I have a curious case where a client's domain is pointing to a different IP address than where it is hosted. The other IP address is an online service using which a volunteer put together a flash web site for the non-profit.

We are trying to move the hosting to our company, but want to get hold of the previous site's backup files. Now, here is the curious part - the cPanel login and FTP access both fail and when we took it up with the current provider, they say it's because the domain has an A record pointing to the other IP address.

Is this true or correct?

Thanks in advance for any insights.

appearantly, the domain pointing to a wrong ip, this may happen if domain dns is worong, changed, or even the domain may be lost by original owner, that is, the domain may have expired and another person may have bought the domain.

if you need old files, you need old ip, probably the files of domain is in its old location (ip). The owner should know old ip. if owner does not know the old ip, you cannot find it (if dns is wrong/changed).

Hello,

You can ask your previous host to get you a backup of that domain on any downloadable location were you can easly download the backup.

I have a curious case where a client's domain is pointing to a different IP address than where it is hosted. The other IP address is an online service using which a volunteer put together a flash web site for the non-profit.

We are trying to move the hosting to our company, but want to get hold of the previous site's backup files. Now, here is the curious part - the cPanel login and FTP access both fail and when we took it up with the current provider, they say it's because the domain has an A record pointing to the other IP address.

Is this true or correct?

Thanks in advance for any insights.

the way that cpanel creates default dns means that it creates the subdomains as a CNAME rather than an A record.
A CNAME is a pointer to another item, rather than an IP address
so when the A record that controls the website changes, the ftp, webmail etc subdomains all stop working because they rely on the new hosts IP.

If you know the old IP address, you can get trick your computer (using the HOSTS file), into thinking the ftp and cpanel addresses still reside on the old server , and get them that way.

You should still be able to FTP using the IP address as the host and your old username and password too.

You should still be able to FTP using the IP address as the host and your old username and password too.

I realized this just minutes ago. Thank you for the great explanation too.

For anyone stuck in a similar situation, here's how I fixed it:

- Found out the old IP address the domain was hosted on. I did this using the NetCraft Toolbar which I have installed. It gives you a hosting history section consisting of the Netblock owner details where I found out the old IP address

- Put that old IP address into the FTP host field of Filezilla and logged into FTP to download all the files.

Logging into the account's cPanel was also easy. I just used https://xx.xxx.xx.xxx:2083/ and used the user name and password the client had provided to login and generate a full back up to the Remote FTP server (my VPS) where I had already created a new account for the domain.

Yes, that is true if the domain is pointing to other server and you are trying with older login credentials.

You need to try with the IP address/cpanel with older credentials to get the back up