SOLVED [CPANEL-22499] Account suspension status isn't preserved after a server transfer

[snewton]

I did a server to server transfer last night and according to the transfer log everything went fine and all packages and accounts transferred to the new server, but today a reseller submitted a ticket saying they couldn't log into the new server with the error "Invalid login".

My first thought was to check cPHulk for any blocks and found the user was locked out due to too many failed attempts, so I figured that was the problem and unblocked them, but they came right back saying they still had the "Invalid login" error.

I checked the logs and found that the error was due to the reseller not having permission to access WHM. While diagnosing the issue I noticed when I clicked "Show Reseller Accounts" it showed every account on the system being owned by root and no reseller was listed.

So basically all the accounts were transferred, but none of the resellers were given reseller permissions as they previously had.

Fortunately, I was able to quickly fix that via WHMCS with the "Change Package" feature for each reseller and reissue their permissions, etc.

While looking further into the issue, I also noticed all of the previously suspended accounts were active on the new server as with transfers with earlier versions of cPanel. The last few transfers I did, all suspended accounts were re-suspended during the transfer (which made my job a lot easier), so I hoped that would continue going forward. Has that changed or is this also related?

For reference, at the time of the transfer I was using cPanel v74.0.5 on both the old and the new servers.

I have several more servers I need to migrate, but now I'm worried I'm going to continue to run into this with each of the additional transfers, so I'd like to find out if this is a bug or something that just went wrong that I'm not seeing or maybe overlooking.

 

[snewton]

Just tried another migration for another server and the log shows they all transferred fine, but again, resellers do not have their reseller permissions or ownership of their accounts and on a side note: Previously suspended accounts were not re-suspended.

This time both servers were running cPanel v74.0.6

Definitely something not right...

 

[snewton]

Just to add, I did 3 more migrations this weekend using the Transfer Tool and they all had the same result.

All accounts transferred with no errors, but reseller permissions were not transferred and suspended accounts were not re-suspended.

All servers running v74.0.6

 

[cPanelMichael]

Hello @snewton,

While looking further into the issue, I also noticed all of the previously suspended accounts were active on the new server as with transfers with earlier versions of cPanel. The last few transfers I did, all suspended accounts were re-suspended during the transfer (which made my job a lot easier), so I hoped that would continue going forward. Has that changed or is this also related?

I've reproduced this behavior in cPanel & WHM version 74 and opened internal case CPANEL-22499 to report the issue. I'll monitor this case and update this thread with more information as it becomes available. In the meantime, the temporary workaround is to manually suspend the account on the destination server post-transfer using WHM >> Manage Account Suspension.

I checked the logs and found that the error was due to the reseller not having permission to access WHM. While diagnosing the issue I noticed when I clicked "Show Reseller Accounts" it showed every account on the system being owned by root and no reseller was listed.

Can you confirm that you selected Copy Reseller Privileges under the list of accounts to transfer in WHM >> Transfer Tool interface? I tested a transfer and confirmed the reseller privileges and account ownership was correctly transferred.

Thank you.

 

[snewton]

Just checked and Copy Reseller Privileges was not checked, so that does explain that. Not sure why it wasn't as it is typically something that is checked by default (from what I can remember from previous transfers) and is not something I unchecked. Weird.

Thanks!

 

[cPanelMichael]

Just checked and Copy Reseller Privileges was not checked, so that does explain that. Not sure why it wasn't as it is typically something that is checked by default (from what I can remember from previous transfers) and is not something I unchecked. Weird.

We changed the default behavior in version 74 so that it's not enabled by default:

Fixed case CPANEL-19730: Transfer Tool: don't enable Copy Reseller Privileges by default.

This is a security-focused change, as administrators should be required to 'opt in' to transferring reseller privileges. Additionally, it makes the behavior in WHM >> Transfer Tool consistent with how /scripts/restorepkg works via the command line.

Thank you.

 

[snewton]

We changed the default behavior in version 74 so that it's not enabled by default:

Fixed case CPANEL-19730: Transfer Tool: don't enable Copy Reseller Privileges by default.

This is a security-focused change, as administrators should be required to 'opt in' to transferring reseller privileges. Additionally, it makes the behavior in WHM >> Transfer Tool consistent with how /scripts/restorepkg works via the command line.

Thank you.

I didn't notice that had changed. Thanks for the info!

 

[cPanelMichael]

Hello,

cPanel & WHM version 74.0.9 is now published to the CURRENT release tier and includes the solution to this issue:

Fixed case CPANEL-22499: Ensure users are resuspended on restore if they were suspended at the time of backup or transfer.

The full change log is available at:

74 Change Log - Change Logs - cPanel Documentation

Thanks!