Wowza with cPanel, Etc.?

Hi,

Since Wowza can run as a service, can it coexist peacefully on a server or VPS already running cPanel? There would be two possible reasons for this:

  • To offer hosting packages (lower end) that include web/e-mail/FTP/media hosting in one server or VPS

  • Even if the server is just used for media (or mostly for media), cPanel would provide a nice GUI for domain name setup, FTP account setup, etc.Is this feasible? I have seen hosting providers that do seem to be running Wowza as a service on a cPanel box.

    Thanks!

I have a lot of problems with Wowza on 2 customer’s servers running CPanel. I don’t know that CPanel is the problem, but I do know that there are many cron jobs associated with CPanel and those machines lose ports 1935, 8084, 8085 regularly, they have to be re-opened all the time. I am reinstalling Wowza on a server this morning just to get away from CPanel.

But if you know CPanel and Wowza you might be able to get them to work together. Let us know.

Richard

I think so. Seems like it should.

Charlie

I would love to resolve this. If anyone would donate a server running cPanel that exhibits the issue for a short period of time I would love to debug the issue. I would just need root access to the machine. If anyone is willing send me an email at charlie@wowza.com.

Charlie

Perhaps Wowza should investigate the alleged incompatibilities because, these days, CPanel is by far the most common control panel. I believe it also provides a way for apps to be installed via CPanel which, presumably, would bypass most problems.

I don’t know that one. I’ve used Hsphere and Cpanel, but don’t know much about the backend of these systems. Lots going on tho.

I would just use vsftpd or similar. FTP client to move files and SSH for everything else. If the server is a dedicated Wowza server keep it as simple as possible, is my suggestion.

Richard

To clarify, I do not know that CPanel is incompatible with Wowza or that it caused any particular problem, that I was able to pin down, but there were persistent regularly occurring problems on two servers I manage which had CPanel.

The customer needed port 80 for Wowza so Apache had to be disabled and CPanel didn’t like that. I was suspicious of the many cron jobs, and CPanel’s tendency to complain by email alert, indicating that it was very active on the server in ways that I did not understand or have any use for.

Ports 1935, 8084 and 8085 would become unavailable, and Wowza would stop working entirely.

And in this situation there was no use for CPanel, the servers are dedicated Wowza servers. SSH and FTP were all that was needed to manage them.

So if you have a use for CPanel and it is working correctly and not interfering with Wowza, don’t let me dissuade you from using it. I think you should not disable Apache on a server using CPanel.

Richard

We are using Wowza in a server with Cpanel with no problem.

but I do know that there are many cron jobs associated with CPanel and those machines lose ports 1935, 8084, 8085 regularly, they have to be re-opened all the time.

Cpanel do not run cron jobs to close firewall ports. Maybe your server is running some king of firewall that manage iptables. Today the firewall most used with Cpanel is CSF - http://www.configserver.com/cp/csf.html .

The customer needed port 80 for Wowza so Apache had to be disabled and CPanel didn’t like that.

Go in WHM - Apache Configuration - Reserved IPs Editor. There you can select ips you want reserver to not be used by Apache.

Thanks for sharing your experiences. I’ll check it out.

If cPanel is the culprit, do you think a different control panel (DirectAdmin or something else) might work?

If a control panel won’t work, what do you recommend for FTP and possibly domain management on a Wowza server?

Thanks again.

If the server is a dedicated Wowza server keep it as simple as possible, is my suggestion.

Makes perfect sense.

Would a simple control panel like Webmin (theoretically) work okay on a Wowza server?