The file you create is not overwritten and is loaded with all the other config files

So

DO NOT edit /home/httpd/vhosts/<domain-name>/conf/httpd.include because this file is overwritten whenever Plesk changes something about apache's config, Rather create the file vhost.conf and/or vhost_ssl.conf with necessary directives in the directory /home/httpd/vhosts/<domain-name>/conf/

For security reasons, only root can create the vhost.conf and vhost_ssl.conf files.

For the changes to take effect, you need to run the following:

/usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/websrvmng --reconfigure-vhost --vhost-name=<domain_name>

The line above tells plesk to add the includes directive into the website’s configuration file, Plesk will probe for the file’s existence before including it.

For sub domains, the file that needs to be created is in

/var/www/vhosts/domain.com/subdomains/<subdomain-name>/conf/vhost.conf

Rules for the domain also apply to the subdomain, But this is particularly useful since plesk allows disabling safe mode for the domain, but not directly for the sub domain, to see how you can disable safe mode for a sub domain see here.

My current installation of plesk is an outdated 9.2.3, the objective is to upgrade it to 9.3.0

Before jumping to upgrading 9_2_3 to 9_3_0, i will first try to bring 9.2.3 to latest then upgrade to 9.3.0

The reason i need to update now is that I got complaints about hacked websites that redirected elsewhere ( Bublik.biz
that redirects in turn to searchresultsdirect ).

So I go to the Web GUI / UI and click on the update / Upgrade, i find my release and the newer release, My release is 9.2.3 and the new release is 9.3.0 so i select the first 9.2.3 and upgrade, the process fails, but not only does the upgrade fail, but web hosting also fails, when opening any website, you will get the @mail (atMail) page in place of the website.

so clicking on My Release 9.2.3 and select everything with an update, right after the update, i get an unpleasant surprise.

it added to my problems that all websites were opening atmail (@mail) and the Web GUI updater to 9.3.0 did not work, now the situation was really bad.

Websites were down (compared to a few had been hacked), and now i had to start working fast, the challenge is to have them online in 5 minutes.

To begin with, Although now you find nothing to update when you open the Web GUI to update and click on the 9.2.3 release, packages (PHP5 and QMAIL) are not really up to date, we need to do that manually.

So i had to start with

/usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/autoinstaller --select-release-id PLESK_9_2_3 --show-components 2>1 | grep upgrade

Followed by

/usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/autoinstaller  --select-release-current --upgrade-installed-components

The above are what Parallels prescribed here

kb.parallels.com/en/6360

That put a tick beside the current plesk release in the Web GUI, and websites were opening again, but did not really resolve my problems, still, i can not update to 9.3.0

Here are some of the WEB UI attempts and the command line attempts (They yield same results and error messages)

Warning! Not all packages were installed.

Please check if your system services are operable.

Please, contact product technical support.

Then, to try and do the same thing from the command line, i run the command

/usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/autoinstaller –select-release-latest –install-everything

And again, the error messages are as follows

ERROR: Unable to install the requested packages because either there is
         not enough free disk space left, or there are package dependency problems.
         Warning! Not all packages were installed.
         Please check if your system services are operable.
         Please, contact product technical support.

So what i did now was Deleted all files in /var/lib/rpm/ , followed by the command “rpm -rebuilddb” without the quotes, then I deleted PSA_9.3.0 in /root/parallels/ , followed by the command

/usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/autoinstaller --select-release-latest --install-everything

         ERROR: The MD5 checksum of the
         /root/parallels/PSA_9.3.0/dist-rpm-CentOS-5-i386/opt/vault/psa-appvault-knowledgetreeoss-3.4.5-8200820080409010953.noarch.rpm
         file does not match the value specified in the configuration file.
         Not all packages were installed.
         Please, resolve the above problem and try installing the packages again.
         If you cannot resolve the problem on your own, contact product technical support for assistance.

