The best way to move an Addon domain out to it's own account?

[Metro2]

I've seen a couple methods described, but I'm wondering what the best approach is to moving an Addon Domain out of an account and into it's own hosting account.

Could someone please share your opinion / experience / preferred method?

Thank you,
M2

[Spiral]

Originally Posted by Metro2

I've seen a couple methods described, but I'm wondering what the best approach is to moving an Addon Domain out of an account and into it's own hosting account.

Could someone please share your opinion / experience / preferred method?

Thank you,
M2

* Backup the files, email accounts (if any), and databases for the domain.

(Side Note: If you copy the entry from /etc/passwd & /etc/shadow, you
can re-instate the original password for FTP even if you don't know it)

* Delete the domain from the server

* Create the domain on it's own account. It is preferable to keep the
same IP address as the original account if that is possible.

(Right here is where you can put back the original password from
/etc/shadow if you saved that off earlier)

* Restore files to /public_html under the new account and you may
have to globally replace paths in the files from the old folder location
to the new folder location so you don't get any broken scripts or links

* Recreate the databases, merge in the backed up data, update the
script configs for any scripts on the site that use databases to point
to the new database and usernames.

* Recreate any email accounts and load saved mail files back into
/home/(login)/mail for the new account.

You should have everything back up and running again but have
the addon domain now operating under it's own account.

Actually most of this could be automated fairly easily. Since this is a
common question, maybe I'll just write an addon to full account conversion
script for everyone to use later.

[Metro2]

Spiral, thank you VERY much for your detailed explanation / method, this helps greatly!

[d_t]

Originally Posted by Spiral

* Recreate any email accounts and load saved mail files back into
/home/(login)/mail for the new account.

You don't need to recreate email accounts from cPanel, just move the mail/example.com and etc/example.com from the old account to the new one then change the owner to new user (note that some files should be in "mail" gorup) This way, the email passwords are keept.

Also, in order to access accounts from horde, you need a symlink
mail/user\@example.com -> mail/example.com/user

Forwards and mail filters are keept in /etc/valiases/ and /etc/vfilters/ - should be backuped and restored with the new domain name.

[Metro2]

Thank you for the extra info d_t !

[ANewDay]

Cpanel should release a tool. I've been contemplating on doing this for one of my addon domains for some time.

[cPanelDavidG]

Our developers are considering the implementation of a utility to migrate an addon domain out to its own account. I have no ETA on this functionality. (Internal Case 8970).

[tekainc]

What is the procedure in the first step re: backup the files.