Migrating Hosting Accounts: Cobalt RaQ to Plesk:

As of today, August 4, 2005, SWsoft, publishers of the Plesk Server Administrator system, make available what they call the Migration Express Service; for a fee they'll be happy to migrate your accounts from the RaQ to Plesk PSA.

There's no easy way to migrate hosting accounts from Sun Cobalt RaQ servers to Plesk PSA servers. Though both we and Plesk offer a migration service, and much of the work is done manually.

It's neither quick nor easy. It's a long and tedious process.

Should you decide to do it yourself, these instructions should work for you. However, please note that we do NOT guarantee this procedure mimics the exact procedure we use, nor do we guarantee that there are no mistakes in this procedure nor that we haven't accidentally left out an important step or steps, or that the steps here are all that will be required for a specific site to work on your new Plesk server. You should never shut down your old RaQ server until after you've assured yourself that everything works on your new Plesk Server.

• Before starting any migration assure yourself that you've installed all the software required by all the sites, on your new Plesk Server.
• Create the site on the Plesk server using the Plesk interface.
• Create all the users on the Plesk server using the Plesk interface.
• Create catchall settings for all the sites on the Plesk Server.
• For all email aliases on the RaQ, create new Plesk "Redirect" mail users. We neither use nor recommend "Mail Aliases" on Plesk Servers because they require multilevel digs through the Plesk interface to see them.
• For all the site-aliases on the Cobalt RaQ, create new sites on the Plesk Server, since Plesk doesn't use "site aliases" the way RaQs do.
• For all the users on the RaQ who also use their personal websites, create Plesk Web Users.
• Created a new directory on the RaQ, "/home/sites-to-move".

Now let's move on to moving the sites from the RaQ to the new Plesk Server. Note Note that if you don't have enough free disk space on the RaQ or on the new Plesk Server to move all the sites at once you may need to do the move in multiple steps.

• First tar up all the sites on the RaQ by name. For example, if site1 were www.example.com: you'd run these commands:
   
  # cd /home/sites/
  # tar -czf /home/sites-to-move/www.example.com.tar.gz site1
   
  and so on for all the sites on the RaQ.
• Then create a new directory on the Plesk Server, "/home/sites-to-move".
• Move all the site tarballs from the Raq to the Plesk system. From the RaQ, logged in as root, you should run this command:
   
  # scp /home/sites-to-move/* [email protected]:/home/sites-to-move
   
• On the Plesk server the following steps will install the site contents:
   
  On a site-by-site basis, first run these commands (this example is for www.example.com):
   
  # cd /home/httpd/vhosts/example.com/
  # mv /home/sites-to-move/www.example.com.tar.gz .
  # tar -xzf www.example.com.tar.gz
  # rm -Rf httpdocs
  # mv site1/web httpdocs
  # ls -al
• Now look at the owner and group name of the "httpsdocs"directory; for this example we'll presume the owner is example and the group is psacln.
   
  This command will change the ownership of all the files to what they need to be on the Plesk server; you should be sure to use the correct owner and group names when you run the command:
   
  # chown -R example:psacln httpdocs
• Now remove the "s" attribute from the group attributes for httpdocs and all subdirectories, since the Plesk server doesn't use them:
   
  # chmod -R g-s httpdocs
• Next remove the group write attributes for httpdocs and all subdirectories, since the Plesk server doesn't use them either:
   
  # chmod -R g-w httpdocs
• If there's anything in the RaQ cgi-bin directory (originally found at web/cgi-bin, but now at httpdocs/cgi-bin) you must move it to the cgi-bin directory at the same level as the httpdocs directory:
   
  # ls -al httpdocs/cgi-bin
• If (and only if) the above command shows any contents in httpdocs/cgi-bin, then run the following commands:
   
  # rm -Rf cgi-bin
  # mv httpdocs/cgi-bin .
   
  See notes below for important issues concerning cgi-bin files and for additional steps to take if the site is protected by a secure site certificate.
• Plesk doesn't set up systemwide users for email only, so in general you may safely ignore the contents of site1/users.
   
  However if any users have their own websites Plesk calls them web users and you'll have to move the contents of their site1/users/username/web directory to their web accessible directory at:
   
  /home/httpd/vhosts/example.com/web_users/webusername

CGI-BIN FILES

If the site contains any CGI programs they may or may not just "work" after they're moved.

If they don't work, the first thing to check would be any paths they require either in their code or their configuration files; the paths on the Plesk Server are significantly different than those on your RaQ.

It may be necessary to reinstall CGI programs on the new server using FTP and the directions published for them.

SECURE SITES

Your RaQ kept all html pages and other files in the web directory whether or not they should be accessed only through the secure https protocol.

The Plesk server keeps html pages and other files to be accessed only through the https protocol in a different directory, which for our example would be:
 
/home/httpd/vhosts/example.com/httpsdocs
 
So you should put those files into that directory.

You'll also need to reinstall the cert on the new server. You should be able to do that through the standard Plesk interface, but be sure to read the instructions.

The necessary files should be found at:
 
/home/httpd/vhosts/example.com/site1/certs
 
If you cannot successfully install the cert from the RaQ server you may need to get a new Secure Site Certificate. Please contact us for information on purchasing site certificates for as little as us$47.95.

SITE STATISTICS

If you were running a site statistics (such as webalizer) on the RaQ you should have had a subdirectory (on our systems it's called "stats") in the web directory.

It should now be at /home/httpd/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/stats
 
and your clients should be able to continue viewing these stats, if they need to, by typing:
 
http://www.example.com/stats
 
in their browser window. To look at stats on the new Plesk server see the instructions for your Plesk server.

VIEWING SITES ON THE NEW SERVER

You should make sure your site works properly on the new server before deleting any files.

The best way is to add a line with both the IP# and the name of the new site with the "www" prefix (for example, www.example.com), to your system's "hosts" file (see your system documentation for the location of the hosts file), and then running a new instance of your browser.

WHEN YOU'RE SURE YOU'RE DONE

Once you're sure you're done you may want to archive the tarball. If you do, first create a directory at /home/sites-moved and then move the tarball there:
 
# mv /home/httpd/vhosts/example.com/www.example.com.tar.gz /home/sites-moved
 
If you don't want to archive it you may delete it.

You may also want to delete the old site information remaining on the new Plesk server:
 
# rm -Rf /home/httpd/vhosts/example.com/site1

THE VERY LAST STEP

The Plesk system automatically creates DNS records when you create the site, so the last step is to tell your registrar to look at DNS on the plesk server.

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

This white paper is Copyright©2004 Nobaloney Internet Services. You may copy it for distribution in any media as long as you copy it in it's entirety including this end section and Copyright notice. Please contact whitepapers@nobaloney.net to notify us of any errors or inconsistencies.

Thanks.

Jeff Lasman
NoBaloney Internet Services
02/17/2004
Edited 08/04/2005