Plesk 8.4 for Windows Release Notes

Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Installation Instructions
    1. Before Installation
    2. Software Requirements
    3. Installation Steps
    4. Completing Installation
  3. Upgrade Instructions
  4. Supplied Components
  5. What's New
    1. Plesk 8.4.0 build 080505.00
  6. Supported 3rd party components
  7. Known Problems and Limitations
  8. Contact Information

1. Introduction

Thank you for downloading this release of Plesk 8.4 for Windows. This file contains information that supplements the Plesk 8.4 for Windows documentation such as requirements, information on new features, corrected bugs, known problems etc. This file was updated with the latest information available at release time.

2. Installation Instructions

We strongly recommend that you refer to the product installation instructions and the product user manual prior to upgrading/installing and operating Plesk. Refer to the Parallels, Inc. web site at http://www.parallels.com for more information.

Plesk 8.4 for Windows documentation: http://www.parallels.com/en/products/plesk/docs/

Plesk 8.4 for Windows Knowledge Base:http://kb.parallels.com/en/products/pleskwindows/

2.1. Before Installation

Before starting the installation process we strongly recommend that you create a full system backup of the entire server.

Internet Information Services (IIS) should be preinstalled with World Wide Web (WWW) Service support.

2.2. Software Requirements

Plesk 8.4 for Windows requires one of the following OS installed on your computer:

An IP address should be configured in OS prior to Plesk 8.4 for Windows installation. The IP address received via DHCP will be converted into static when you change IP pool.

Plesk 8.4 for Windows can be installed only on NTFS partition.

In order for your server to support ASP.NET, FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions, File Transfer Protocol (FTP) Service, Server Side Includes (SSI) and Active Server Pages (ASP), you need to install these components manually.

In order for your server to support domain performance configuring, you need to enable QoS Packet Scheduler service.

If you plan to use MS SQL Server support in Plesk 8.4 for Windows, the MS SQL Server should be installed and configured to use standard or mixed security mode. If MS SQL Server is not installed, you can select Microsoft Database Engine to be installed with Plesk 8.4 for Windows and configured with administrator name 'sa' and random password.

IMPORTANT: We strongly recommend that you install Plesk 8.4 for Windows on a clean server; specifically, only above-mentioned operating system components should be installed.

2.3. Installation Steps

  1. Log in as "Administrator" or another user with Administrator's privileges.
  2. Change your working directory to the directory where the Plesk 8.4 for Windows distribution resides.
  3. Run the SetupPlesk.exe or plesk_8.4.0_build080505.00.exe.
  4. Follow the on-screen instructions.
  5. In some cases when the installation is finished, reboot confirmation will be requested.
  6. After the reboot Plesk will be started automatically.

2.4. Completing Installation

In order to finish the initial configuration of Plesk, you need to login to Plesk 8.4 for Windows on your host at https://domain.name:8443/ or https://IP-address:8443/

The default username is "admin" and the default password is "setup". Both are case sensitive. For security reasons the password has to be changed upon initial login.

3. Upgrade Instructions

If you have Plesk version earlier than 7.5.x installed on your machine, you need to upgrade it to Plesk 7.5.6+ first, migrating all data, upgrade it to Plesk 7.6.1, and then run the Plesk 8.4 installer.

If your machine has Plesk 7.6.x, 8.1.x, 8.2.x or 8.3.x installed, you will be prompted to upgrade existing Plesk installation to 8.4 after running the installer.

Plesk 8.4 for Windows includes Sitebuilder 4.2 in the distribution package, but your Sitebuilder 2.x or 3.x installation will not be upgraded automatically. If you want to upgrade your Sitebuilder installation, add the following key to the command line of EXE installer when installing Plesk 8.4: WSB_UPGRADE=force

If you have used SiteBuilder 2.0.5 with earlier versions of Plesk, you can migrate web sites created in SiteBuilder 2.0.5 to SiteBuilder 4.2 after you upgrade Plesk for Windows to version 8.4.

