Failed transfer of Aliases of a domain

[hicom]

We did a transfer of a site from a cPanel server that we no longer can access. We noticed after the transfer complete that Alias domains did not transfer properly.

In the transfer logs, it says:

"Failed to restore the domain “aliasdomainName.com”: (XID tpj9hf) Sorry, the domain is already pointed to an IP address that does not appear to use DNS servers associated with this server. Please transfer the domain to this servers nameservers or have your administrator add one of its nameservers to /etc/ips.remotedns and make the proper A entries on that remote nameserver."

The alias domain does not show under "Aliases" section. However, there are e-mails setup for it such as [email protected] exist but they do not work, giving following error:
"[email protected] is undeliverable: Unrouteable address"

In the DNS, the alias domain entry exist. When trying to re-add the Alias domains, I get the error:
"There was an error when the system attempted to create the alias. Park::park failed: (XID mxqhb9) A DNS entry for “example.com” already exists. You must remove this DNS entry from this server or all servers in the DNS cluster to proceed. "

I prefer to avoid removing the DNS entries and re-adding. What is the best way to reconcile and fix this issue?

Thanks in advance for your guidance.

 

[HostXNow_Chris]

I noticed this the past few days also which is annoying.

It should not do this if using DNS cluster and choose "Express Transfer". The whole point of that is to say you want to move a cPanel account from one server to another in FULL and at at the same time update the records in DNS cluster so the domains restored on the new server now loads from the new server instead of the old server.

Then it should just be a matter of going to the old server and terminating the cPanel account but clicking the "Keep DNS Zone".

The job should be done.

Currently, the Express Transfer no longer works which did work fine in the past. In fact, you should also be able to copy the data from the old server to the new server without Express Transfer to do initial sync of the data which is useful for larger accounts, and when it completes for the first time and customer gives the go-ahead to update the records so the domains load from new server, you could then do an overwrite of data with Express Transfer which would quickly rsync any missing data since the initial transfer and also make the domains loads from the new server.

Again, then it should just be a matter of removing the old accounts from the old server, but be sure to click "Keep DNS Zone" so the zones are not removed from the DNS cluster.

Currently, it does not work at all and you would have

1: generate a backup of the cPanel account
2: copy it to the new server
3: terminate the account from the old server
4: restore the backup on the new server

Transfer works for the main domain and subdomains only, not Addon Domains.

Any idea when this will be fixed?

 

[cPanelLauren]

"Failed to restore the domain “aliasdomainName.com”: (XID tpj9hf) Sorry, the domain is already pointed to an IP address that does not appear to use DNS servers associated with this server. Please transfer the domain to this servers nameservers or have your administrator add one of its nameservers to /etc/ips.remotedns and make the proper A entries on that remote nameserver."

This is due to a configuration setting on the new server. Because the aliased domain is set to use remote DNS you need to allow Remote DNS on the server by going to WHM>>Server Configuration>>Tweak Settings -> Allow Remote Domains

My assumption in this instance is that the aliased domain is not using the DNS of either server and is pointed elsewhere


@HostXNow_Chris the issue you're noting sounds different, can you give me precise replication steps?

 

[hicom]

This is due to a configuration setting on the new server. Because the aliased domain is set to use remote DNS you need to allow Remote DNS on the server by going to WHM>>Server Configuration>>Tweak Settings -> Allow Remote Domains

My assumption in this instance is that the aliased domain is not using the DNS of either server and is pointed elsewhere


@HostXNow_Chris the issue you're noting sounds different, can you give me precise replication steps?

Correct. the issue is caused by Allow Remote Domains in Tweak Settings turned off. However, the alias domain was already pointing to existing DNS servers so it should not have prevented it from being added. It would be useful to add exception to allow remote domains during transfers, or at least be notified of some features in cPanel that may cause transfers to fail.

Our solution after this happened was to remove the DNS entry then re-add the alias domain in cPanel. We had to do that for dozens alias domains that were prevented from being added in cPanel despite their virtualhost and email is transferred properly

 

[HostXNow_Chris]

@HostXNow_Chris the issue you're noting sounds different, can you give me precise replication steps?

If that's the case then apologies for posting in the wrong thread.

You can try this

Have 2x cPanel servers and 2x cPanel DNS only VPS all configured correctly

Then try to copy a cPanel account (an account that also has addon domains on it) from one server to the other server. During the transfer it copies the main cPanel domain across fine, but for the addon domains it reports the error saying the DNS already exists in the DNS cluster and they first need to be removed from the DNS cluster before the addon domains can be transferred across i.e only the main cPanel domain is transferred and not the addon domains. It never used to be like. So must be a bug.

 

[HostXNow_Chris]

For example, shows like this.

Failed to restore the domain “<snipped>”: (XID jtz7xf) A DNS entry for “<snipped>” already exists. You must remove this DNS entry from this server or all servers in the DNS cluster to proceed.
Failed to restore the domain “<snipped>”: (XID 7yqdcu) A DNS entry for “<snipped>” already exists. You must remove this DNS entry from this server or all servers in the DNS cluster to proceed.
Failed to restore the domain “<snipped>”: (XID nnyhqn) A DNS entry for “<snipped>” already exists. You must remove this DNS entry from this server or all servers in the DNS cluster to proceed.
(XID jtz7xf) A DNS entry for “<snipped>” already exists. You must remove this DNS entry from this server or all servers in the DNS cluster to proceed.
(XID 7yqdcu) A DNS entry for “<snipped>” already exists. You must remove this DNS entry from this server or all servers in the DNS cluster to proceed.
(XID nnyhqn) A DNS entry for “<snipped>” already exists. You must remove this DNS entry from this server or all servers in the DNS cluster to proceed.
<snipped>

And the same happens when Overwrite and Express Transfer is selected.

Because cPanel DNS cluster is used the data for the main domain along with the addon domains should transfer over to the new server. Then do a final rsync to make sure the data is as recent as possible, and then the IP address should be replaced for the main domain and addon domains with the new IP address and then the transfer is completed.

Then once have confirmed the data has been copied across correctly to the new server would need to go back to the old server to terminate accounts and select the account to be terminated but select "Keep DNS Zone" since the DNS is already updated/ok for the new server.

Then data is removed from the old server, and the domains/addons should be loading from the new server.

 

[hicom]

Correct. the issue is caused by Allow Remote Domains in Tweak Settings turned off. However, the alias domain was already pointing to existing DNS servers so it should not have prevented it from being added. It would be useful to add exception to allow remote domains during transfers, or at least be notified of some features in cPanel that may cause transfers to fail.

Our solution after this happened was to remove the DNS entry then re-add the alias domain in cPanel. We had to do that for dozens alias domains that were prevented from being added in cPanel despite their virtualhost and email is transferred properly

I believe this may have occurred because we had "Restricted Restore" checked.

 

[cPanelLauren]

@HostXNow_Chris

Your issue sounds like a case we have open - CPANEL-27949 - The Allow Remote Domains Option in Tweak Settings does not allow domains to be transferred with the transfer tool if the DNS cluster is configured with Write-Only relationship..

What does your cluster configuration look like?


@hicom your issue looks like a case that was marked as by design - CPANEL-17782 - Copy a account from another server with an account password with restricted restore fails to restore any addon domains. The explanation is as follows:

To answer the specific question:

• "Could they have created the addon domain in cPanel outside of the restore system?"
  Unless they have enabled "allowremotedomains=1" in cpanel.config, NO. If so, then YES. However, I suspect that if this feature was enabled, the addon domain would likely be restored just fine, as that exception in Cpanel/Validate/Component/Domain/DomainRegistration.pm ONLY will ever trigger if allowremotedomains=0, regardless of what codepath you take to get there. Restricted restore just happens to do input validation, and thus breaks the current expectations of users (that it will restore effectively broken accounts that the hosting provider "fixes in post").

 

[HostXNow_Chris]

@ cPanelLauren on the Shared/Reseller servers, the DNS cluster is set to Synchronize changes and on the cPanel DNS servers, they are set to Standalone. It has always been that way afaik?

Thanks for checking.

Chris

 

[HostXNow_Chris]

Ps I think it was because Restricted restore was checked.

 

[cPanelLauren]

@HostXNow_Chris
It would be in both cases if you were using restricted restore, your's threw me off a bit because of the case with the DNS clustering but based on your configuration and the fact you had restricted restore enabled, I'm leaning toward it being the restricted restore caveat.