cPanel DNS Only to Full cPanel

[CollateralFX]

Hello there,

We currently have a simple Pentium-D 3.0Ghz machine with 4GB of ram and plenty of hard drive space and we currently use it as a DNS only machine. We want to upgrade the machine to full cPanel. Does anyone know if you can simply upgrade cPanel DNS only to full pledge cPanel without an OS Reload? We would much greatly want to avoid the OS reload fee.

 

[cPanelDon]

Hello there,

We currently have a simple Pentium-D 3.0Ghz machine with 4GB of ram and plenty of hard drive space and we currently use it as a DNS only machine. We want to upgrade the machine to full cPanel. Does anyone know if you can simply upgrade cPanel DNS only to full pledge cPanel without an OS Reload? We would much greatly want to avoid the OS reload fee.

A clean cPanel install on a fresh, minimal OS installation is highly recommended and is the only supported method; attempting to convert an existing system is not supported and attempting to do so would be performed at one's own risk.

I cannot guarantee this will work, but I would first ensure the system has a cPanel license provisioned, otherwise the attempted process is not at all a possibility. Second, I would manually edit the cPanel update configuration file to look for the proper build tree; following this, I would perform a forced cPanel update (upcp) via root SSH access.

Here is the path to the cPanel update configuration file:

/etc/cpupdate.conf

For the contents of the aforementioned file, here is an example of the difference between a cPanel system and that of a cPanel DNSONLY system:

• A cPanel system:
  

  CPANEL=release

• A cPanel DNSONLY system:
  

  CPANEL=dnsonly

MOD EDIT:

For anyone coming to this thread, please note it was written in 2010. Information on this topic with updated instructions is now available at:

How to Convert a cPanel & WHM Server into a cPanel DNSONLY Server

Thanks.

 

[dansgalaxy]

Apologies for digging up old thread.

Just wondering, while I understand this is not officially supported, but is there any reason why it shouldn't work? And did this work successfully?

 

[CoNfOuNd]

I did this yesterday on a server and it worked perfectly fine. Nothing terrible has happened [yet].

 

[jndawson]

Seems it must be time to reactivate this thread.

We installed a DNSOnly version on a new server with the intention of converting to full WHM when ready to do so. We checked /etc/cpupdate.conf:

CPANEL=current
RPMUP=daily
SARULESUP=daily
STAGING_DIR=/usr/local/cpanel
UPDATES=daily

That didn't match up with the above post, but we figured it's 10 years old and lots has changed.

There didn't seem to be any issues identified in the forums that we could find, so off we go to upgrade.

cd /home && curl -o latest -L https://securedownloads.cpanel.net/latest && sh latest

Got this error:

2020-04-08 09:55:11  850 [29780] (ERROR): The installation process found evidence that the following control panels were installed on this server:
2020-04-08 09:55:11  851 [29780] (ERROR): cPanel & WHM
2020-04-08 09:55:11  852 [29780] (FATAL): You must install cPanel & WHM on a clean server.

So, is there a path to convert a fairly recently installed DNSOnly version to full blown WHM?

We were going to upgrade to CloudLinux, as well. If we install CL first, will that count as a clean server? Will that wipe out the DNSOnly installation?

 

[jndawson]

So, is there a path to convert a fairly recently installed DNSOnly version to full blown WHM?

We were going to upgrade to CloudLinux, as well. If we install CL first, will that count as a clean server? Will that wipe out the DNSOnly installation?

I thought for sure that by now we'd have a either a 'yes' or 'no' as to the capabilities of the upgrade process.

 

[jndawson]

We're in this upgrade mode again, so thought I'd bump this on the odd chance there is an easier migration path to upgrade from dnsonly to full WHM.

Anybody...? Anybody....? Buehler...?

I thought for sure that by now we'd have a either a 'yes' or 'no' as to the capabilities of the upgrade process.

 

[cPRex]

In general, we don't recommend trying this anymore. It just seems to cause issues and leads to an unstable system for our clients, so we don't publish details on how to do it.