Help moving sites to a new server

efeezy

efeezy

New member
Oct 5, 2007
5,250
136
0
50
I'm moving a handful of sites (1 domain + addon's) from an old shared Host Gator account I've had forever, over to one of my dedicated boxes. I had the HG people do a backup of the entire thing, mysql databases, the whole deal and I have it in a rar file on my local computer.

On my dedicated, I created a new account/ip in whm, but I"m not sure how to get everything on the .rar where it needs to go on the new server. I've never had to do this before, so I'm completely flying blind.

If someone could give me some instruction on my next steps to get this thing transferred and up & running, I'd appreciate it. Thanks.
 


If you were to FTP the rar file (though tar.gz or zip is whats supported) to the public_html dir (or whatever you packed up) , then in Cpanels' file manager you can go down and click the "extract" link, but like I said I'm not sure if it supports rar.
 
lol seriously? I thought you were a coder/developer.. *shocked*

2 options:
1. manually backup files and move over
2. ask Hostgaytor about providing a tar.gz backup.. send that over to the new server and untar the file into your public_html (or equivalent) directory
 
The exact steps to getting this done depend a lot on what you are moving specifically, and whether you are changing domain names (I'm guessing not, but who knows). PM me if you are looking to hire this out. Here are some of the things you are *probably* going to need to do:

1. Make sure your new dedicated box has all the necessary software, e.g., MySQL, Apache, etc. Also check that the version of MySQL you have is compatible with the version you are exporting from (If you have a mysql dumpfile and not a binary backup, you probably don't need to worry about this)
2. Set up apache virtual hosts for each of your sites, specifying docroot etc.
3. Unpack html stuff into appropriate docroots, possibly more than one if you have several sites (see #2)
3. Create MySQL users needed for sites if you require them, i.e., if any of your sites are WordPress installs, etc.
4. Import MySQL dump into your new MySQL instance.
5. Create some temporary rules in your hosts file so that you can access your sites on the new IP by domain name
6. Test the shit out of your new setup to be sure that you've installed everything correctly.
7. Update DNS for all of your domains that you are moving.
8. Profit.
 
sgtryan said:
lol seriously? I thought you were a coder/developer.. *shocked*

2 options:
1. manually backup files and move over
2. ask Hostgaytor about providing a tar.gz backup.. send that over to the new server and untar the file into your public_html (or equivalent) directory
Click to expand...

Now that's funny. I'm a novice coder at best, and my server tweaking skills are probably not far behind that.

I had hostgator create the backup for me. I uploaded it to my root server, all 5.0 GB of it, which took 24 hours. Now I can't get the backup to install. HG is telling me that it appears to be corrupt or incomplete. I've had these sites down since Friday and I'm no closer to having them back up and running on the new server. I'm ready to just rebuild them from scratch, because at this point, if I have them create another backup, and I have to FTP it to the new server, that's another 24+ hours. And even then it's not a guarantee it will work.
 
efeezy said:
Now that's funny. I'm a novice coder at best, and my server tweaking skills are probably not far behind that.

I had hostgator create the backup for me. I uploaded it to my root server, all 5.0 GB of it, which took 24 hours. Now I can't get the backup to install. HG is telling me that it appears to be corrupt or incomplete. I've had these sites down since Friday and I'm no closer to having them back up and running on the new server. I'm ready to just rebuild them from scratch, because at this point, if I have them create another backup, and I have to FTP it to the new server, that's another 24+ hours. And even then it's not a guarantee it will work.
Click to expand...

Unless you are hosting your new server on a dial-up connection, a 5GB backup shouldn't take more than 10 minutes to transfer.
 
subigo said:
Unless you are hosting your new server on a dial-up connection, a 5GB backup shouldn't take more than 10 minutes to transfer.
Click to expand...

They told me to download the backup to my local computer and FTP it up to the new server. I"m using filezilla and it's uploading at 60 KB/s average, even with 10 connections running in the tranfer settings.

I'm trying it again and it's going to take 24 hours on my business DSL connection. Not sure of a way to speed this up.
 
Save yourself some time after you download it again... check the file md5 of the one you are downloading now vs. the one you have on your dedicated box. If they are the same, don't bother uploading from home to dedi.
 
efeezy said:
They told me to download the backup to my local computer and FTP it up to the new server. I"m using filezilla and it's uploading at 60 KB/s average, even with 10 connections running in the tranfer settings.

I'm trying it again and it's going to take 24 hours on my business DSL connection. Not sure of a way to speed this up.
Click to expand...

They told you the worst possible thing in the world.

Move the backup to a public directory on the hostgator site (probably public_html of a domain if it's cpanel) and then just:

#wget http://yourdomain.com/backup.tar.gz

...from the new server. Download shouldn't take more than a few minutes.
 
efeezy said:
They told me to download the backup to my local computer and FTP it up to the new server. I"m using filezilla and it's uploading at 60 KB/s average, even with 10 connections running in the tranfer settings.

I'm trying it again and it's going to take 24 hours on my business DSL connection. Not sure of a way to speed this up.
Click to expand...

You should either:

1. Put the backup file in a publicly accessible directory. Password protect it if you like with .htaccess in case anybody grabs it.

Then log into your dedicated server using putty then grab the file:

Code: 
wget hxxp://mysite.com/backup.tar

OR

2. Login to your dedicated server using putty and FTP to your CPanel account and grab it that way.
 
The original backup was still in the home directory on the old server. I just told them to take it from there and move it directly so I didn't have to dick with it. We'll see what happens.
 
Here's a question. They were able to restore the main domain, but my add on domains are now pointing to the default whm / apache page. The add on's are showing added in the cpanel, but I'm not sure what I need to do to get the wordpress sites back showing again. It appears that all the Wordpress install, themes, plugin's etc made it over in the transfer. Strange.
 
Do you know if the actual data for the add-ons is located in the place that cpanel expects it to be? Sorry for being vague, but I usually do this stuff "manually" as opposed to in cpanel...
 
Are your nameservers in place?

1. Have you changed your nameservers? Have they propogated?
2. Restart apache and see if it fixes the problem.
3. Why not get individual accounts for your addon domains?
4. Can I take a look at the server? If yes - I may try fixing it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom