Websites often need migration when trying to switch to a user friendly control panel. Being mobile friendly, server owners often choose Webmin as a cPanel alternative.

Fortunately, it’s very easy to migrate from control panels like cPanel to Webmin.

But, improper server settings or duplicate username can result in unsuccessful server migration.

That’s why, at Bobcares, We’re frequently receiving customer requests for migration from CPanel to Webmin as part of our Server Migration Services.

Today, we’ll see how our Migration Engineers do cPanel to Webmin migration and fix related errors.

How we do cPanel migration

Webmin is one of the system administration tools that make it simpler for admins to manage Linux servers. Also, Virtualmin is a Webmin module which is comparable to cPanel. It offers non-root users with features to handle their shared hosting accounts.

Now, our Migration Specialists use below steps to migrate cPanel accounts with Virtualmin.

1. Firstly, we login into cPanel.

2. Then navigate to Backups > Full Backup and fill the following field too.

1. Destination: select SCP.
2. Notification email: Enter an Email address.
3. Server field: Enter the IP address of the Virtualmin Server.
4. User field: root.
5. Password: Enter the root password.
6. Port: 22.
7. Folder: Enter path as “/root”.

3. Next, we click Generate Backup. Once the download the backup to the Virtualmin server, a notification email will send the given Email address.

After we generate the backup, we’ll start the migration procedures in Virtualmin.

1. We login to Virtualmin.

2. Then, we click on Add Servers menu > Migrate Virtual Server option.

3. Also, in the source backup file, select local file and enter the backup file name with its path prefix of /root/.

For example: /root/backup-5.6.2019_21-6-51_UserName. Here, backup-5.6.2019_21-6-51_UserName is the backup file name.

4. Again, we choose cpanel backup as Backup file type. And, we fill the following field too.

1. Domain name to migrate: Enter the domain name.
2. Username for domain: Enter the cPanel user name.
3. Password for administrator: Enter the cPanel password.

Also, we fill the remaining fields left to their defaults. Or if the new account need a dedicated IP address, we choose the option “Virtual with IP“. Then we assign a free IP on the Webmin server.

5. Finally, we click on the Migrate Now button.

The time required for the migration completion depends on the size of the account. Small accounts migrate quickly, while the larger accounts take more time.

That completes the migration procedure from cPanel to Webmin server. However, our Migration Engineers always preview the website on the new server before changing the DNS. This helps to avoid any website downtime.

How we fixed migration related errors in Virtualmin servers

From our experience in managing servers, we’ve seen customers facing problems in migration from cPanel to Webmin. Let’s take a closer look at how our Migration Engineers fixed these problems.

1. Duplicate Username

Recently, one of our customers reported a problem while migrating his cPanel server to Virtualmin server. The error said as the username already exist and asked to change the username.

On checking, our Migration Specialists didn’t find any user with the same name in the Virtualmin. However, we found a system user on the server under users and groups.

Therefore, to solve the error we had to change the system username to an alternate one. After that, we initiated the migration once again.

Finally, cPanel migration was completed successfully.

2. Conflict in Server settings

Similarly, another customer migrated his cPanel server to new Virtualmin server without any error. However, the websites worked after altering the name server IPs to the new Virtualmin server, but email did not work and rejected the password too.

Usually, new account creation in Webmin/Virtualmin depends on a preset Server Template. In this case, our Support Engineers found that the email account was created with default settings as user.domain, and not user@domain.com.

However, it was created in cPanel as user@domain.com. This blocked the email server from properly authenticating the username.

So, we had to change the username format in System Settings -> Server Templates -> Default -> Mail for Domain, and set “Format for usernames that include domain” to user@domain.

That fixed the issue, and the email account started working properly.

[Looking for a trouble-free migration from cPanel to Webmin? Our Migration Specialists can do it for you.]

Conclusion

In short, Virtualmin is a Webmin module which is comparable to cPanel. Today, we saw how we do cPanel to Webmin migration as part of cPanel Migration Service without affecting the websites and fix related errors.