I found this guide at forum-forum. I found it VERY useful in making a smooth transfer of accounts. I hope you’ll find it useful too. I did not write this, and I don’t know who did. I added a few things, which are italicized. Please post if you have any changes/additions.
Ready to transfer server providers?
24-48 hours before transfer:
1. Login to old server as root
2. cd /var/named
3. perl -pi.bak -e “s/14400/900/g” *.db
4. /etc/rc.d/init.d/named restart
Here we have edited every single dns zone and created a .bak of each (just
in case you need to revert). Changing the TTL from 14400 (24 hours) to 900 (15
minutes) means that as soon as you make a change to a dns zone, it will take
affect everywhere within 15 minutes as opposed to 24 hours. This will be helpful
after transfering the account because we want the sites to be pointing to the
new server ASAP so that file changes, new emails, etc all get to the new server
and don’t get “lost.” Make sure that you do this though atleast 24
hours before starting the transfer, that is how long it will take the internet
to “find out” that they need to check the dns server every 15 minutes
instead of 24 hours. (I hope that made sense)
Right before you do the transfer…
To make a smooth transfer without loosing any email, shut down exim here to
avoid delivering any email to the old server. The email will be delivered to
the new server when it becomes active. You should also tell your clients when
the move is taking place so they’re not angry when they lose posts in a forum
or changes to their site at this time. Maybe you also want to stop ftp and cpanel
too.
1. Login to old server as root
2. service chkservd stop
3. /etc/rc.d/init.d/exim stop
4. /etc/rc.d/init.d/pure-ftpd stop;/scripts/ckillall -9 pure-ftpd;/scripts/ckillall
-9 pure-authd;/etc/rc.d/init.d/proftpd stop;
5. /etc/rc.d/init.d/cpanel stop
READY to Transfer? Here we go:
1. Login to new server’s WHM, click on copy multiple accounts
2. Fill out the info
3. Select the accounts to transfer, if you chose select all at the bottom note
that you will assign every account it’s own ip address unless you manually unselect
assign ip address to the side of every account.
4. Sit back and relax
Transfers have completed, let’s make the change happen! Here we go:
1. Login to old server as root
2. cd /var/named
3. perl -pi.bak -e “s/[oldip]/[newip]/g” *.db
4. /etc/rc.d/init.d/named restart
This will point all the sites to the newip. Hopefully most of your sites are
on a shared ip. For all the accounts that are NOT on a shared ip you will need
to copy the .db.bak for that domain to .db and edit it to reflect the new IP.
MAKE SURE that you restore the back up file (.db.bak) for the old server’s hostname
and namesevers, otherwise your DNS will be useless.
Transfer completed. Sites are functioning on new server, now transfer the nameservers!
Here we go:
Be sure to set up your NEW nameservers on the NEW server (see setting up nameserver).
WHM will only add an A record for the oldips (until you transfer the nameservers
with the registrar) so you need to edit the DNS zone to reflect the new ips.
Submit the ip changes to your registrar and give it 48 hours to update. Within
48 hours your DNS will be served off your new server, thus you can cancel that
old server with that host you couldn’t wait to leave.
If you have resellers, copy all the files in /var/cpanel that reference resellers
and anything ending in .accts to the new server.
GOOD LUCK! If ANY setup does not make sense to you I would suggest that you
do some research or ask for some help before jumping in.
