So if you read my post a little while back about my lasting suspicion that my roommates and I are giving room and board to a few unwanted furry little bastards, I can now confirm that my suspicion is correct. On Christmas eve I was doing some dishes and I noticed that Capone was staring blankly at a cabinet by the refrigerator. After Harley joined him and they both sat and stared at one for a good 10 minutes, I figured they just wanted something in the cabinet so I opened it up to see what was so appealing. I swear as soon as I did that Capone stuck his face in there and Harley pushed him aside and just dove in, pulling out something in her mouth as well as a shelf full of vases that came crashing to the floor.

It was about then that I heard this squeaking noise like what you hear in dog toys, and realized that she was carrying a big stinkin’ rat in her mouth. Though the thing had just gotten caught in a rat trap that our exterminator put in and was well alive and dangling out between Harley’s teeth, the entire kitchen started to smell like someone microwaved a dead fish wrapped inside a tortilla filled with pickles.

You can thank my sister Torie for wanting to document this experience by taking pictures:

So what do blood-hungry puppies do after catching furry intruders? Well, Capone says, “Please sir may I have another” :

Then they both pass out from a hard night’s work:

I can think of a few things that are wrong with that title but in all seriousness…don’t you ever wonder where cPanel stores the config changes that you make in WHM?  Automation is the key nowadays, and lately that’s required me to get a little down and dirty with cPanel to find its deepest secrets. *This information is not official documentation, nor is it backed up by cPanel or set in stone.  In other words, don’t blame me if you mess up your server.

These are files that store the information read and used by WHM (as of 11.23.6)

• The Book of Eli movie

• IP addresses: /etc/ips
• Reserved IPs: /etc/reservedips
• Reserved IP reasons: /etc/reservedipreasons
• IP address pool: /etc/ipaddrpool
• Access hash (WHM remote access key): /home/user/.accesshash or /root/.accesshash
• cPanel update preferences: /etc/cpupdate.conf
• Basic cPanel/WHM setup:  /etc/wwwacct.conf
• System mail preferences: /etc/localaliases
• Exim open relay list: /etc/alwaysrelay
• Server-wide max emails per hour: /var/cpanel/maxemailsperhour
• Tweak settings: /var/cpanel/cpanel.config
• Packages: /var/cpanel/packages/
• Features: /var/cpanel/features/
• User data: /var/cpanel/users/ and /var/cpanel/userdata
• Apache templates: /var/cpanel/templates/apache(1,2)
• Exim config template: /etc/exim.conf.localopts
• Exim mail IPs: /etc/mailips
• rDNS for mail ips: /etc/mail_reverse_dns
• Clustering: /var/cpanel/cluster/root/config
• Service manager: /etc/chkserv.d
• Users and their domains: /etc/userdomains
• Users and their main domains: /etc/trueuserdomains
• Users and their owners: /etc/trueuserowners
• Main cPanel IP: /var/cpanel/mainip
• cPanel version: /usr/local/cpanel/version
• Resellers: /var/cpanel/resellers
• Reseller nameservers: /var/cpanel/resellers-nameservers

These are a few scripst that you can use to achieve the same  results of their WHM equivalents:

• Initialize quotes: /scripts/initquotas
• Compile Apache: /scripts/easyapache  (you can pass additional options – see EasyApache 2 docs)
• Update cPanel: /scripts/upcp
• Enable/disable tweak settings: /scripts/smtpmailgidonly on|off
• Change PHP API and suExec settings: /usr/local/cpanel/bin/rebuild_phpconf
• Suspend an account: /scripts/suspendacct <user> <reason>
• Terminate an account: /scripts/killacct <user>

Obviously there are a ton more, and just about anything done in WHM can be done directly on the server.  The main things to remember:

Scripts are mainly stored in /scripts and /usr/local/cpanel/bin

Data files are in /var/cpanel

Config files are in /etc/ and /usr/local/cpanel