Installing New Components
Ever been in a Plesk box but can’t find certain components, like ASP support, or the backup manager? This is because Plesk installs whatever you tell it to at the initial install, and only whatever you tell it to. This leads to a lot of missing components that you might be used to having access to. Plesk won’t tell you anything in the GUI except that the component is not installed, so you must hunt down this binary:
/usr/local/psa/admin/bin/autoinstaller
This is the Plesk Autoinstaller, which will allow you, through its byzantine menu corridors, to find the gold that is the component you need. Navigating it is fairly simple, although you’ll probably want to read all of the text on the screen if this is your first time.
However, a more sinister condition awaits you – the fact that the Plesk autoinstaller apparently doesn’t know how to fucking resolve rpm dependencies. Why is it called an autoinstaller if it doesn’t automatically install anything extra? I don’t know.
Resolving Plesk Component Dependencies
Luckily, it’s not that difficult to resolve RPM dependency errors. Did you get an error message that looks something like this?
Retrieving information about the installed packages...
File downloading PSA_9.3.0/dist-rpm-CentOS-5-x86_64/build-9.3.0-cos5-x86_64.hdr.gz: 10%..20%..30%..40%..50%..60%..70%..80%..90%..100% was finished.
File downloading PSA_9.3.0/update-rpm-CentOS-5-x86_64/update-9.3.0-cos5-x86_64.hdr.gz: 10%..20%..30%..40%..50%..60%..70%..80%..90%..100% was finished.
File downloading PSA_9.3.0/thirdparty-rpm-CentOS-5-x86_64/thirdparty-9.3.0-cos5-x86_64.hdr.gz: 13%..25%..31%..40%..54%..60%..72%..83%..95%..100% was finished.
Determining the packages that need to be installed.
ERROR: Unable to install the "psa-backup-manager-9.3.0-cos5.build93091230.06.x86_64" package.
Not all packages were installed.
Please, contact product technical support.
[root@host2 plesk]#
Not to worry! First, try Google to find that RPM – Plesk allows their FTP server to be directory indexed, so it shouldn’t be hard to find the exact RPM it’s erroring out on. Try downloading the .rpm file and installing it manually using rpm -i:
wget http://autoinstall.swsoft.com.cn/PSA_9.3.0/dist-rpm-CentOS-5-x86_64/opt/backup/psa-backup-manager-9.3.0-cos5.build93091230.06.x86_64.rpm
rpm -i psa-backup-manager-9.3.0-cos5.build93091230.06.x86_64.rpm
If all goes well, you’ll get output messages listing the failed dependencies. Ignore any Plesk-looking dependencies, the auto-installer actually fixes these. Use yum to install any other system packages you may need.