And there is no use re-downloading the file, it is probably a problem on parallel’s side

And since it seems Qmail send is not working, I have attempted to set the permissionsas follows just in case

chmod 2511 /var/qmail/bin/qmail-queue

Now that the complete update all does not work, i tried to update each package alone, So i begin by requesting the latest version of the base system by issuing this command on the command line

/usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/autoinstaller –select-release-latest –install-component base

A big load of text is displayed in my terminal window, but generally the plesk messages are of one of the following formats

* Downloading the file…

*warning: /root/parallels/PSA_9.3.0/update-rpm-CentOS-5-i386/SOME_FILE: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID e8562897

*warning: /etc/PACKAGE/FILENAME created as /etc/PACKAGE/FILENAME.rpmnew

*Installing the package iproute-2.6.18-10.el5.i386

Warnings are probably no big deal, and emails i have been trying to send are arriving in my inbox as the process goes on, and finally, a message that reads.

Congratulations!
Plesk has been successfully installed on your server.
To complete the system configuration, please proceed to URL:
https://ip-97-74-196-212.ip.secureserver.net:8443/ or

https://97.74.196.212:8443/

Use the login name 'admin' and password '<YOUR ADMIN PASSWORD>'.

Further, use the following commands to start and stop Plesk:
"/etc/init.d/psa start" and
"/etc/init.d/psa stop" respectively.

All Plesk control panel documentation is available at

http://www.parallels.com/en/products/plesk/docs

*****************************************************************************
*                                                                           *
*      NOTE:   You have a default key file with limited functionality       *
*              currently installed for Plesk, which allows                  *
*              creating one client account, one domain, one mail name and   *
*              one web user.                                                *
*              To extend the limits of your license key and enable          *
*              additional features, please contact the Parallels sales      *
*              department: sales@parallels.com                              *
*                                                                           *
*      Thank you for choosing our products!                                 *
*****************************************************************************
Trying to register service psa...  using /sbin/chkconfig
done

GNow we probably want to check if the update shows in the Web UI,

To my surprize, most of plesk was not installed, i do not know what effect this has on existing ruby or python websites, but surely, they need to be installed again before we go any further

So i ran the AutoInstaller with no parameters as follows

/usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/autoinstaller

and then selected The auto installer package

Once the Auto installer is installed, i went on to install everything but the Application Vault packages since there is a problem with the MD5 sum of the downloaded file from parallels

vault/psa-appvault-knowledgetreeoss-3.4.5-8200820080409010953.noarch.rpm

Good luck with your plesk

security through obscurity is in a few words “A system relying on security through obscurity may have theoretical or actual security vulnerabilities, but its owners or designers believe that the flaws are not known, and that attackers are unlikely to find them.”

Well, i don’t think so, surely not when PLESK hard codes a port !

You see, Mail span software evolves daily, and when you popularise a port, it is probably on the checklist of spammer software.

So how do you stop the spam ? I personally implement a system to limit the amount of email a Domain name can send and requier authentication to send mail.

So, not to go off topic, the Mail Message submission feature does have a use to me, Even though it is not rocket science to open extra ports for mail, This feature is rather useful for users who have there port 25 blocked for example.

In Jordan, Most ISPs block port 25 to reduce spam, as an expert i have no clue how they intend to stop spam by blocking port 25, They can’t be serious, Spammers are power users and they know how to overcome the Port 25 issue, and there are not many servers on the internet that are open relays are there ?

Anyway, i am not here to critisize them either, the point is, You can always open alternative ports for your users (Any port you wish) and instruct them to use it, and plesk makes it easier with a single click.

As i write, A PLESK 8.6 Windows machine displays the message (not supported by the mail server) next to Switch on message submission, i will let you know about this feature in Plesk 9 and if it is available and what workarounds exist for this as soon as i get PLESK 9

When on Plesk, Horde becomes PSA-HORDE that has one real major difference that the original HORDE does not, it has advertising to it’s left

If there is one thing that differentiates Paid mail hosting from Free hosting (Since google allows you to host your mail domain), it is the No-Advertising feature, and plesk took that away.

Anyway, i am not taking any of this advertising thing, i know horde and i know they can not possibly hide it from me, After all the PHP code of horde is there.

The file that needs edeting is

/usr/share/psa-horde/templates/portal/sidebar.inc

Find the line that reads
if (window.NewsFeeds) {
and make it

if (false) {

Even when you do this, when Plesk updates Horde again, it will probably overwrite this, But modifeying this at every update is the easiest sollution i can think of besides dissabeling Plesk updates (Which is very dangerous)