To successfully migrate web sites created in SiteBuilder 2.0.5 to SiteBuilder 4.2:

  1. Install SiteBuilder 4.2:
  2. Run sitebuilder.exe utility located in the folder where Plesk is installed with the following parameters:

ATTENTION: If you upgrade from Plesk 7.6.1 for Windows to Plesk 8.4 for Windows and you want to use Sitebuilder 4.2, then you need to run a special utility available in Plesk 8.4 distribution to ensure that all web sites created in SiteBuilder 3.1 (which was delivered with Plesk 7.6.1) will work with Plesk 8.4 after the update. This utility is located in %plesk_bin% folder, and it is called sitebuilder.exe. To perform a successful update, run sitebuilder.exe with --update761 parameter, for example: C:\Program Files\SWsoft\Plesk\admin\bin\sitebuilder.exe --update761.
We strongly recommend that you contact Parallels support team in order to quickly and efficiently transfer your web sites upon the update.

4. Supplied Components

Plesk 8.4 for Windows distrubution package ships the following components:

5. What's New

5.1. Plesk 8.4.0 build 080505.00

  1. [+] Web Application categories - All web applications are now sorted by categories, which makes it easier to choose the right application to install.

  2. [+] DomainKeys support - You can use DomainKeys e-mail sender authentication system to reduce the amount of spam and phishing e-mails that are sent to your customers.

  3. [+] Database backup - Plesk allows you to back up and subsequently restore your databases on a per-domain basis.

  4. [+] Database Users prefix - To make managing database users easier, new database users can be created with corresponding client username added to database user name as a prefix.

  5. [+] Forbid creating domains in foreign DNS zone - Plesk now has an option to allow or forbid users to create new subdomains and domain aliases in the DNS zones belonging to other users.

  6. [+] Application Packaging Standard (APS) CGI support - Complete support of APS CGI applications.

  7. [+] Simple DNS Plus 5.0 support - Plesk can be used with the latest version of Simple DNS Plus.

  8. [+] Component updates - Updates for multiple built-in third-party components, including:

  9. [+] New Plesk events - New API events generated upon domain and client template creation, update or removal are available.

  10. [*] Plesk Management Service improvement - Plesk for Windows has increased performance achieved by moving some threads from Plesk Management Service to regular Plesk Task Scheduler.

  11. [*] Improved FTP account for Backup - Name validation improvement.

  12. [*] Security fixes.

  13. [-] Issue with domain creation through API-RPC is resolved.

  14. [-] Issue with creation of scheduled task on Windows 2008 is resolved.

Legend:

[+] new feature

[-] bug fixed or removed

[*] bug fixed and improvement made


6. Supported third-party components

Mail servers

  1. MailEnable Standard 1.986
  2. MailEnable Professional 3.14
  3. MailEnable Enterprise 3.14
  4. Merak 9.2.1
  5. SmarterMail 5.0
  6. MDaemon 9.6.4
  7. hMailServer 4.4.1
  8. CommuniGate Pro 5.2

Antiviruses:

  1. DrWeb 4.44.0.10170
  2. Kaspersky AV 5.0.0.49
  3. ClamWin 0.93
  4. Merak Antivirus

DNS servers:

  1. Microsoft DNS 5.2
  2. BIND DNS Server 9.4.1
  3. Simple DNS Plus 5.0

FTP servers:

  1. Microsoft FTP 6.0
  2. Microsoft FTP 7.0
  3. Gene6 FTP Server 3.10
  4. Serv-U FTP Server 6.4

Web Statistics:

  1. Webalizer V2.01-10-RB02
  2. AWStats 6.6
  3. SmarterStats 3.3
  4. Urchin 5.7

Web Scripting:

  1. ASP 6.0.3790.0
  2. ASP.NET 1.1.4322
  3. ASP.NET 2.0.50727 (.Net Framework 2.0/3.0/3.5)
  4. Miva Empresa 5.0.6
  5. Perl 5.8.8
  6. PHP 4.4.7
  7. PHP 5.2.5
  8. Python 2.5.0.0
  9. SSI 6.0.3790.0
  10. Apache Tomcat 5.5.4
  11. ColdFusion 5.0
  12. ColdFusion MX 6.1
  13. ColdFusion MX 7.0
  14. ColdFusion 8.0 x86
  15. Microsoft FrontPage 5.0.2.5012

