Building A Web-And Mail Server With CentOS 4.3

hausmasta writes "This is a detailed description how to set up a CentOS 4.3 based server that offers all services needed by ISPs and hosters (web server (SSL-capable), mail server (with SMTP-AUTH and TLS!), DNS server, FTP server, MySQL server, POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, etc.). This tutorial is written for the 64-bit version of CentOS 4.3, but should apply to the 32-bit version with very little modifications as well."

Is ISP Config a bad thing?

[Kadin2048]

I see your point after reading TFA regarding ISP Config, it definitely expects you to install it. But I have to wonder, after checking out ISP Config, if this is a bad thing. It's not as if this is a closed-source or commercial product, so I don't think that the article writer is getting any sort of kickback from recommending it or using it in his easy setup article. It's BSD licensed, actually, so (depending on your personal definition of free, etc.) it's less thorny an issue in terms of use than Linux itself in many cases.

I guess I'm just wondering what the arguments are against using ISP Config, and why it wouldn't be a good thing to use on a production server or why people dislike it. If you're new enough that you're using a Perfect Setup article to build a server, installing a GUI utility (which is all ISPConfig is) might not be a bad idea. The only downside to it that I can see immediately is that you end up running a totally separate Apache webserver and PHP setup for it, in addition to the one you're using to actually serve web pages. This seems like it might double your security exposure, if it's not kept up to date and patched/locked-down correctly.

It's kind of like all those "how to build a blog" articles that tell the user to install PHPMyAdmin in step 3, and then have later steps that are only explained using PHPMyAdmin, even though they could easily be done using commandline SQL commands. I think the assumption is that if you know how to use the MySQL utilities directly, then you probably are above the level of the intended audience of the howto in the first place.