Documentation

CyberPanel

CyberPanel is an open-source control panel for web hosting. Provibr talks to its API with the login of your main administrator and manages the websites on it: creating them, suspending and resuming them, moving them to another package, and removing them.

Switch API access on

On a fresh CyberPanel the API is switched off, and that holds for your main administrator too. You turn it on in the panel under Users, API Access, for the user admin. Nothing else is needed: Provibr signs in with the login you already have.

Leave it off and every call comes back as API Access Disabled, whatever you filled in. CyberPanel checks that switch before it checks the password, so a correct password gives exactly the same answer as a wrong one. Everything points at your credentials while the problem sits one checkbox further along.

The main administrator has to be called admin

Part of the CyberPanel API refuses every name other than admin, and that is the part which lists the websites on the panel and reports how far a new one has come. Provibr needs both, so the account you fill in below is the one called admin.

This is not a setting but a condition, and it comes from CyberPanel rather than from us: an administrator that was renamed cannot be used for this integration. The connection test says so, so you find out before your first order does.

What Provibr asks for

Four fields. The agent keeps them in its own vault on your host; Provibr cannot read them back.

The address of the panel including the port, for example https://panel.example.com:8090. Leave the port out and Provibr fills in 8090. Plain http is refused: that port speaks TLS and nothing else.
The name of the main administrator, which is admin.
The password of that administrator.
The SHA-256 fingerprint of the certificate, as long as the panel uses the self-signed one.

CyberPanel has no API token that covers these commands: inside its own API the token route is on or off per endpoint, and the four that create, suspend, repackage and remove a website all ask for the password. So this is the full password of your main administrator, the same situation as with Webmin.

The certificate

Every fresh CyberPanel presents the same self-signed certificate, made out to www.example.com and signed by CyberPanel itself. A browser therefore calls it wrong rather than self-signed, and the chain never verifies. Fill in the fingerprint and the agent trusts that one certificate instead of switching verification off. You read it from any machine that can reach the panel:

shell

openssl s_client -connect <host>:8090 </dev/null 2>/dev/null | \
  openssl x509 -noout -fingerprint -sha256

Commands and terminal output are in English everywhere, in the panel and in these pages. One text, one truth: what you read here is literally what your host will print back.

Put a certificate of your own on the hostname of the panel and the chain verifies by itself; leave the field empty then. That is the better choice there, because such a certificate is replaced now and again and a pinned one would have to be filled in here every time.

Packages

CyberPanel describes what a website may use in a package. Provibr reads that list and refers to a package by name; the packages themselves are made and changed in CyberPanel, not here.

A web hosting plan in Provibr points at one package on one integration. That is what your customer orders, and you set the price yourself.

Moving a website to another package changes the bookkeeping and nothing else. Measured from inside the server with a package that carried different limits: the disk quota stayed as it was and the web server configuration kept the old values. The panel shows the new name, so read that name as administration and not as a limit that moved along with it.

What an order sends along

A website on CyberPanel is addressed by its domain, and that is its identity in Provibr as well. An order carries four things:

The domain. It has to be free on the panel, and everything Provibr does with this server afterwards points at it.
A contact address for the website.
The package the website goes on.
A password for the panel login that CyberPanel creates underneath the website.

Creating takes about fifty seconds on CyberPanel, of which some twenty-eight go into an SSL attempt that the panel makes whatever you send along. Provibr waits for the real outcome instead of believing the first answer: that one arrives after about three seconds and says nothing, not even whether the domain was still free.

Suspending and resuming

Both work straight away: the panel reports the new state and its own list shows it immediately. Provibr suspends a website when you ask for it, and when your capacity is exceeded.

Suspending on CyberPanel is a web server trick and not an account block. The website becomes unreachable, but FTP, mail and databases keep working and the unix user is not locked out. That differs from DirectAdmin, and it matters as soon as you use suspending to enforce something.

Disk space and bandwidth

CyberPanel is the only control panel in Provibr without usage graphs, and that is not something the integration leaves out: the panel does not measure it. Bandwidth usage is calculated and then thrown away, and disk usage comes out of a cache that stayed empty on a new website, so the zero it reports cannot be told apart from nothing at all.

A graph that stands at zero for ever looks like a measurement, which is why there is none. What a website may use is written in its package, and whatever CyberPanel does know stays in the panel itself.

Websites that already exist

Websites made outside Provibr can be imported on the integration page: the agent lists what is on the panel, and you pick which of them should become a server in Provibr.

An imported website counts towards your capacity from that moment on, like every other web server.

What this does not do

Provibr manages websites, not the panel: it does not install CyberPanel, does not update it and does not change server settings. There is no console, and DNS, mailboxes and databases stay untouched. CyberPanel can do all of that itself, and Provibr does not drive it.

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