REG      254,0              193803 /lib/ld-2.7.so (path dev=0,22)
opencore-  9929     nobody    0u   CHR      136,0                   2 /dev/pts/0
opencore-  9929     nobody    1u   CHR      136,0                   2 /dev/pts/0
opencore-  9929     nobody    2u   CHR      136,0                   2 /dev/pts/0
opencore-  9929     nobody    3u  IPv4   15383737                 TCP *:4089 (LISTEN)
opencore-  9929     nobody    4u  unix 0xeade2400            15383740 socket
opencore-  9929     nobody    5u  IPv4   15708630                 TCP bart111.savonix.com:4089->192.168.1.174:56453 (ESTABLISHED)
opencore-  9929     nobody    6u  IPv4   15708637                 TCP localhost.localdomain:59547->localhost.localdomain:4088 (ESTABLISHED)
authd      9933       root  txt    REG       0,22   147721     190373 /var/opencore/bin/authd.app/Contents/Linux.unknown/authd.exe
authd      9933       root  mem    REG      254,0              190373 /var/opencore/bin/authd.app/Contents/Linux.unknown/authd.exe (path dev=0,22)
authd      9933       root    3u   REG       0,22    60707     185886 /var/opencore/log/authd.event.log
authd      9933       root    6u  unix 0xe411d180            15383747 /var/opencore/sockets/authd/authd.sock
swupd      9942       root  txt    REG       0,22   102772     190412 /var/opencore/bin/swupd
swupd      9942       root  mem    REG      254,0              190412 /var/opencore/bin/swupd (path dev=0,22)
swupd      9942       root    3u   REG       0,22    11600     190588 /var/opencore/log/swupd.event.log
swupd      9942       root    4u  unix 0xea7108c0            15383756 /var/opencore/sockets/swupd/swupd.sock
opencore   9952   opencore  cwd    DIR       0,22     4096          2 /
opencore   9952   opencore  rtd    DIR       0,22     4096          2 /
opencore   9952   opencore  txt    REG       0,22  1810005     283123 /var/opencore/bin/opencore.app/Contents/Linux.unknown/opencore.exe
opencore   9952   opencore  mem    REG      254,0              283123 /var/opencore/bin/opencore.app/Contents/Linux.unknown/opencore.exe (path dev=0,22)
opencore   9952   opencore  mem    REG      254,0              188064 /var/cache/nscd/group (path dev=0,22)
opencore   9952   opencore  mem    REG      254,0              188063 /var/cache/nscd/passwd (path dev=0,22)
opencore   9952   opencore  mem    REG      254,0              194056 /lib/libc-2.7.so (path dev=0,22)
opencore   9952   opencore  mem    REG      254,0              192611 /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (path dev=0,22)
opencore   9952   opencore  mem    REG      254,0              194131 /lib/libm-2.7.so (path dev=0,22)
opencore   9952   opencore  mem    REG      254,0              200468 /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6.0.10 (path dev=0,22)
opencore   9952   opencore  mem    REG      254,0              203316 /usr/lib/libgrace-pcre.so (path dev=0,22)
opencore   9952   opencore  mem    REG      254,0              202211 /usr/lib/libpcre.so.3.12.1 (path dev=0,22)
opencore   9952   opencore  mem    REG      254,0              201369 /usr/lib/libgrace.so (path dev=0,22)
opencore   9952   opencore  mem    REG      254,0              194129 /lib/libcrypt-2.7.so (path dev=0,22)
opencore   9952   opencore  mem    REG      254,0              194130 /lib/libdl-2.7.so (path dev=0,22)
opencore   9952   opencore  mem    REG      254,0              194143 /lib/libpthread-2.7.so (path dev=0,22)
opencore   9952   opencore  mem    REG      254,0              193803 /lib/ld-2.7.so (path dev=0,22)
opencore   9952   opencore    0r   CHR        1,3              184057 /dev/null
opencore   9952   opencore    1u   REG       0,22   334554     188026 /var/opencore/log/opencore.debug.log
opencore   9952   opencore    2w   CHR        1,3              184057 /dev/null
opencore   9952   opencore    3u   REG       0,22    33016     190589 /var/opencore/log/opencore.event.log
opencore   9952   opencore    4u  IPv4   15708639                 TCP localhost.localdomain:4088->localhost.localdomain:59547 (ESTABLISHED)
opencore   9952   opencore    5r  FIFO        0,5            15383772 pipe
opencore   9952   opencore    6w  FIFO        0,5            15383772 pipe
opencore   9952   opencore    7u  unix 0xf415e1c0            15383773 /var/opencore/sockets/opencore.sock
opencore   9952   opencore    8u  IPv4   15383786                 TCP *:4088 (LISTEN)
opencore   9952   opencore    9u   REG       0,22   109064     190592 /var/opencore/log/opencore.access.log
opencore   9952   opencore   10u   REG       0,22    53248     284978 /var/opencore/db/panel/panel.db

While the product appears to be a control panel, its actually a whole lot more, and I'm not sure if I want all that comes along with it. I'm so happy with how debian works, I only want a way to control and configure it better.

Note - there is a ton of javascript which is powering the panel web interface.

¥

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