As you might know already, it is a pretty useless organ (well, almost), yet it IS present in our body (unless you surgically remove it). The world around us is not much different. Often, when buying things, we receive "extras" or "add-ons" with our purchase. Sometimes they are really free, but at other times they are touted to be free when their cost is already included in the retail price of the main product you are buying (and you won’t even know it)!
Anyway, on some occasions it happens that some of these "extras" that we hardly ever use become a pain in the butt, harming us more than helping! Like, often when you buy a brand new computer you get a Microsoft Windows™ and Norton™ Antivirus packaged as "add-ons" – installed in it, unless you specifically ask the shop owner to give you just the plain DOS! :D
Cpanel™ is a software, and not much different in this respect. It offers you several useful tools; at the same time, it also offers you two useless tools! Now, if the tools were just useless then I won’t give a sh*t, but these two tools really affected my server’s performance to such an extent that I had to ask my host to remove them! Check them out: are they helping or hurting your business?
1. Leechprotect: Cpanel offers a tool called "password-protect directories" which is sort of a "free membership" software to put it in a few words; sure it hardly does anything more than password protecting a directory and monitoring for "leechers" (members who distribute your membership products to their "connections" for free, or maybe simply provide free access to your membership); but for folks who cannot afford to invest in an expensive script like AmemberPro or Dlguard or even the relatively cheaper Membership Ease, and yet want to setup a membership site, this tool comes handy!
Only problem is that the addon tool which helps you monitor "leechers", Leechprotect, feeds on your server’s CPU power like a true leech! Ironical, eh? ;):D
I never asked for it because I don’t use this Cpanel feature, but it came bundled with the main software anyway, so what could I do? :| If you use Cpanel then you too would have it installed automatically on your server. I monitor my server frequently and through my extensive study of the server’s CPU usage I found out that…
Hold your breath!
Leechprotect used up the maximum CPU in my server!
So what was happening?
a) I was not using the damn thing, yet it was killing my server!
b) It was affecting all the websites on the server, and therefore, killing my income!
I did a bit of "Google research" on leechprotect and I found out that I was not the only one with the problem:
http://www.eukhost.com/forums/f29/how-completely-remove-leechprotect-cpanel-vps-12411/
http://forums.theplanet.com/lofiversion/index.php/t61059.html
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=478044
I asked my host to disable leechprotect from my server. Little did I know that leechprotect would come back to haunt me when:
a) Cpanel updates run
b) I import a website from another host where leechprotect was running
There is nothing you can do about (b), except to make sure to ask your host to disable leechprotect each time you import a new website from another server. For (a) however, I simply asked my host to disable Cpanel’s "auto-update" cron to make sure that leechprotect never comes back!
It was WORTH it! Now my server’s CPU usage is normal, and my websites run fine. What more could I ask for?
Note that I use a VPS hosting; I don’t know if you can disable leechprotect form your website if you are under a shared hosting system; but anyway, asking your hosting won’t hurt!
2. Analog stats: This tool has long become dead and useless; in fact, Awstats offer you much more comprehensive stats (than Analog), followed by Webalizer. A trait common to Awstats and Webalizer is that both of them are extremely light and take up very little space on my server – pretty much the antithesis of Analog stats!
In other words, Analog not only took up 60% of my disk space but also, each month’s stats log was so heavy (running into 60-70 MB) that it would take one hours to download and view them!
Again, I am not the exception. See what the populace is saying about Analog stats! :D
http://forums.cpanel.net/f5/analog-stats-huge-file-size-23527.html
So I had to ask my host to disable analog server-wide. That did not remove the "analog" folders from the server’s individual accounts though, so once again I asked my host to manually delete the "analog" folder from the "home" directory of each of the websites hosted on my server. Only then did I manage to completely get rid of it!
So what we have here is two completely useless parasites: one kills you CPU and the other your disk space! We don’t opt for a surgery to remove the appendix from our body just because it is useless; we do so when it becomes a life-threatening problem for us. Likewise, if these tools are not only useless but also a PITA for you, you too should REMOVE them before they suck the lifeblood out of your server/business!
Feel free to let me know your thoughts on this. Just click here to post your thoughts. :)
Disclosure: ArindamChakraborty.com is affiliated to AmemberPro, Dlguard and Knownhost!
Thanks for this eye opening facts.
I only once used CPanel based VPS when I started my IM. It also costs 85$ per month. Gladly I stopped using that cpanel vps after a few months..
Then I used a DirectAdmin VPS later. Cost was very low compared to cpanel vps. It was around 10$ per month.
So I got familiarized with two major controlpanels and found directadmin does things like cpanel. Those who comes from cpanel to directadmin may feel some difficulty, but directadmin is simple to use.
But I dont know directadmin have any addons that uses too much resources or space. Well, I am satisfied with directadmin because it is a good cpanel alternative comes with same functionality and low price.
Actually I had considered using directadmin once but was not particularly sure I could handle it myself. Like you said, cpanel users may find it a bit difficult. Someday I might find time to learn it LOL. My current hosts offers you 3 choices though: Directadmin, Cpanel, Plesk, and even the “plain unmanaged” package.
Thanks for valuable insight. Didn’t cross my mind that some of these Cpanel programs has such great impact on the server load.
Thanks for this post, though i feel this is too advance for me, because about Cpanel itself i still learn from the basic videos lessons. But i believe this info will be useful in my future Cpanel lessons.
Regards,
Achmad K W