Hello from New York City!
Pre-sale Questions about Professional Support Plans.
Thank you.
| SYSTEM INFORMATION | |
|---|---|
| OS type and version | UBUNTU |
| Virtualmin version | Latest |
We support Webmin, Virtualmin, and the services Virtualmin manages. We don’t support every service Webmin manages (there are 100+ modules, we can’t be an expert on all of those services).
So, we do support you with mail server and DNS questions, but, that doesn’t mean we’ll help with a wholly unrelated mail server or DNS server deployment…we’re just supporting the mail stack as Virtualmin configures it and DNS in the context of Virtualmin and the kinds of DNS deployments Virtualmin supports (including secondary servers managed by Webmin and/or cloud services like Route 53)
Also, we can’t be your sysadmin. We answer questions, give links to relevant documentation (our own or others), fix bugs, and help you figure out problems (and we’re generally very good at it and fast with the specific stuff we deal with every day, since we see a lot of the same problems and confusions regularly), but we’re not generally logging into people’s servers and performing sysadmin tasks. At a few bucks a month, we’re here to lend guidance not do the work of managing your servers directly, and we probably charge too little even within those guidelines (none of our competitors offer unlimited support in this way or for anywhere near the price, AFAIK).
There are lots of tutorials out on the internet. 
Fire up virtualmin gpl and have mess about and set how it works
Hi Joe!
When migrating a cPanel backup to into Webmin/Virtualmin, will the custom DNS name server settings for that account be restored smoothly? Thank you for your feedback and clarification.
Define “custom DNS name server settings”? All records should be brought over as part of the migration, but if you have templates or whatever in cPanel/WHM, you’d probably need to recreate those in Virtualmin. Our migration can bring domains and all of their data (websites, web applications, databases, DNS records, mail spools, use homes, etc.) over, but we don’t try to replicate the WHM configuration (and it probably wouldn’t be realistic to try, as our implementation of plans and templates is quite different).
You can usually expect a cPanel/WHM migration to be relatively painless, but not completely automatic. And, the more complicated your sites and how customized your deployment is, the more likely there will be issues you need to manually sort out. We provide support for those migrations, though. We can usually help you solve any problems that come up.
I’ll also mention you can install Virtualmin GPL and try migrating one of your cPanel domain backups. The migration is mostly the same for Pro and GPL when coming from cPanel/WHM, so if you see it work (or not work, as the case may be) in GPL, you can be confident it’ll probably be the same in Pro. That may help make your decision about how disruptive a migration would be for you and your users.
Most users find it is pretty quick and painless and they’re able to switch to their Virtualmin server and turn off the old cPanel server pretty quickly, as in hours or days, depending on the number of domains and size of data coming across. You can try one domain at a time to keep the process manageable and minimize risk/downtime, etc.
The custom name server for the website is set as follows:
* ns1.**website**
* ns2.**website**
Does the original site have to be shutdown in order for the migration to actually work since both use the same domain name? Is there a guide to doing a migration of a cPanel migration backup?
Do you think this will be problematic?
No, you can edit your pc host file to test everything is working correctly.
You sound inexperience in moving so testing the process is vital.
Also look at lowing you current TTL settings in your DNS so the rest of the world knows the new IP number of the new server else it can take 24hours for caches to update.
https://www.hostpapa.com/knowledgebase/time-live-ttl
You need to set your DNS TTL (Time to live) to a very short integral. I was at a place that used 60 seconds. May be a tad overkill. This tells other DNS agents NOT to cache for over 60 seconds before timing out and doing a fresh lookup. Note, some caching servers don’t honor this. Technically, it is on THEM, but… 
Check the doc section.
Ah, that’s a glue records issue, and things are going to get weird, because the DNS for glue records exists above your direct level of control (on the root name servers for the zone). Your registrar provides a means to set it, possibly with some delay, but Virtualmin can’t do it for you.
How you update glue records depends on your registrar. You may be able to change the A records for the name servers (ns1 and ns2) on the old server and have the root name servers pick that up automatically…but, you may not be able to do that. Some won’t pick up changes later, or if they do it is quite delayed. Nothing Virtualmin can do about that, as everything happens on servers out of Virtualmin’s control. Your old name servers and your zone root name servers are the only servers that can do anything.
Those records will presumably come across (if they’re in the zone backup from cPanel, they will be present when Virtualmin restores them), but the Virtualmin server is not authoritative until the zone root knows about it so they don’t matter until the world (zone root name servers) know about the change.
In the past, I’ve sometimes needed to create new ns3 and ns4 records on the new server and old server, and add NS records pointing to those for the zone, and then update the glue records at your registrar. And, then, eventually, switch back to ns1 and ns2 once everyone (registrar and zone root server) agrees on the IP addresses of those records. It’s something that happens so rarely, I don’t actually know when/why this would be necessary or if it was specific to the registrar I was dealing with.
So, the short answer is: Virtualmin can’t help with this, as the problem is outside of Virtualmin’s control. But, it’s not that big of a deal to change it, just depends on your TLD and your registrar and how they want you to handle it.
Best practice, in general, whenever moving servers is to cut TTL time to something quite short.
Virtualmin GPL is being installed in a Ubuntu Multipass Virtual machine inside because the PC is currently being used by another family member everyday. This is my first time doing this. Not sure if this is the best way for install testing.
What values should be used to configure the hostname and FQDN on the virtual machine?
Should it be a subdomain of my public domain name or a dummy domain name.
Just doing internal testing in my apartment at first.
/etc/hostname/etc/hostsThe PC host OS is Linux Mint.
Any clues appreciated. Thank you.
The docs explain it pretty well, for example I use server.mydomain.com, the allows me to use mydomain.com as a virtual server. So do NOT use mydomain.com as hostname and try to create a virtual server mydomain.com.
I would not use a dummy name as the hostname needs to be a “FQDN”
Hi,
For anyone requiring day-to-day SysAdmin assistance, that’s my area of expertise.
Whether on a per issue basis or a monthly subscription my services compliment a Pro subscription or GPL installation which offers appropriate functionality (whereas Pro also financially supports the product development in addition to offering more features).
If you’d rather leave the technical stuff to a pro, please drop me a line on the forums via a PM.
Best Regards,
Peter Knowles | tpnAssist.com
Happy Friday! Thank you for your feedback.
The host PC being used is connected to the Internet by Verizon FiOS. What changes to my home router and/or Firewall are needed to actually test Virtualmin GPL on the pubic internet? Or is there a simple way to setup and test Virtualmin GPL in a closed internal only LAN environment?
When migrating VPS servers, it is advisable to inform the current hosting company about it? Is there anything the current host does to either prevent or make it more difficult to for customers to migrate to a new server?
For example: DNS registrars like NameCheap.com and PorkBun typically put a Transfer lock on all accounts by default.
Any clues appreciated.
Have a good holiday weekend.
You can test anywhere you want. There are a few things that’ll behave a little differently. Virtualmin won’t be able to get Let’s Encrypt certificates for a system on a private network, for example, and you probably need to disable the check for resolution when adding name servers, etc.
No. They don’t care what you’re doing on your virtual machines.
Transfer lock is irrelevant for anything you’ve discussed thus far. Hosting providers generally don’t have any awareness/control over what you have on your VMs.
I think the name server records will be setup as per the server template, virtualmin doesn’t import the zone file directly.
Ah, you might be right. It may only bring over the A records for those names, and you’d need to correct the NS records.
It’s also possible to configure Virtualmin Server Templates to create NS records of the form OP is using.
