Find cPanel, DirectAdmin and MySQL Passwords from the CLI (and One-Time Login Links)
Short answer: cPanel and DirectAdmin do not keep the root, WHM or admin password anywhere you can read it back. They are normal Linux user passwords, stored only as hashes in /etc/shadow. You either reset them or, better, log in with a one-time login link created from the command line. What you can read as
October 6, 2026
Server hacked: incident response runbook for Linux and cPanel Pro
An incident response runbook for a hacked Linux or cPanel server: contain it, preserve evidence, find the entry point, decide clean or rebuild, rotate credentials in the right order and tell customers.
September 30, 2026
MySQL/MariaDB won’t start: crash recovery runbook Pro
When MariaDB won't start after a crash, this runbook reads the error log first, matches the common causes, walks innodb_force_recovery levels 1 to 6 safely, and rebuilds from a dump on cPanel and DirectAdmin.
September 30, 2026
Mail server IP blacklisted: delisting runbook Pro
What to do with a mail server IP blacklisted by Spamhaus, Barracuda or Microsoft: find and stop the source, clean the queue, fix rDNS, SPF, DKIM and DMARC, delist, and relay mail meanwhile.
September 30, 2026
Disk full on a production server: recovery runbook Pro
A recovery runbook for a disk full on a production server: safe space to free first, inode exhaustion, what never to delete, and how to bring MySQL, Exim and Dovecot back cleanly after ENOSPC.
September 30, 2026
Multi-Server Health Check over SSH Pro
A multi-server health check that logs in to every server in a list over SSH, in parallel, and grades load, memory, disk, inodes, units, updates, clock and mail queue as OK, WARN or FAIL.
September 30, 2026
Server Inventory Report
A one-page server inventory report for Linux: OS, hardware, disks, IPs, control panel, web server, PHP, database and mail versions, firewall, backups, open ports and pending updates.
September 30, 2026
Restic Backup Script for Offsite Backups
A restic backup script for cron: dumps every MariaDB/MySQL database, backs up to any restic repository, applies daily/weekly/monthly retention, checks integrity and test-restores a random file.
September 30, 2026
Disk and Inode Alert
A disk and inode alert for cron: checks every real filesystem for space and inode use, estimates days until full from growth between runs, and lists the largest directories when a threshold is crossed.
September 30, 2026
Access Log Top IPs and Bots Report
An access log top IPs report for Apache, LiteSpeed and Nginx: top IPs, agents, URLs, fake Googlebots, 404/5xx and wp-login or xmlrpc floods for the last minutes or hours, across all vhosts.
September 30, 2026
PHP-FPM Slow Log Analyzer
Turns a PHP-FPM slow log into answers: slow requests grouped by script, stack frame, function and WordPress plugin, plus pm.max_children hits and timeouts per pool next to each pool's settings.
September 30, 2026
Backup Verify Script
A backup verify script that checks every account and database series: fresh, not shrinking, opens cleanly, and present for every expected account. Anything it cannot test is a failure.
September 30, 2026