Transferring an account that has parts of it's username already existing

[whipworks]

Hi Support,

We were currently transferring an account from an old CPanel server to a new one and the new one wouldn't accept it because part of the username of the account being transferred already exist. Is there a way to fix this without change the username of the account? We want to avoid changing the username as much as possible to avoid any issues that it may have with the database.

Example of the issue is moving old account with username "domain123" and new server saying it can't transfer it because there's an account that already exist named "domai". Let us know. Thanks!

 

[cPanelLauren]

Hi @whipworks

Were you able to resolve this? What version/s of cPanel/WHM are on the cPanel servers (old and new)? Do you have the error being reported specifically?

 

[whipworks]

CPanel version v84.0.19

Error: You have selected 1 account that cannot transfer properly because its username conflicts with a username on the local server.

• The remote account “username” cannot transfer because the first 8 non-special characters match the local username “username123”.

To resolve this issue, you can rename the incoming account so that the first 8 alphanumeric characters do not match those of any local accounts, or deselect the account.

So basically part of the username already exist with an account that has almost the same username BUT NOT THE SAME.

 

[cPanelLauren]

Ahh I see, it doesn't matter though because the first 8 characters match. When that occurs you'll need to rename the account so that there is at least one difference in those characters.

 

[whipworks]

What will happen to the database associated with the username then?

 

[cPanelLauren]

When you update the username it updates the ownership globally so the DB should be unaffected.

 

[sparek-3]

This kind of underscores one of those really, really, really puzzling moves cPanel made a few years ago.

"You can have long usernames now... just so long as the first 8 characters are unique"

Well... what's the point of the long username if the 8 characters have to be unique?


Now to be fair, this was done before cPanel adopted a MySQL or MariaDB system that supported longer usernames, so for legacy sake the first 8 characters had to be unique for database usernames. I understand WHY the first 8 characters had to be unique... but what I don't understand is... why even make long usernames available?

My guess is someone submitted a feature request and the cPanel yes-men all agreed "hey that sounds like a good idea... let's not discuss the pros and the cons, let's just implement it. This feature request topic is getting pretty angry, better do what they say"

 

[popeye]

When you update the username it updates the ownership globally so the DB should be unaffected.

But why does it say this below iwhen you go to change user name ?

A username change may take some time to complete and may break websites that are associated with the account. You should verify the account’s integrity after you rename the account.

 

[cPanelLauren]

But why does it say this below iwhen you go to change user name ?

A username change may take some time to complete and may break websites that are associated with the account. You should verify the account’s integrity after you rename the account.

Why it says that is because it could break the site if the username is not changed properly, i.e., the process does not complete as it should. In most cases this is not an issue but if you would like please feel free to open a ticket and our analysts would be happy to assist you with any of these issues.

 

[popeye]

Why it says that is because it could break the site if the username is not changed properly, i.e., the process does not complete as it should. In most cases this is not an issue but if you would like please feel free to open a ticket and our analysts would be happy to assist you with any of these issues.

Just tried one and the wordpress site went offline had to change the user name for the database to the new one.

 

[cPanelLauren]

Do you mean the user in the wp-config? This absolutely would not be something cPanel would automatically update in this instance.