Migrating from Directadmin to Virtualmin... any pointers?

Howdy,

Well, I doubt this could be added in the next 3 weeks, but I know it's on Jamie's todo list to get DirectAdmin backups importing to Virtualmin. I'm not sure where he is with that.

So, I'd continue to plan the way you're planning -- but I'd also suggest taking a moment to file a quick feature request :-)

Using the Support link above, can you put in a request to have Virtualmin import a DirectAdmin backup file? It may help him if you're able to provide an example backup file.

As far as email goes though -- what format is that in on your current server?

In some cases, the mail can simply be copied over directly (though the format would need to be identical, which is unlikely unless you're using Dovecot... it uses Maildir+).

Another alternative is to use an IMAP sync'ing tool such as "imapsync". That's a great tool... you can purchase it from their site, or (legally) obtain it for free from other sites (just Google for it).

Using imapsync, you could loop over all the accounts on both of your servers, and sync all your email. You can run that as often as you like, so you can run it both before and after your new server is live.

Would something like that do the trick for you?

-Eric

Hi Guys,

Just wondering if you had any movement on the DirectAdmin to Virtualmin backups? I'd be interested in migrating a 50+ client base from DA to VMin and wondered how mailboxes were going to behave.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Cheers, Karu

Howdy,

There isn't currently support for importing DirectAdmin backups.

I don't recall the specifics, though since it's taken more than a few months it's likely he ran into some snags with getting them to import into Virtualmin.

I'll talk to Jamie to see where that's at, but would you be willing to offer a backup file for him to use and test if he needs one?

-Eric

Sorry I didn't get notifications on my posts by default and since we no longer work with the DA client, we can't offer a backup sorry :( Would have been very handy at the time.

Thanks Eric.

Hi,

While there is no "official" support for importing a DA backup into Virtualmin, there's this guy named Peter (oh wait, that's me heh heh) who can assist in accomplishing the task in a manual process if desired for a minimal fee.

Drop me a line if you'd like to over details, and schedule some time to make the transition as smooth as possible.

I'm actually in the middle of (manually) porting over several domains from DA to virtualmin.

It shouldn't be too hard; I can give you a rough idea of how DA organizes the domains/emails:

DA uses dovecot (Maildir++) and exim.

There's a bunch of files in /etc/virtual/example.com/*, most import is "passwd" which dovecot uses to look up the user using "args = username_format=%n /etc/virtual/%d/passwd" in the auth sectino of dovecot.conf file. That part will be easy to port.

The UID and GID are set to the domain name owner (shared uid), the user's home directory stored in there is /home/owner/imap/example.com/user

The web pages are stored in /home/owner/domains/example.com/public_html (and /home/owner/public_html is a symbolic link to there)

DA gets rather tricky and complex with mail delivery though (it uses exim while virtualmin uses Postfix--and DA uses some advanced features like perl scripting in the exim configuration). I'm just about ready to dig into the Postfix configuration to punch that in.

No idea on the backup format though (I'm not doing this from backups, I'm doing this from nfs-mounted live directory on the DA server)

Honestly, my biggest concern right now is on the web page end: I have customers STILL using Frontpage to update their pages, and using FP's web forms; DA (at least the old version we were still running) had full support for FPE. Getting them to use webdav to upload is part of the battle--the rest is dealing with ALLLL those forms. I'm tempted to just write my own version of shtml.exe to handle it.

Curious if any progress has been made on importing the DA backups.

I'm looking for a new host, and my DA options seem to be dwindling. I'm seriously considering moving everything to a Webmin/Virtualmin setup.

I would also consider contracting it out if I could find a reliable source.

My other option would e cPanel, but I'm not crazy about the licensing fees... this is just for my own personal domains and some small sites that I host. They don't make me any money.

Howdy,

The most recent Virtualmin version includes a feature that will import Direct Admin backups.

Give that a shot and let us know how it works for you!

-Eric

It's in both versions.

-Eric

I finally found the feature... I'm still getting used to the different layout of Webmin/Virtualmin

It "mostly" seemed to work. It does not seem to handle domain aliases very well (or at all), and there are still some old DNS records hanging around.

Changing the DNS entries seems a lot more difficult than in DA, so I'm still working through that.

Howdy,

You can make DNS changes in Server Configuration -> DNS Records.

The Direct Admin import is fairly new -- if you find things that it's not doing, and you have a backup that you can offer as a sample, Jamie will be able to correct that.

You could file a request using the "Support" link, and in there, explain what the import isn't doing. Mark the issue as "Private", and then post a link to where Jamie can download your backup and test the feature.

-Eric

Thank you.

I've created an issue and tried to provide as much information as possible.

Hello,

I have some DA accounts that will migrate to Virtualmin.

The first one went fine, the only thing is that my customers use the login name name@domain.com to access their e-mail accounts on Thunderbird or Outlook and the login name on Virtualmin is name.domain. I have read that this can be changed and I need to add a new user to make this work fine. Please give advise of the steps I have to do to accomplish the migration.

Thanks on advance!

Agustín.