SiteBuilder:

  1. SiteBuilder for Windows 4.2.108

Web Administration Tools:

  1. phpMyAdmin 2.10.1
  2. ASP.NET Enterprise Manager 0.1.3
  3. myLittleAdmin 2000 2.7.r126, 2005 3.2

Database servers:

  1. Microsoft SQL Server 2000
  2. Microsoft SQL Server 2005
  3. MySQL 5.0.45

Web Mail Solutions:

  1. Horde IMP H3 (4.1.6)
  2. MailEnable Web Client
  3. IceWarp Web Mail
  4. SmarterMail Web Client
  5. CommuniGate Pro Web Client

Spam Filter:

  1. SpamAssassin 3.2.3
  2. Merak Spamfilter
  3. SmarterMail Spamfilter

Other:

  1. stunnel 4.07

7. Known Problems and Limitations

  1. Plesk 8.4 for Windows cannot be installed if installation path contains non-ASCII symbols.
  2. Plesk 8.4 for Windows cannot be installed in a directory path with short directory names. For example, you can install Plesk in C:\Program Files\Parallels\Plesk, but not in C:\PROGRA~1\PARALL~1\PLESK.
  3. Plesk Firewall works only if Microsoft Windows 2003 Service Pack 1 (or later) is installed.
  4. If you wish to patch Plesk over a network, you should have write permissions for the Plesk distribution packages (which are unpacked during Plesk installation). This notice does not apply to the Web installer.
  5. SmarterStats user is created with the credentials of a corresponding domain FTP user. It should be noted though that SmarterStats user password will contain only alphanumeric characters and '_' symbol used in place of all non-alphanumeric characters.
  6. If an external Sitebuilder system (that is, Sitebuilder installed in SVE or VPS environment or on a remote server) is integrated with your Plesk server, your customers will not be able to access Sitebuilder through Plesk if they use Internet Explorer with default security settings. To resolve this issue, make sure that both Plesk and Sitebuilder are located in one subnet (for example, 110.57.106.1 and 110.57.106.2). Alternatively, you can tell your customers to go through the following procedure:
    1. Open Internet Explorer and go to Tools > Internet Options > Privacy > Sites.
    2. Enter the address of the external Sitebuilder system in the Address of Web Site field and click Allow.
  7. Plesk does not automatically detect third-party components. Thus, after a new third-party component is installed, you need to go to Plesk > Components Management and click Refresh.
  8. If you run both Plesk and Sitebuilder inside one Virtuozzo VE, then make sure that you allocated at least 700 megabytes of disk space to this VE.
  9. Kaspersky Antivirus does not work on Windows 2008.
  10. BIND DNS Server is not available for installation on Windows 2008.
  11. Acronis True Image Enterprise Server is not available for installation on Windows 2008.
  12. IIS Application Pool crashes on Windows 2008 if RPC Over HTTP Proxy feature is installed.
  13. Horde Webmail settings are missing after the upgrade from Plesk 7.6.x, 8.1.x, 8.2.x
  14. Error message is shown when you install Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and the installation path is more than 57 characters long: see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/935371 for details.
  15. Drwebcom.exe is falsely detected as a virus by AVG, leading to Plesk installation/upgrade failure.
  16. Users of Internet Explorer 6.0 might encounter minor graphic issues when browsing the list of web applications in a specific application category. It is recommended to upgrade IE 6.0 to IE 7.0 or use another browser.

8. Contact Information

Parallels Headquarters
13755 Sunrise Valley Drive Suite 600
Herndon, VA 20171 USA
Phone: +1.703.815.5670, Fax: +1.703.815.5675

Web: http://www.parallels.com

E-mail:
For billing information, email accounting@parallels.com
For purchasing or partnering information, email sales@parallels.com
For technical support, use our Online Support Form.
To report problems with Plesk software, email bugreport@parallels.com
For information on career opportunities with Parallels, email careers@parallels.com
For press contact information, email press@parallels.com
For information about becoming a Partner, email partners@parallels.com
For information on translating Plesk into your language, email i18n@parallels.com
For general product information, email info@parallels.com

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