Installing Vesta on the DV Developer

Vesta is an easy-to-use open source web hosting control panel that is compatible with RHEL 5 & 6, CentOS 5 & 6, Debian 7, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 12.10, Ubuntu 13.04, Ubuntu 13.10, and Ubuntu 14.04. It comes chock-full of useful features and packages, and allows you to start setting up your websites very quickly. If you’re an advanced user who wants to set up and experiment with a different control panel, Vesta is for you!

Installation is pretty straightforward. All you’ll need is a DV Developer and SSH access to the server to get started.

1. Add a DV Developer and perform package updates
To add the server, you can contact our sales team (877-578-4000), add the server from our website or from your Account Center. I used Ubuntu 14.04, so these instructions will cover installation on that specific OS Template. Keep in mind though that it can be installed on any of the OS’s listed above!

Once the server’s been provisioned, connect via SSH and refresh the packages and ensure they’re all up-to-date:

ssh root@server.com[c]

<h1>sudo apt-get update</h1>

<h1>sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

NOTE: You may get messages about a GPG error, similar to this:

W: GPG error: http://archive.canonical.com trusty Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY $STRING NO_PUBKEY $STRING

These can be resolved with the following command. Run it for each key string listed in the error message:

# sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys $STRING

If need be, install curl:

# sudo apt-get install curl

2. Download and install Vesta

Now that we’ve finished refreshing the software packages, we can download the Vesta installer using curl with the following command:

<span class="s2"># curl -O <a href="http://vestacp.com/pub/vst-install.sh"><span class="s3">http://vestacp.com/pub/vst-install.sh</span></a></span>

Then, run in the installer script:

# bash vst-install.sh

You’ll see the installer menu:

Put in a valid email address, and let the installer do its thing. You will have to provide some feedback to the script to fine-tune the installation. For instance, it will ask if you want to install bind9 (for DNS). Here are the options provided:

Configuration file '/etc/init.d/bind9'
==> File on system created by you or by a script.
==> File also in package provided by package maintainer.
What would you like to do about it ? Your options are:
Y or I : install the package maintainer's version
N or O : keep your currently-installed version
D : show the differences between the versions
Z : start a shell to examine the situation
The default action is to keep your current version.
*** bind9 (Y/I/N/O/D/Z) [default=N] ?

I put “N”, since I use Media Temple’s nameservers. But if you would like to run your own nameservers on this box, you’ll want to select Y.

Soon after that, the installer will complete and will provide you with the URL to access the control panel, as well as the username and password needed:

3. Log in and get started

4. Explore Your New Control Panel
The control panel itself is pretty intuitive, with the main functions laid out in a logical manner, as you can see here:

The documentation is a work in progress, but there are already tons of good entries. You can see it here.

You can also manage Vesta via command line. It comes with a full suite of commands that all start with “v-”. To see them, SSH in to the box and type “v-”, then tab twice. The full list is here:

There you have it! In as little as 15 minutes after adding the DV Developer to your account, and with just a few commands in SSH, you can be up and running on a Vesta-powered server!