How to manually transfer all accounts using pkgacct and restorepkg?

Introduction

While the Transfer Tool can move all accounts between two servers that are online and able to communicate, often it is necessary to transfer accounts to a new server while the old server is offline, or otherwise inaccessible. Data must be transported manually, but the process is relatively straightforward.

Procedure

You must ensure you have enough space on your system to generate a full set of backups. If you need more space, you could mount a separate drive.

Either create a directory or mount a drive to the system. In this example, we'll use the mount point "/transferdata/"

The following will run a backup on all accounts and place that backup into /transferdata

for x in `ls -1 /var/cpanel/users`; do /scripts/pkgacct $x /transferdata; done

Once complete, move the backups to the new server. Move over your mounted drive to the new system, or transfer the files via a protocol such as SFTP or SCP.

In the following Restore example, we'll use the mount point "/restoredata/"

cd /restoredata
for x in cpmove*.tar.gz; do /scripts/restorepkg --force $x ; done