I can't remember when Transfer Tool last worked perfectly
I'm not blaming cPanel. Maybe I'm just using the feature incorrectly. Bear with me, this is going to be a semi long post.
It's been a few years since we've last done a large migration without having to pick up a lot of loose ends afterwards.
Yesterday, I had to migrate clients from two CloudLinux 7 servers to two new CloudLinux 8 servers.
I setup the servers to have the same configuration where possible. Source server was running cPanel 110 and destination was running 114. I didn't really think much about it as we've previously migrated between versions without any issues.
What we had planned was the following:
- New server should be setup with a temporary IP
- Migrate accounts to new server using Live Transfer
- Replace the temporary IP with the old server's IP (using
I waited for almost an hour before trying to abandon, but without any luck. This happened for multiple accounts. We also saw multiple "This system is not authoritative for the zone" errorsThis system is not authoritative for the zone "example.com". Make "ns1.domain.com", "ns2.domain.com", and "ns3.domain.com" resolve to this server.
This was true for some domains but the vast majority of the "failed" domains I checked were using our name servers. We also had at least one case were the transfer log said everything went fine for a client (not even a single warning) but the transfer somehow forgot a MySQL database. Due to this last issue and because we started seeing multiple websites just throwing error 500, we switched back to the old server. We stopped the new server and booted the old one. Because we had been using the Live Transfer feature, all of the accounts on the old server were suspended and service proxying was enabled. According to the documentation found It sort of solved the issue for us but mail was still attempted to be proxied for some domains. Changing the "Email Routing" in cPanel seemed to fix the issue. We also had a problem where the hostnames no longer responded to queries. Our root domain (let's just call it domain.com) has DNSSEC enabled. We used server1.domain.com and server2.domain.com as hostnames on the servers we were migrating. I have no idea what went wrong, but suddenly the two hostnames couldn't be queried in any way. They returned SERVFAIL no matter what we did. cPanel support solved this issue for us: [quote] I was able to proceed with the review on that system to identify why the subdomain is not returning. When checking the local zones, I found that there was rejection entries for a missing zone. This zone appears to have been the cause of the original DNSSEC issue as well.[11:35:10 ns2 root@95135693 ~]cPs# pdns_control bind-list-rejects server1.domain.com error at 2023-10-10 11:34:24 +0000 parsing 'server1.domain.com' from file '/var/named/server1.domain.com.db': Unable to open file '/var/named/server1.domain.com.db': No such file or directory: No such file or directory server2.domain.com error at 2023-10-10 11:34:33 +0000 parsing 'server2.domain.com' from file '/var/named/server2.domain.com.db': Unable to open file '/var/named/server2.domain.com.db': No such file or directory: No such file or directory
Since the subdomains need to be in the parent zone for DNSSEC, the creation of this zone previously would have caused the original reported issue. Since that time, this zone appears to have been deleted but was still present in the named.conf file. To resolve this, I ran a rebuild and confirmed the subdomain now resolves.[11:37:10 ns2 root@95135693 ~]cPs# /scripts/rebuilddnsconfig
Unfortunately, he wasn't able to figure out why the zone was missing. We've reported multiple issues regarding the Transfer Tool to cPanel, and some of them they have been able to reproduce. I no longer remember the last time we completed a large migration (at least 30 accounts) without having big issues. Another big issue was the transfer tool not honoring each website's PHP version. They would change to the default PHP version during the daily cPanel maintanance. That costs us more than a few clients. That should be fixed now, though. I'm starting to wonder if we're just using it wrong. I don't recall having any issues when disabling Live Transfer, so maybe Live Transfer just causes some issues in our setup? I know Live Transfer will only work if the domain is using our name servers but should it cause any trouble if we aren't? Usually, we just leave it enabled for all accounts, even the ones that doesn't use our name servers. If anyone has any feedback, please let me know.
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I completely understand the reasoning for Live Transfer and in a perfect world it would be great, but in actual practice it's a mess to use, especially when one or more account transfers fail. Therefore I prefer to disable Live Transfer for any large migration. That way, when something goes wrong, no big deal. Just re-transfer the account that failed and you're in business. 0 -
The second link you posted about how to disable Live Transfer is the correct way to handle that. As you may know, I am also the Migrations Coordinator here, so the Transfer Tool, and it's success, is near and dear to my heart. I haven't heard of any issues like what you speak of, though, as that tool is one of the most frequently used tools in the product. If you're able to provide us access to a test environment where you ran into that "100%" issue, we could investigate that, but I honestly don't have any thoughts of my own to add to this. I will say there is one area where the Transfer Tool can struggle, and that is with single, very large accounts. If you have one domain that is 500G in size, it's better to use the skip home directory option and rsync that data. 0 -
The second link you posted about how to disable Live Transfer is the correct way to handle that.
