{"id":43,"date":"2009-12-24T14:08:10","date_gmt":"2009-12-24T19:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.the-greathouses.net\/blog\/?p=43"},"modified":"2010-02-05T16:37:37","modified_gmt":"2010-02-05T21:37:37","slug":"plesk-control-panel-access","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.the-greathouses.net\/blog\/2009\/12\/plesk-control-panel-access\/","title":{"rendered":"Plesk control panel access as a virtual domain"},"content":{"rendered":"

I use a VPS (Virtual Private Server) to provide mail and web services for our companies. \u00a0This off-loads the server and internet maintenance for our high speed internet server requirements. \u00a0The hosting center provides services we simply could not afford to provide directly and at a much more reasonable cost. \u00a0Domain configuration and maintenance is mostly performed from a web “control panel”. \u00a0Low level host configuration control can be done from a Linux command line using an SSH connection.<\/p>\n

The Plesk control panel is connected to via SSL (https:\/\/ URL) on port 8443 by default. \u00a0This generally works out very well, except when I am on the road and find myself behind a restrictive firewall that only allows web connections on standard ports – port 80 for http and port 443 for https. \u00a0When this occurs, I need a way to access the server administration interface without resorting to using my 3G telephone connection. \u00a0 This turns out to be a perfect opportunity for working with subdomains and Apache proxy support to transparently forward ports 80 and 443 to port 8443 on the same server.<\/p>\n

After several hours searching with Google and reading many various proxy solutions and approaches, I discovered a posting on theBartels.de<\/a>, Running Plesk on Port 443<\/a>, that covered my requirements and almost worked for me. \u00a0I recommend reading the excellent information provided in the post to better understand what I have done.<\/p>\n

Requirements:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Apache web server with mod_proxy support enabled<\/li>\n
  2. Virtual hosting system that uses Plesk and allows subdomain creation<\/li>\n
  3. Access to the subdomain configuration files<\/li>\n
  4. Command line access for Plesk and Apache configuration update<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Note: In the configuration description, I use example.net<\/span> to represent the domain to have control panel access configured and <\/em>plesk.example.net to represent the new subdomain for accessing the control panel. \u00a0Use your own domain naming as appropriate and desired.
    \n<\/em><\/p>\n

    Configuration steps:<\/strong><\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Create a subdomain (plesk.example.net<\/em>) with SSL support using the Plesk control panel<\/li>\n
    2. Create a file called in\/var\/www\/vhosts\/example.net<\/em>\/subdomains\/plesk<\/em>\/conf\/ called vhost.conf with the following content<\/li>\n

      ProxyPass \/ https:\/\/localhost:8443\/
      \n<\/span> <\/span><\/code><\/p>\n

      <Location \/>
      \nProxyPassReverse \/
      \n<\/Location>
      \n<\/span> <\/span><\/code><\/p>\n

      SSLProxyEngine On
      \n<\/span> <\/span><\/code><\/p>\n

      <Proxy *>
      \nOrder deny,allow
      \nDeny from all
      \nAllow from all
      \n<\/Proxy><\/span><\/code><\/p>\n

    3. Login via SSH as an administrative user and reconfigure the domain from the command line using:\n
        \/usr\/local\/psa\/admin\/sbin\/websrvmng –reconfigure-vhost –vhost-name=<\/span>example.net<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/ol>\n

          \n<\/em><\/span><\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
        1. From the command line, reload Apache configuration using the appropriate command depending on your Apache installation:<\/span><\/li>\n

          \/etc\/init.d\/apache2 reload<\/code><\/span>
          \nor
          \n \/etc\/init.d\/httpd reload<\/code><\/span><\/p>\n

          <\/em><\/p>\n

          <\/p>\n

        2. \n
          Test your Plesk control panel access using the new subdomain you configured by opening your browser and connection to https:\/\/<\/span>plesk.example.net<\/em>\/<\/span><\/div>\n<\/li>\n

          <\/em><\/ol>\n

          <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I use a VPS (Virtual Private Server) to provide mail and web services for our companies. \u00a0This off-loads the server …Continue reading →<\/a>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[17,36,11,12,13,16,15,14],"class_list":["post-43","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geek","tag-apache","tag-geek","tag-http","tag-https","tag-plesk","tag-proxy","tag-virtual-hosting","tag-vps"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-greathouses.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-greathouses.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-greathouses.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-greathouses.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-greathouses.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-greathouses.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-greathouses.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions\/58"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-greathouses.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-greathouses.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-greathouses.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}