Find configuration changes relative to base

[sonicthoughts]

I have seen countless comments (complaints...) that there is no utility or documented way to migrate a custom config from one server to another. For several reasons, we want to move to from Centos 6 to Centos 7.

Clearly Cpanel has utilities to migrate user accounts or from other vendors, but over the years there have been custom additions and configuration to the OS. The user accounts depend on these and the fear is that post-migration things will break. Rsync is not recommended.

What would be enormously helpful is a way to compare a current OS system to the latest Centos distribution and documentation on how to migrate.

For example, "rpm -qa" or "yum list installed"shows a list of packages installed by cpanel, how can i generate a list that is not? What system configuration files are transferred with backups and what are not?

Please provide some help for how to approach this.

 

[24x7ss]

Hello,

You shouldn't really transfer the system files from one OS version to another as this will break the destination server. As far as websites/mails/databases, you have cPanel's utility to migrate the data over. You shall not face any issues after migration if the php/mysql/apache version is same on both servers.

"rpm -qa" will list all the rpms installed by cPanel as well as OS. You can install the missing rpms if needed once everything is migrated over.

 

[sonicthoughts]

@24x7server that is helpful, but vague. There are lot's of config changes that are not covered by cpanel and knowing what is installed by cpanel via rpm -qa vs. dependency etc is like pulling your hair out.

 

[cPanelMichael]

Hello

You may find the following thread helpful:

https://forums.cpanel.net/threads/transfer-cpanel-configurations-to-new-server.399642/

Thank you.

 

[sonicthoughts]

This is EXACTLY the kind of info we need - however it needs to be part of documentation and more comprehensive. I would expect that most people want the same thing, however this is specifically related to Cpanel configuration. It is not acceptable to say that the rest of the server is not supported. The reason is that cpanel is very integrated into CentOS and takes over configuration of things like apache, mysql, etc. Also, it installs many packages and services.

How are we to know what is part of cpanel and what is not for migration unless you tell us?

For example, we needed to add a package called "wkhtmltopdf" via yum - perhaps if we have a list of packages that cpanel installs we can identify additions.

Sure, in an ideal world, we would keep a configuration log of every change and then replicate that on the new system but that is not the real world.

Please help us with identifying all configuration relative to a base cpanel install so we can recreate on the new target server. The referenced post is directional fine, but far from complete.

 

[cPanelMichael]

This is likely best addressed with a feature that would clone a server configuration. I believe the following feature request that you have added feedback to would address this issue:

https://features.cpanel.net/topic/c...-a-new-server-excluding-server-specific-items

Thank you.