Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Hosting Security and Technology : how do i move accounts from one harddrive to another?

[neotek]

The harddrive in my server died tonight and my isp is installing a new one with a new operating system as we speak. I am expected to just copy files across and set everything back up. I have no idea whatsoever how to do that, given that all the accounts on the server were created by cpanel. I have no idea what directories to copy other than /home and I have no idea how to get the new copy of cpanel they'll install on the new harddrive to recognise the accounts I just copied over.

If someone can help me with any of this I will be forever in their debt.

Thanks in advance; please help if you can, I run the risk of losing my entire business because of this.

edit: to clarify, the old harddrive had bad sectors and now refuses to boot in anything but readonly mode. the new harddrive they're installing will become the primary drive, the old harddrive will become the slave. i'll be able to copy files from the old drive directly onto the new drive. they'll both be in the same machine, basically, only the new drive will be the master instead of the old drive being the master, if you catch my drift.

[3spades]

If you have backups made by cpanel you can do a full restore from within whm. If not then you will need to manually move stuff into the right dirs and check ownership and permissions.

[neotek]

I can move the accounts over but my question is, how do I get the new copy of cpanel to recognise the accounts and rebuild its index? Or is there a special folder I can move over to copy all of cpanel over as well?

[3spades]

Well once you move all the files over they will be in the right places so cpanel will recognise them. What you need to move are all the cpanel user files that belong in /var/cpanel/users and the dns zone files and copy over the old httpd.conf and copy/paste the passwd/shadow entries and all.

[neotek]

Thanks, I'll try that. If it works, I owe you BIG-TIME.

[3spades]

If it works, have backups run atleaste once a month so incase this happens again all you need to do is a full restore and tick off recreate accounts.

[neotek]

It half-worked, but I moved a few other things, played around with some settings, and everything's back online as I write this. Thanks very much, 3spades, you were a big help!

[neotek]

Okay, still having a problem with mail accounts. It looks like they haven't survived the migration. Got any ideas on how to get them working again?

[neotek]

Okay, this is the weird bit. I can send email to email accounts created by users (ie, testaccount@domain.com) but not the default email account for that account (ie, say the username is bob and the domain is fred.com, bob@fred.com is the default email account for fred.com.) The only account I can send email to the default account for is one that I created myself before moving all the files over, so obviously there's a directory or a file somewhere that I've missed that contains the names of the default email accounts for each account.

That's easily the least understandable thing I've ever written, so if someone out there can understand it and give me a solution they'll be some kind of god.