How to update DirectAdmin License manually

DirectAdmin is a popular control panel for Linux and Unix. It’s designed for website administration via a graphical user interface that you can access over the web. It’s popular for shared hosting situations due to the ease with which users can access and change the settings for their individual sites.

It’s a paid service where you can pay for usage on a monthly, yearly or even lifetime basis. The main benefit of it being a paid service is the access to technical support, which helps a lot when issues crop up or you want to increase the security of your system, which is especially important if you’re running a shared hosting platform with many users.

Since DirectAdmin is proprietary software, you’ll need a license to run it. While there is an automated solution for updating your DirectAdmin license, it is sometimes not possible, in which case you’ll need to update it manually. Fear not, as it’s an extremely simple process on the same level as your distro’s standard package update command. We’ve compiled this short guide to walk you through the steps of getting your license updated.

Getting started

In order to follow the steps for this guide, you’ll need these prequirements ready:
• A server (Cloud Server or Dedicated Server) with DirectAdmin installed
• A valid license key
• All commands must be entered in root

Tutorial

This guide is concerned with how to update or force the update of your Directadmin License. You’ll first need to obtain a valid key from directadmin.com, and the user ID that was assigned to the license. Naturally, the license should be registered and assigned to your server’s IP address.

Here’s a set of sample information that we’ll use in this guide:
• User ID : 1111
• License : 12345
• IP address : 123.123.123.2

Your first step is to change into your Directadmin directory.

cd /usr/local/directadmin/scripts

You’ll notice a handy script in this directory. This is the key to performing the manual update. Use the following command (remember to enter it as root!) to update your license.

./getLicense.sh [User ID] [License ID] [Server IP address]
./getLicense.sh 1111 1234 123.123.123.2

Now, the final step is to restart your DirectAdmin service.

service directadmin restart

Conclusion

Voila! Your DirectAdmin license should now be updated. As you can see, it’s a very easy process that doesn’t take much time, so don’t put it off when it comes time to update. If you found this article helpful, feel free to share it with your friends and let us know in the comments below!