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Overview

This document describes how to manage the cPHulk service from the command line.

Note:

  • You can also manage the cPHulk service with WHM's cPHulk Brute Force Protection interface (WHM >> Home >> Security Center >> cPHulk Brute Force Protection).
  • In cPanel & WHM version 72 and later, you can use cPanel's Terminal interface (cPanel >> Home >> Advanced >> Terminal) or WHM's Terminal interface (WHM >> Home >> Advanced >> Terminal) to access the command line from within the interface.

Manage cPHulk

Use the following methods to manage the cPHulk service on your server.

Important:

The system requires several configuration changes in order to properly enable cPHulk. Therefore, we strongly recommend that you do not enable it from the command line. Instead, use WHM's cPHulk Brute Force Protection interface (WHM >> Home >> Security Center >> cPHulk Brute Force Protection) to enable cPHulk.

Debug mode

To enable debug mode for the cPHulk service, run the following command:

touch /var/cpanel/hulkd/debug

Check cPHulk's status

To check the status of the cPHulk service, run the ps aux | grep -i cphulk command. The system will return output that resembles the following example:

root 1501 0.0 0.4 34816 5076 ? S 07:58 0:00 cPhulkd - processor

Note:

In this example, the output indicates that cPHulk is enabled.

Restart the cPHulk daemon (cphulkd)

To restart the cphulkd daemon, perform one of the following actions:

  • Use WHM API 1's configureservice  function to perform the restart, which also performs the necessary the Dovecot service rebuild and restart. To do this, run the following commands:

    whmapi1 configureservice service=cphulkd enabled=0 monitored=0
whmapi1 configureservice service=cphulkd enabled=1 monitored=1

  • Perform a soft restart, rebuild the Dovecot service, and restart the Dovecot service. To do this, run the following commands:

    /scripts/restartsrv_cphulkd
/scripts/builddovecotconf
/scripts/restartsrv_dovecot

  • Perform a hard restart and force the system to flush the daemon's memory, rebuild the Dovecot service, and restart the Dovecot service. To do this, run the following commands:

    /scripts/restartsrv_cphulkd --stop; /scripts/restartsrv_cphulkd --start
/scripts/builddovecotconf
/scripts/restartsrv_dovecot

Disable cPHulk

To disable the cphulk daemon, perform one of the following actions:

  • Use WHM API 1's configureservice function to perform the restart:

    whmapi1 configureservice service=cphulkd enabled=0 monitored=0

  • Run the following commands:

    /usr/local/cpanel/etc/init/stopcphulkd
/usr/local/cpanel/bin/cphulk_pam_ctl --disable

To disable the cPHulk service so that it remains offline, even after a restart of cPanel & WHM, remove the cPHulk touch file with the following command:

rm /var/cpanel/hulkd/enabled

Log files

cPHulk stores its logs in the following files:

/usr/local/cpanel/logs/cphulkd.log
/usr/local/cpanel/logs/cphulkd_errors.log

IP address management

Add IP addresses to the whitelist

To add IP addresses to the whitelist from the command line, run the /scripts/cphulkdwhitelist IP command, where IP represents the IP address or IP address range that you wish to add.

For example, to add the 192.168.0.20 IP address to the whitelist, run the following command as the root user:

/scripts/cphulkdwhitelist 192.168.0.20

Add IP addresses to the blacklist

To add IP addresses to the blacklist from the command line, run the /scripts/cphulkdblacklist IP command, where IP represents the IP address or IP address range that you wish to add.

For example, to add the 192.168.0.20 IP address to the blacklist, run the following command as the root user:

/scripts/cphulkdblacklist 192.168.0.20

Remove lockouts

If the cPHulk service locks you out of your cPanel account, the /scripts2/doautofixer?autofix=disable_cphulkd script in WHM can disable cPHulk and allow you to log in.

For example, log in to WHM and navigate to https://www.example.com:2087/scripts2/doautofixer?autofix=disable_cphulkd, where www.example.com represents your server's hostname.

If you enabled the Block IP addresses at the firewall level if they trigger brute force protection or the Block IP addresses at the firewall level if they trigger a one-day block options in WHM's cPHulk Brute Force Protection interface (WHM >> Home  >> Security Center >> cPHulk Brute Force Protection), remove the iptables rule that the system created. To do this, run the following command:

iptables -F cphulk && mysql -e "Delete from cphulkd.login_track;"

Note:

This command removes all of the cPHulk service's lockouts. To remove the lockout for a specific IP address, on servers that run cPanel & WHM version 11.50 or later, call WHM API 1's flush_cphulk_login_history_for_ips function.

Additional documentation