Skill Level : Beginner

In this post, I will explain how to transfer a website from one cPanel server to other.

Pre Requisites

Server Platform : Linux

User requires     : cPanel and SSH access (root) to at-least the Destination server (where the account is restoring)

The Process

From the Target server, Generate a Full cPanel backup of the account using either cPanel or through root shell access.

(i) By cPanel

Login to cPanel. Go to Files -> Backups

Click “Download or Generate a Full Website Backup”. Choose Backup Destination as “Home Directory” (Make sure you’ve enough Disk Space before you proceed) and a valid E-mail address to notify you once the Backup is generated.

Once the Backup is completed, a mail will arrive on the E-mail you’ve mentioned above (if specified) and the ‘Backups Available for Download’ will be populated with the name of the backup file generated like :

Do you know why the backup generated is the form tar.gz ? Its because, in the tar format all files are preserved with their appropriate permissions and then its compressed to gz (gzip) for obtaining the least possible file size.

The process in the Target server is finished. Now login as Root in the server which requires the account to be restored. We’ve to download the backup file generated there to this server. There are number of ways to do this. Some are weird

Method 1

If you have the cPanel details of that server, you can use it for FTP access. And since the Backup is generated on the Home directory there, its all about downloading the backup.

# root@server [/home]# ftp oldserver.com or IP

Connected to oldserver.com.
220———- Welcome to Pure-FTPd [privsep] [TLS] ———-
220-You are user number 3 of 50 allowed.
220-Local time is now 17:28. Server port: 21.
220-IPv6 connections are also welcome on this server.
220 You will be disconnected after 15 minutes of inactivity.
Name (oldserver.com:root): user
331 User user OK. Password required
Password:
230 OK. Current restricted directory is /
Remote system type is UNIX.
Using binary mode to transfer files.
ftp> get backup-6.2.2011_06-23-57_account.tar.gz

This will download the backup. You need root access to restore it. Before you restore you need to check whether there is an account or domain which already exists by the name which you intend to restore.

cPanel script to check whether the domain/account name exists

# grep account /etc/userdomains

Method 2

Generating a cPanel backup through Remote FTP (Passive Mode transfer)

It is possible to generate a Remote backup of the account in a server, where the backup has to be restored. Go to cPanel -> Backups -> Download or Generate a Full website backup. Select the Backup Destination as Remote FTP Server (passive mode transfer). Follow the screenshot :

cPanel script to restore the account

# nice -n 19 /scripts/restorepkg –skipres <username>

For the script to run, the backup should be in any of the following locations in the server :  /, /home, /home2, /home3, /misc, /net, /root, /usr, /usr/home, /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs, /var/tmp, /web

This feature will restore full backups, cPanel backups and cPanel move files in one of the following formats:

cpmove-{USER}
cpmove-{USER}.tar
cpmove-{USER}.tar.gz
USER.tar
USER.tar.gz
backup-{BACKUP-DATE_TIME}_{USER}.tar
backup-{BACKUP-DATE_TIME}_{USER}.tar.gz

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a cryptographic protocol which ensure the security of communication over the Internet. SSL encrypt the segments of network connections above the Transport Layer, using symmetric cryptography for privacy and a keyed message authentication code for message reliability.

How SSL works

Web servers and Web browsers rely on the SSL protocol to create a unique encrypted channel for private communications over the Internet. The SSL Certificate consists of a public key and a private key. The public key is used to encrypt information and the private key is used to decrypt it. When a Web browser points to a domain which is secured by SSL, a level of encryption is established based on the type of SSL Certificate as well as the client Web browser, operating system and host server’s capabilities. This is why SSL certificates feature a different range of encryption levels.

Obtaining an SSL Certificate

Domain example.com needs an SSL Certificate. The following steps are involved in it :

a) Example.com generates a CSR (Certificate Signing Request) and during this process, a private key is generated.
b) With this CSR, Example.com goes to a trusted, third party Certificate Authority like Verisign. They take the Certificate Signing Request and validates example.com. The Certificate Authority validates example.com.
c) When the validation process is complete, the third party Certificate Authority gives a new public key (certificate) encrypted with their private key.
d) Example.com installs the new certificate and gets secured.

Installing SSL

(i) Through cPanel/WHM
Its quite easy to install SSL through cPanel/WHM interface.

Generating CSR

Under Security tab, click SSL/TLS Manager.

Generate the Private Keys first by accessing the option Generate, view, upload or delete your private keys

Access the option Generate, view, or delete SSL certificate signing requests. Fill in the forms like Domain Name, E-mail Address, Country etc.

You will obtain the CSR. Contact the Certificate provider with this information. The Certificate Authority will then provide the Certificate (CRT). Finally you will have the following files associated with SSL :

CSR in the format domain.com.csr or domain_com.csr

CA bundle, which have the Public key of the Certificate Authority in the format domain.com.cabundle or domain_com.ca-bundle

CRT, the certificate in the format domain.com.crt or domain_com.crt

Private key in the format domain.com.key or domain_com.key

Method 1 : Installing from cPanel

1. Go to SSL/TLS Manager.
2. Click Generate, view, upload, or delete your private keys.
3. Under the Upload a New Certificate section, click on the Browse button (next to Choose a .crt file option) and find the Domain Certificate file (example.crt) that you obtained from the SSL vendor. Alternatively you can paste the Certificate contents on the section Paste the crt below. Make sure to include the BEGIN and END tags, while copying your certificate. Click the Upload button.
4. Go Back and click Return to SSL Manager at the bottom of the page.
5. Click on Setup a SSL certificate to work with your site. If this option is not available, your web host may have disabled it. You will need to contact them for further support.
6. Now, select the domain you are using from the Domain drop down menu. It will attempt to fetch the SSL Certificate and the private key. If this doesn’t work, you may need to contact your web host.
7. In the box labeled CA Bundle paste the contents of the Intermediate certificate (DigiCertCA.crt).
8. Click Install Certificate. Your SSL certificate should now be installed, and the website configured to accept secure connections. You or your web host may need to restart Apache before it will work.

Method 2 : Installing from WHM

You can install SSL certificate from WHM also. Its quite simple when compared to the installation through cPanel. All you need is the root access to WHM. Once you login to the WHM, search for the option Install a SSL Certificate and Setup the Domain.

You’ll find three boxes. Paste the CRT file contents in the first box. It will automatically fetch the Key and CA Bundle (In most cases, CA bundle needs to be fetched manually). Finally click Submit once all the fields are populated. You’ll see a message that indicates the installation is successful

Method 3 : Manual Installation

You need the Server Root shell access for this. Go to the Apache configuration file in the server, in the cPanel case its /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf. Locate the VirtualHost entry configured for SSL. Configure it like :

<VirtualHost xxx.xxx.x.xx:443>
 ServerName example.com
 ServerAlias www.example.com
 DocumentRoot /home/example/public_html
 SSLEngine on
 SSLCertificateFile /usr/share/ssl/certs/example.com.crt
 SSLCertificateKeyFile /usr/share/ssl/private/example.com.key
 SSLCACertificateFile /usr/share/ssl/certs/example.com.cabundle
</VirtualHost>

where SSLCertificateFile is the SSL certificate file path, SSLCertificateKeyFile is the Key file path, SSLCACertificateFile is the path to the Intermediate file. Make sure you’ve the files in the specified path (It may vary on different scenarios). Restart the Web server and you’re done.

Skill Level : Beginner

In this post, I will explain how to convert an add-on domain to a primary domain. Considering a complex case, lets consider the primary domain should be a different one from the one that holds the Add-on domain.

Pre Requisites

Server Platform : Linux

User requires     : cPanel and SSH access (root)

This is a Site transfer. Also both the sites I’ve mentioned here is on same server.

Case

The Add-on Domain under a website has to be converted as its Primary Domain. If you have a Full backup, its another case. I’ll explain it in another post.

Solution

Lets consider the Add-on Domain is addon.com under the user admin and the document root of the add-on domain is :

/home/admin/public_html/addon

Now it should be transferred as the Primary Domain

* Using WHM Create a New account primary.com, the document root is then say /home/primary
We’ve to transfer the whole data from /home/admin/public_html/addon.com to /home/primary/public_html first.

* The Steps will be :

root@server [/home/admin/public_html/addon]# cp -r ./* /home/primary/public_html

This will recursively copy everything inside the PWD to the specified location

Don’t forget to copy .htaccess too

root@server [/home/admin/public_html/addon]# cp .htaccess /home/primary/public_html

* Thats it, the contents are moved, but there is a database too which has to be moved eventually.
* I’ll site some type of websites like CMS and Blog :

For a Magento website, the database configuration is specified inside the local.xml file which is placed inside the /app/etc directory inside a domain. For example

root@server [/home/admin/public_html/addon]# cd /app/etc
root@server [/home/admin/public_html/addon/app/etc]# cat local.xml

* Watch for these lines in the local.xml file

<username><![CDATA[admin_user]]></username>
<password><![CDATA[password]]></password>
<dbname><![CDATA[admin_db]]></dbname>

ruby -v
ruby 1.8.7 (2009-06-08 patchlevel 173) [i686-linux]

But when updating the gems and the gem itself, we were getting error as below,


gem update --system
Updating RubyGems...
ERROR: While executing gem ... (Gem::RemoteSourceException)
HTTP Response 302 fetching http://gems.rubyforge.org/yaml


Solution was to specify another source as below, which was the 302 redirection of http://gems.rubyforge.org/yaml . May be gem now handles the 302 redirection properly.

gem install rubygems-update --source http://production.s3.rubygems.org/ 

followed by the gem update itself.

sudo gem update --system --source http://production.s3.rubygems.org/

To add the source permanently, use the command below and for more help

gem help sources

gem sources -a http://production.s3.rubygems.org/

IFS or Internal Field Seperator holds the value which seperates the various entities. This can be file names, values read into a script by read etc. It is the character or characters designated as whitespace by the operating system.

The IFS is set to the newline and space character. The global variable $IFS stores the value. To view the exact value stored in IFS execute:

echo "$IFS" | cat -vTE
 ^I$
$

Running echo “$IFS” will not give you any visible output (after all, you are going to see a space and a newline). cat -vTE displays non printable characters , tabs as ^I and ends each line with a $ sign.

In a script which utilises filenames (with spaces), it is always preferable to change the IFS to include only the newline character opposed to the default space and newline character. Lets check out one such script which accepts filenames wih spaces. This scripts simply prints the file names in your current directory. (Remember to create some files in your currenct directory which has spaces. You may try the same script removing the lines with the IFS variable in reference to see the difference)

#!/bin/bash
OIFS=$IFS # Original IFS

IFS=$(echo -en "\n\b") # New IFS

for fil in $(ls -1 $PWD); do
	echo $fil
done

IFS=$OIFS # Restore earlier IFS

IFS can also be used to read files with lines sepearated by a special character. For example in the /etc/passwd, to store the various entries like username, homedirectory etc.

The following script uses the while construct to determine the users who have the shell portion as /bin/false

#!/bin/bash

OIFS=$IFS
IFS=':'

while read username password userid groupid comments homedir shell_avail
do
	if [[ $shell_avail == /bin/false ]]; then
                echo "$username has no shell"
        fi

done < /etc/passwd
IFS=$OIFS

In the above script each of the 7 portions of the /etc/passwd file is assigned to the 7 variables
username password userid groupid comments homedir shell_avail with the read command. The if portion in the script compares the seventh variable – shell_avail to /bin/false to determine the username and outputs it.

From now on you can use the IFS variable for all those files with spaces and extracting values separated by a special character.