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                             Control panels redux

Have I mentioned how much I hate control panels? Oh, I guess I have [1].

A simple operation. Changing the IP (Internet Protocol) address of a site.
Make a one, maybe two line change to the DNS (Domain Name Service) zone file,
a one, maybe two line change to the Apache configuration file, restart both
(and maybe add the IP address to the machine, another file and a command).
Ten minutes, and that's if I'm taking my time.

With the control panel C uses?

You can't!

The control panel has two “plans” for websites, a name-based plan, where the
website shares the IP address with all the other sites on the server, and an
IP-based plan, where the site has its own IP address. The IP-based plan
allows you to change the IP address of the site. Except to the IP address of
the box. If you try, you get:

> * **ipinfo—Write service configuration**
> * Field IP Address ( ERROR ): IP address XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX is in list of
>   registered namebased addresses
>

And once a site is set to an IP-based plan, you can't switch to a named-based
plan. Nor can you switch from a name-based plan to an IP-based plan. “Once
created, a name-based domain cannot be changed to an IP-based domain.”
(emphasis added)

Oh, you still want to change it anyway?

You'll have to create a new domain. It can't have the name as the old domain,
unless you delete it first. And it doesn't matter if you try to create the
domain on a different server—you still have to delete the existing website if
you want to use the same name.

Lovely.

Sure, the control panel makes it easy to do the typical things you do, create
a website, with users, and manage email accounts and FTP (File Transfer
Protocol) accounts, as long as you don't mind doing things its way. Once you
start straying from the proscribed course of things (such as earlier today, I
had to create a user account with restricted FTP access—it's possible, but
not through the control panel) things become difficult, if not outright
impossible, quickly.

The inability of this XXXXXXX control panel software to change the IP address
of a site is just mind bloggling to me. And this is not like this is the
first time, or the second time, this has come up—no, this is like the third
or fourth time this has come up since I've started [2].

Did I mention I hate control panels?

[1] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2004/11/22.3
[2] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2004/11/09.2

Email author at [email protected]

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