FreeBSD HELP please?!?

[motobrandt]

I am currently running some old CObalt Raq4's with about 150 sites on them. I have been working with a "guru" friend of mine that really likes FreeBSD as a web server OS. So he wants to help me migrate my sites and users to an X86 box running FreeBSD4.8

I want to run Direct Admin on this box as I'm really impressed with what I've seen so far (lurking ;-) ) from DA. But I don't see any support or tips for getting a FreeBSD box ready for DA. All of the info is for RedHat which is what I have used for years but am ready to switch to BSD.

Can someone give me some tips on what to get on the box? And does the free install apply to FreeBSD as well?

Cheers,

Brandt

[ProWebUK]

I'm going to leave the main information for Mark or John to confirm although regarding the free install, im 99% certain it does come included with standard licensing :)

Chris

[existenz]

I have moved many websites from Cobalts to FreeBSD. If you would like some advice PM me I can tell you what we have learned.

[rhoekman]

Can this progress be public so others can learn?

[existenz]

Sorry about that...it should be public.

I need more details...MySQL, DNS etc? For us this was a manual process but it we moved 10 sites a hour once we got into it.

[motobrandt]

Did you move the users and disk space prefs per user and all that stuff? Or did you just move users and passwords and domains that they belong to.

More details on my situation:

Currently:

I have 2 Raq4r's doing Web Hosting only. I run Mysql for Vbulletin and other databases. I have Bind, and telnet, turned off on these machines. PHP is on, Spamassassin, OpenWebmail, Imap, SMTP, SSH, I have 45 websites on one server, and about 100 on the other. A few sites have SSL and their own IP addresses. They others (most of them) are virtually hosted.

What I want to end up with:

I want to have all of these sites running on one server running FreeBSD, DirectAdmin, ModernBill (I think - suggestions?), spamassassin, snort, mrtg, and all that other cool stuff that Chris has listed on his checklist.

How I want to get there:

Um... one easy script. lol
Seriously though, I wouldn't mind doing it all manually but... what a pain in the ass for me and my customers. A helpful script or list of instructions would be great. Or even just a list of pitfalls that you ran into while doing yours.

I'm even willing to go to RedHat 9.0 if it makes everything so much easier. But it would probably be about the same amount of hassle and I just don't know what to expect from RH in the future reguarding 9.0.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

cheers,
Brandt

[DirectAdmin Support]

Hello,

There are very few user transfer scripts at the moment for anything, let alone a raq4... so chances are it will have to be done manually.

John

[existenz]

We did not script it. I can only tell you how we did the swap.

To be honest this is a plan we use for moving customers from other hosting companies all the time. I am sure most people do the same thing:

For us we were moving DNS and everything. We setup the new FreeBSD box, and added all the zones from the old box. About 2 weeks before we did the swap we will add this DNS server to all the domains (unless you are reusing one of the ip's from the existing DNS). We point the DNS to the old boxes. Remember to keep the TTL low so you can make the changes apply quickly.

We create all the accounts on the new FreeBSD box. We will do a direct FTP transfer from the old to new box into their new accounts. We keep the MySQL stuff on the old box for a while (you will have to manually edit the files). We manually create all the email accounts (Actually we ask the customers to login to the new account and create the email accounts they PLAN on using. Gives us time to purge old accounts they don't use.)

When we sent out the email for them to create mail accounts, we gave them the host name of the box and their account name so they could view their website and make sure it has been moved properly.

http://subdomain.domain.tdl/~username/

Their are a few things you can do like move the webalizer stats. You could create a shell script but it would not be easy since they have 2 different setup's. Sorry I could give you a automated solution.

I can only give you hints to the issues we had.

[nobaloney]

We move clients from RaQs to DA all the time; in fact we're moving a RaQ3 full of sites to DA this week.

The biggest key is all the "stuff" you want to add, and that's why at the moment we're sticking with RHL (7.3, as most hosting companies seem to think it's the most stable of the RH releases when it comes to hosting).

First we create the site. Letting the client create their own email sounds interesting; we've always done it for them.

We actually tar up the Cobalt "web" directory, then move it into the domain path, alongside the public_html directory (not the link, but the actual directory, in ~domains/example.com/).

Then we rename the public_html directory to public_html.SAVE and rename the web directory to public_html.

We also have to manually change some directory permissions and ownership, but it's all quite simple, and DA, like the RaQs, put the cgi-bin inside the web (public_html) directory.

Remember to change the paths on any cgi programs that need it (Subscribe Me was a real pain for us; until we figured out where their installer put the paths we actuallly reinstalled it for a bunch of clients). I got four rather complex sites (lots of CGIs) done today, alongside of a lot of other work.

Since a lot of html coders write code that won't work at the ~username url, we've learned (thanks, John for your help) to create a ServerAlias for test.example.com so the client can look at both sites at the same time.

Beware, though, that if the site has this kind of coding:


<a href="http://www.example.com/something.html
the site will point back to the old machine.

I hope this helps.

Jeff