Preparing for Migration from cPanel-managed Servers

This chapter describes what data can be migrated from cPanel and discusses the steps you might need to perform before starting migration.

Migrated Objects and Settings

The following table describes what objects and settings are migrated.

Object or setting on cPanel source server	Migration result
Main domain with settings and web content.	For each domain, a new separate subscription (with webspace) belonging to the server administrator is created.
Subdomains.	Only those cPanel subdomains that are not aliases to addon domains are migrated.
Addon domains.	Migrated as additional domains.
Parked domains.	Migrated as domain aliases.
Custom error pages.	Only pages for error codes supported by Parallels Plesk Panel are migrated: 400 Bad Request. 401 Authorization Required. 403 Forbidden. 404 Not Found. 405 Method Not Allowed. 406 Not Acceptable. 407 Proxy Authentication Required. 412 Precondition Failed. 414 Request-URI Too Long. 415 Unsupported Media Type. 500 Internal Server Error. 501 Not Implemented. 502 Bad Gateway. 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable. Also, after migration, the custom tags that could be used in error pages (Referring URL, Visitor's IP address, Requested URL, Server name, Visitor's browser, Redirect status code) are not substituted with actual values.
Mail accounts with content and webmail settings.
Mail forwarders.
Autoresponders.
Default e-mail address for catching mail to non-existent accounts.	Migrated with settings and content.
Mailing lists with content.
FTP accounts.	Migrated; however passwords for FTP accounts are not migrated, new passwords are generated instead. You can view these passwords in the migration log that is available for download after migration completion, and notify your users about password change.
Anonymous FTP shares, their settings and files.
Password-protected directories.
Databases with data and database user accounts.	During migration, database users who had access to several databases under a single domain are transformed into separate database user accounts, one account per database. For example, in cPanel, a database user jdoe_dbuser1 had access to databases jdoe_db1 and jdoe_db2. After migration, there will be two database users in Parallels Plesk Panel: jdoe_dbuser1 for database jdoe_db1, and jdoe_dbuser_x for database jdoe_db2.
Installed web applications.	Migrated, but not shown in the list of installed applications in Panel.
Installed CGI scripts.	The files are migrated, but are not registered in the Panel's database as belonging to any web application or CGI script.
Records about allocation of disk space resources.
Records about allowed number of mail accounts.
Records about allowed number of subdomains.
Records about allowed number of add-on domains.
Records about allowed number of FTP accounts.
Records about allowed number of databases.
Records about allowed number of mailing lists.

The following table describes what objects and settings are not migrated.

Object or setting on cPanel source server	Migration result
User accounts.
Records about service plans (packages).
Wild-card redirects.
DNS zone configurations	After migration, you can check the DNS zone settings of the migrated domains, and add custom records, if required.
Mail domain forwarders.
Server-side IMAP mail filters.
Settings of e-mail authentication with DomainKeys mechanism.
Settings of e-mail authentication with Sender Policy Framework mechanism.
IP blacklist for domains, IP addresses, and address ranges.
SSL certificates.	After migration is finished, you can transfer them manually.
The list of hosts allowed to remotely connect to the websites' MySQL databases.
Perl and PHP extension modules.
Records about allowed monthly bandwidth usage.
Records about allowed number of parked domains.
Settings of CGI support on hosting accounts.
Cron jobs.
Web statistics program.

What to Do Before You Start Migration from cPanel to Parallels Plesk Panel

To avoid issues related to migration of cPanel's virtual hosts to Parallels Plesk Panel 10, you should do the following:

Switch off SELinux on the destination server.
Configure the Parallels Plesk Panel-managed destination server to use the same directory for storing virtual host files as is used on the source cPanel server. You should do this only if you did not create new domains/websites on the destination server by using command-line tools.

To switch off SELinux:

Open the file /etc/selinux/config in a text editor and locate the line SELINUX=<value>.
Change it to SELINUX=disabled.
If you cannot find this file, open the file /boot/grub/grub.conf in a text editor and add the parameter selinux=0 to Grub Boot Loader:
title SE-Linux Test System
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20-selinux-XXXXXXXXXX ro root=/dev/hda1 nousb selinux=0
        #initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.20-selinux-XXXXXXXXXX.img
Restart the server to apply the changes.
If you do not want to restart, issue the command setenforce 0.

To change the location of virtual hosts on the destination server:

Open the file /etc/psa/psa.conf and set the HTTPD_VHOSTS_D value to /home instead of /var/www/vhosts.
Important: The directory containing virtual hosts and document root directories of all sites must be located on the same partition where Parallels Plesk Panel is installed. Otherwise, migration will fail.
Move all existing files and directories from /var/www/vhosts/ to /home/ by using the following command:
mv /var/www/vhosts/* /home/
Rebuild all apache configuration files to pick up all virtual hosts from the new location:
/usr/local/psa/admin/bin/websrvmng --reconfigure-all

After that, webspaces for all new websites will be created in the /home directory, which is typically used by cPanel's virtual hosts.

Alternately, you can change the location of virtual hosts on the destination server by using the command-line utility transvhosts.pl:

/usr/local/psa/bin/transvhosts.pl --dest-dir /home --correct-scripts

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