Is that mentioned anywhere (besides on that link itself)? I spent a very long time trying to figure out how to disable it I grew pretty frustrated because unsuspending an account in the WHM interface literally tells you that service proxying was also disabled. As you can see on this screenshot, we had three sessions on a single server that couldn't be aborted. Times are in UTC+2, so around 22 hours ago. They're still trying to abort. This is what the session looks like: All of those warnings are "Possible ambiguous use of trailing variable" and "This system is not authoritative for the zone" warnings. Of around 40 accounts, only a small handful had 0 warnings. I don't know if I can reproduce it. If it only occurs for Live Transfers, our client will have potential downtime again. After 15 hours of issues, I don't feel like taking any chances I really love the idea of Live Transfer but I haven't had any major success with it so far. Believe me, after spending 10 hours prepping for the transfer, I really wasn't hoping that I would have to troubleshoot for the next 15 hoursI will say there is one area where the Transfer Tool can struggle, and that is with single, very large accounts. If you have one domain that is 500G in size, it's better to use the skip home directory option and rsync that data.
The biggest account we transferred was around 50GB so that should still be a reasonable sized account, I guess. Another thing I've noticed: Let's say we have ~470GB of user data on one server. We're migrating to a new server with 500GB free disk space. If I initiate a transfer of all accounts (let's just say 100 accounts with 4.7GB of data each) at the same time, it will only transfer one account at a time. If I abort the transfer and select the first 5 accounts, the Transfer Tool can transfer all of them at the same time. Is that because the Transfer Tool thinks that 470GB data + temporary files needs to fit on the 500GB disk at the same time? Whereas if we only transfer 5, it thinks that it's 23.5GB + temporary files, which leaves plenty of available space? I hope you understand what I mean. Thanks.0 -
I don't think we mention the Live Transfer reverting tool anywhere else - should we? If so, where would you like to see that? Somewhere in the interface itself? As far as the disk space, I do know what you mean but I wouldn't expect it to calculate it like that. 0 -
Having a link to it in the interface would be a good idea, although I don't know where it would need to be. Perhaps on the "Transfer Tool" or "List Accounts" page if one or more accounts have service proxy enabled? When I suspected service proxy was the issue, I googled "cPanel disable service proxy" and this was the most relevant article: Service Proxying | cPanel & WHM Documentation - and that just told me that unsuspending the account would disable the proxy. Hmm, if that's not how the disk space calculations are made, I'll have to investigate why it refuses to transfer more than 1 account at a time. 0 -
If you'd like to create a ticket we'd be happy to do some digging! 0 -
I migrated a couple hundred accounts from a CloudLinux 6 ELS server to two CloudLinux 8 servers over the past six months. After every live transfer I had to execute the following on the gaining (new) servers in order for the proper CloudLinux Alt-PHP settings to be properly used on the new machines: /usr/sbin/cagefsctl --rebuild-alt-php-ini accountname; /usr/sbin/cagefsctl --force-update && /usr/sbin/cagefsctl -m accountname What a pain in the ass :) 0 -
[quote] We've reported multiple issues regarding the Transfer Tool to cPanel, and some of them they have been able to reproduce. I no longer remember the last time we completed a large migration (at least 30 accounts) without having big issues. Another big issue was the transfer tool not honoring each website's PHP version. They would change to the default PHP version during the daily cPanel maintanance. That costs us more than a few clients. That should be fixed now, though. I'm starting to wonder if we're just using it wrong. I don't recall having any issues when disabling Live Transfer, so maybe Live Transfer just causes some issues in our setup? I know Live Transfer will only work if the domain is using our name servers but should it cause any trouble if we aren't? Usually, we just leave it enabled for all accounts, even the ones that doesn't use our name servers. If anyone has any feedback, please let me know.
Hi DennisMidjord, I can tell you that some of the issues you described are not limited to Live Transfers from our experience. We have moved in the recent past 6 months about 400 domains with the transfer tool in batches of 30 from several different WHM/cPanel servers. We noticed a lot of non critical warnings due to mysql to mariadb but also due to different utf8 config. (in our case all save to ignore) We had 4 batches out of the 13 that resulted in a stuck transfer status though when viewing the actual transfer it was already done and rsync was idle We had to manually edit the database records following the guide at0 -
@ITHKBO - sure! Although that would need to happen in a ticket and not over Forums. 0 -
Yeah the Live Transfer is a mess and should have never been made the default. We banned our staff from doing direct server to server transfers because of the mess caused by this tool. We just backup the account and do an upload from our machine.
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You can disable Live Transfer in the Transfer Tool - https://support.cpanel.net/hc/en-us/articles/360051837674-How-to-disable-the-Live-Transfer-feature-in-Transfer-Tool
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@cPrex Thanks but we are aware of that and have already disabled it. We just don't trust that it wont get messed with in future updates... causing it to get turned back on. Its not totally out of the realm of possibilities as it got automatically turned on once already.
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@vf-hostmaster Disabling Live Transfer it isn't permanent. Disabling it just disables it for that session only.
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Correct - disabling Live Transfer is only for that session.
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