Migration Guide from cPanel to DirectAdmin

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Introduction

This article contains information about the migration from cPanel to the latest available DirectAdmin version. Follow all the steps of this article for a successful installation.

Prerequisites

  • DirectAdmin version 1.57.4 or higher
  • You need to have the SSH login details of your server ready with root or administrative user
  • Installed software screen, rsync, nano
  • DirectAdmin cpanel_to_da conversion script version 0.0.32 or higher

Step 1 – Log in using SSH to cPanel server

You must be logged in via SSH as sudo or root user. Please view this article for instructions if you don’t know how to connect with your server via SSH.

Step 2 – Prepare the cPanel server

Create a directory to store the cPanel user backups.

  • mkdir -p /home/all_backups

Find the max length of your cPanel users.

  • ls /var/cpanel/users | awk ‘{print length, $0}’ | sort -nr | head -n1

Output

  • 16 abcdefghijklmnop

Step 3 – Log in using SSH to DirectAdmin server

You must be logged in via SSH as sudo or root user.

Step 4 – Prepare the DirectAdmin server

Create the directory.

  • mkdir -p /home/admin/all_backups

Change the directory owner to admin.

  • chown -R admin. /home/admin/all_backups

Install the converter script.

  • cd /usr/local/directadmin/custombuild
  • ./build update
  • ./build cpanel_to_da

Step 5 – Log in using SSH to cPanel server

We are using screen to prevent interruption due to network issues on the client.

  • screen -DR

Create user backup.

  • for user in ls /var/cpanel/users/; do { /scripts/pkgacct ${user} /home/all_backups; }; done

!!! The backup name should be cpmove-user.tar.gz, backup-…._user.tar.gz will not work. If you have backup-…._user.tar.gz you can rename it with this

  • for i in ls backup-[0-9]*.*.tar.gz; do { USERNAME=echo $i | cut -d_ -f3 | cut -d'.' -f1; mv -v $i cpmove-${USERNAME}.tar.gz; }; done

Transfer /home/all_backups from cPanel to your DirectAdmin.

  • rsync -avt --delete /home/all_backups/ root@your_directadmin_server.com:/home/admin/all_backups/

Step 6 – Configure DirectAdmin configuration

In these steps, we will change the default DirectAdmin configuration to our needs.

Step 6.1 – Enable IPv6

Check if IPv6 is configured in your DirectAdmin configuration:

  • grep “ipv6” /usr/local/directadmin/conf/directadmin.conf

If there is no output we have to enable it.

  • echo “ipv6=1” >> /usr/local/directadmin/conf/directadmin.conf
Step 6.2 – Allow underscores in database name or database user

Enable underscores in database names and database users.

  • echo “allow_db_underscore=1” >> /usr/local/directadmin/conf/directadmin.conf
Step 6.3 – Change DirectAdmin username length

Default DirectAdmin settings for username length is 10. The allowed username length is based on the database version that you are using.

In our situation, we have to change the username length to 16 characters (step 2).

  • echo “max_username_length=16” >> /usr/local/directadmin/conf/directadmin.conf
Step 6.4 – Change DNS template (add 3rd nameserver )

DirectAdmin supports two nameservers by default. In order to add the third or more DNS servers to your DNS record, you have to make changes in your DirectAdmin configuration.

Add NS3 to your DNS configuration.

  • cd /usr/local/directadmin/data/templates/custom
  • cp …/dns_ns.conf .

Add the following line at the bottom of dns_ns.conf.

  • ns3.snel.com.=|DOMAIN|.
Step 6.5 – Restart DirectAdmin

Apply the changes by restarting DirectAdmin

  • systemctl restart directadmin

Step 7 – Restore the backups in DirectAdmin Web Interface

We will now restore the backups in the DirectAdmin Web Interface. Log in to your DirectAdmin web interface:
https://directadmin.snel.com:2222

See more info here: