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WebAdmin Console Issues

Here are some possible reasons why your LiteSpeed Web Server WebAdmin page may not be available.

LSWS is not Running

If LiteSpeed Web Server is not running, then the LiteSpeed Web Server WebAdmin page won't be available for sure. You'll need to check if LSWS is running. If it is, then this is not your WebAdmin problem, and you can move onto the next step. If it's not running, then you'll need to restart it.

Check LSWS's status with the following command:

/usr/local/lsws/bin/lswsctrl status

If you see [ERROR] litespeed is not running, restart LSWS with the following command, and then try to access the WebAdmin Console again.

/usr/local/lsws/bin/lswsctrl start

Check LSWS's status with the following command:

systemctl status lsws

This command will give you one of three different results:

  • active: LiteSpeed Web Server is running
  • inactive: LiteSpeed Web Server is NOT running
  • failed: the server encountered errors and failed to start properly

If the output displays inactive, restart LSWS with the following command, and then try to access the WebAdmin Console again: 

systemctl start lsws

If the output displays failed, you may need to reinstall LiteSpeed Web Server, or open a support ticket for assistance.

Check if LSWS is running:

ps -ef | grep litespeed

On cPanel, you may be running Apache instead of LSWS at the moment. The following command should show which server is currently running:

ps -ef | grep httpd

Error 403 in LiteSpeed WebAdmin

There is an option to restrict access to the WebAdmin. If you forget to add your IP address, or if it changes, you can edit it from the configuration file in /usr/local/lsws/admin/conf/admin_config.xml:

<security>
 <accessControl>
   <allow>192.0.2.0</allow>
   <deny>ALL</deny>
 </accessControl>
</security>

Put your IP address in the allow list. For multiple IP addresses it looks like this:

<allow>192.0.2.0, 192.0.2.1</allow>

Save the file and restart LSWS.

Different Admin Port

If you are still unable to access the WebAdmin Console, check your LSWS Admin configuration to see if the default admin listener address value of *:7080 has been changed. If so, open the correct port accordingly.

You can find the admin configuration file in /usr/local/lsws/admin/conf/admin_config.xml

Firewall is Blocking Port 7080

We have found that in most cases WebAdmin access problems are due to the port being blocked by a firewall. The WebAdmin Console port must be open to be accessible from outside of your server.

With LSWS started, run the following command from your hosting machine to check if there are any processes listening on port 7080:

netstat -na | grep 7080

If so, take a further step to verify what that process is:

curl -i http://localhost:7080

If it returns the correct output, something similar to Server:LiteSpeed, then the LSWS WebAdmin Console is working as intended within your server, but is likely being blocked by your firewall.

At this point you should check your firewall rules and either append allow rules or remove blocking rules as needed. Use the following command to list your current rules in iptables:

iptables -L

If using cPanel and CFS, there are options to add this TCP port to the allow list.

In most scenarios, the above steps should fix the problem.

CDN issues

If you have recently enabled a reverse proxy content delivery network, like QUIC.cloud or Cloudflare, your example.com site is now served through a CDN. This means that the origin server is no longer accessed directly. 

The CDN may not know how to handle https://example.com:7080

You can solve the issue by creating a subdomain for your WebAdmin Console, such as webadmin.example.com. This subdomain would be accessed directly (https://webadmin.example.com:7080) and would not go through the CDN.

Hosting provider blocking connections

If you have looked at all of these scenarios, and you are still unable to get access to your WebAdmin Console, it’s possible that your hosting provider may be restricting access to the port. Contact them and ask to have the port opened for your access.