Moving of working emails from cpanel to cpanel

[TeeGee]

Hi Guys,
I hope I've got an easy one for you...

I'm migrating all my domains from one host to another - both use cpanel.

I don't have access to SSH (I'm on a low cost reseller plan) so I can't use that...

What's the easiest way to move the mail boxes across?

I've read somewhere that you just need to tarball the /home/user/etc and /home/user/mail folders on the old server - transfer them - and then expand them on the new server...

Is it as easy as that? am I missing something critical?
If that's done, and I flick the DNS to point at the new server, will mail seamlessly work?

Do I need to create the email addresses on the new server first? (could be painful, as I don't know the passwords for some of the email addresses on the old server)

Any help gratefully appreciated!

Cheers,
Richard

[cPanelTristan]

Is there any reason you wouldn't want to simply use a full backup of the account itself instead and generate it using cPanel > Backups > Download or Generate a Full Backup area?

After you have the backup file, you could just ask the provider of the new server to restore it, which would restore everything for that account. Since you are moving the account to their machine, they should be happy to restore it for you. Even if the account already exists on the new machine, you could ask them to do a forced restore:

/scripts/restorepkg --force username

Where username is the cPanel username.

[TeeGee]

Is there any reason you wouldn't want to simply use a full backup of the account itself instead and generate it using cPanel > Backups > Download or Generate a Full Backup area?

After you have the backup file, you could just ask the provider of the new server to restore it,

Hi Tristan,
Yes, they charge to do that - about $40 per domain...

I'm poor, lol, can't afford that times 90 domains...
Cheers,
Richard

[cPanelTristan]

True enough, I can understand that. Then you should be able to simply copy /home/username/mail and /home/username/etc folders to the new machine. In fact, you should be able to just copy /home/username to the new machine for all of the content.

I still believe this is going about it the wrong way, though, because the full backup I mentioned obtaining, which should be an option in cPanel > Backups area, will have the filters, forwarders and so on in it. It will also have all the content for the home directory and the MySQL databases. If you simply make that full backup, you can extract it locally on your machine, then upload anything you need to upload. You could also restore the databases that way from the sql files in the backup.

[TeeGee]

True enough, I can understand that. Then you should be able to simply copy /home/username/mail and /home/username/etc folders to the new machine. In fact, you should be able to just copy /home/username to the new machine for all of the content.

I still believe this is going about it the wrong way, though, because the full backup I mentioned obtaining, which should be an option in cPanel > Backups area, will have the filters, forwarders and so on in it. It will also have all the content for the home directory and the MySQL databases. If you simply make that full backup, you can extract it locally on your machine, then upload anything you need to upload. You could also restore the databases that way from the sql files in the backup.

Thanks for that, I'll give it a go! (I hadn't worried too much about the website side of things, as they're mainly HTML, with no SQL to worry about)

I might test the process first with a not-so-used domain name

Cheers,
Richard

[TeeGee]

OK, so it sorta worked... but not really...

After tarballing the entire old home directory, moving it across, and untaring it... everything looks ok...
The mailboxes are present, along with their inbox contents & folders... password are as usual, webmail works...

But - mail doesn't get delivered to the account...

Sending to the mailbox from outside, gives me:
"Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 5.1.0 - Unknown address error 550-'No Such User Here' (delivery attempts: 0)"

and if I try to send from the newly migrated email account (via webmail):

Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable
550 Verification failed for <richard@werwerwer.com.au>
No Such User Here
Sender verify failed

So... maybe I do need to set the mailboxes up first?

Cheers,
Richard

[cPanelTristan]

Richard, you may well want to setup the email accounts first and then recopy everything that way. The passwords are definitely stored in /home/username/etc location, so even if you use a different password first, once you copy those contents, you will get the old password reset for the email account.

[TeeGee]

Richard, you may well want to setup the email accounts first and then recopy everything that way. The passwords are definitely stored in /home/username/etc location, so even if you use a different password first, once you copy those contents, you will get the old password reset for the email account.

Thanks Tristan,
I'll give that a go in the morning (1.23am here, and time for sleep!)

Cheers,
Richard

[TeeGee]

Richard, you may well want to setup the email accounts first and then recopy everything that way. The passwords are definitely stored in /home/username/etc location, so even if you use a different password first, once you copy those contents, you will get the old password reset for the email account.

Hi Tristan,
Yes, that works... you do need to create the email addresses first (and the passwords don't matter)...
Once done, just dump the tarball in there, and voila... mail is moved, with OLD passwords intact ... easy peasy...

Thanks for the help!
Cheers,
Richard