I created this blog for three reasons, which are reflected in the three main site categories: geek, life, and photo. The geek category was supposed to be a place where I could talk about computer and internet stuff, and to make tutorials for things I struggled with and thought “there should really be a tutorial explaining how to do this.” I’ve never actually created a tutorial, so here goes my first attempt.
This is a checklist of things I had to do to move one of my websites (mikeneedsajob.com) from my HostMonster web server to my new Linode one. I’ve outgrown HostMonster in the last two years that I’ve been with them, and I decided that it was time for me to learn a little more about hosting. HostMonster puts a very thick layer between you and your server, making every task easily accomplished though a user-friendly interface. Linode takes all of that away, but still holds you hand as much as you need while setting up your own server environment, making it the perfect learning ground.
I spent all of today figure out this process, so here it is, from beginning to end. Hopefully this will save me a headache in 6 months when I might have to do this again and I forget one of these steps.
NOTE: These steps only apply to my specific Linode setup, which could very easily differ from yours. I’m running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, Apache 2.x, PHP 5.x, and MySql 5.x.
transfer files
Step 1 is to transfer all of the site files from your HostMonster server to your Linode one.
This is simple, and you should probably already know how to do this. Using simple FTP to move the files to-and-from your own computer should suffice, unless your site is extraordinarily large. When you upload to Linode, you should be putting your websites into the /srv/www/ directory. Now, if you plan on having multiple websites hosted on this server and want to keep things clean (a concept you’re probably not familiar with since you’ve been using HostMonster), create different directories inside of /srv/www/ for each site. Personally, I like to be overly organized, so here’s the file structure I used:
/srv/www/mikneedsajob.com/v1/public_html/
I dumped all of my files inside of public_html. If your site uses scripts that shouldn’t be publicly available, you can put those in an includes folder in the v1 directory.
As a side note, the v1 is because several sites I manage have older outdated versions, and I like to keep records of them. Ultimately, this v1 directory might become a subdomain of Mike Needs A Job v2.0 for posterity’s sake.
transfer databases
If your site uses any MySql databases, you’ll need to transfer those over, too. Before you start the import, you’ll need to create empty databases on your Linode with the same names as the ones you’re going to be importing. I don’t have phpMyAdmin installed yet, so I SSHed into it (I’m assuming you know how to do this since it’s required for you to initially set up your Linode), logged into MySql, and created the database by issuing this command:
CREATE DATABASE [db name];
Then in HostMonster, log into the cPanel, then into phpMyAdmin and create a .sql export of your databases. Once you have it downloaded onto your computer, FTP it up onto your Linode. It doesn’t matter where you put the file on the server, but make note of the location. To make things easy, I simply uploaded it to the v1 directory inside of mikeneedsajob.com.
Once it’s uploaded, SSH into your Linode again, and issue the following command from the shell:
mysql -u [username] -p[password] [database-name] < [path-to-mysqldump-file]
Replace everything in square brackets with the appropriate information. Make sure there is no space between the -p and your mysql password (it looks wrong when you’re entering it, but trust me). If my .sql file was called dump.sql, the path for me would be /srv/www/mikneedsajob.com/v1/dump.sql. Log into mysql again and check that everything got imported correctly. To do a quick check that all of the tables exist, type this command into mysql:
USE [db name]; SHOW TABLES;
prepare apache
Now that your entire website data has been copied to Linode, you need to prepare Linode to serve the site. First we need to tell Apache what to do with incoming requests for the site. I’m going to assume you’ve already set up Apache for virtual hosting (if not, follow the steps here. This whole section actually just comes straight from that guide.). First we’ll create a file in the /etc/apache2/sites-available/ directory named after the website (i.e. mikeneedasjob.com). To do this, cd into the sites-available directory in the Linode shell, and then issue this command:
vi mikeneedsajob.com
This will bring up the vi editor for a new file named mikeneedsajob.com. Go to that link for basic vi commands. To enter text into the new file, hit your i key, and it should bring up a cursor on line 1. Then paste or type the following text into it:
<VirtualHost [your ip address]:80>
ServerAdmin example@mikeneedsajob.com
ServerName mikeneedsajob.com
ServerAlias www.mikeneedsajob.com
DocumentRoot /srv/www/mikeneedsajob.com/v1/public_html/
ErrorLog /srv/www/mikneedsajob.com/logs/error.log
CustomLog /srv/www/mikeneedsajob.com/logs/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
The ErrorLog and CustomLog lines are optional, and if you choose to enter them you’ll need to create the logs directory. When you’ve entered that text, hit your esc key, then type :wq (which stands for write and quit). When back in the Linode shell, issue this command:
a2ensite mikeneedsajob.com
And to finish, restart Apache:
/etc/init.d/apache2 reload
add site to linode dns manager
Thankfully, Linode makes managing your site’s DNS terribly simple. Just log into manager.linode.com, click on DNS Manager at the top, and Add a Domain Zone. Tell them what domain you want to manage, and allow them to automatically add a few records for you. What results is the cleanest DNS manager with all the appropriate fields for you to add your A, MX, and CNAME Records, to name a few. You can go to this page for a little bit more help if you need it.
change dns nameservers
Now you’re finally ready for your website to be served from Linode. All that you need to do is point your DNS Nameservers to Linode’s.
If you bought your domain from HostMonster themselves, you can change the nameservers in the Domain Manager tab at the top of your account. If the domain is an addon to your account, highlight the appropriate domain, and disassociate it from your primary account. If it is your primary domain, you’ll need to do some clicking around yourself, because I have no idea how disassociate it. mikeneedsajob.com was an addon, that’s all the experience I have…
Anyway, once it’s disassociated, there’s an option in the Name Servers tab where you can choose to use custom nameservers. Select this option, and enter Linode’s nameservers.
If your domain is managed by another registrar other than HostMonster (e.g. godaddy, enom, etc), log into that registrar . Right now your nameservers are pointing to HostMonser, and look something like ns1.hostmonster.com and ns2.hostmonster.com. You’ll need to delete those, and add Linodes. Currently, they look like this:
ns1.linode.com ns2.linode.com ns3.linode.com ns4.linode.com ns5.linode.com
They should never change from those listed, but just in case, you might want to check what their current ones are.
All DNS managers tell you that nameserver changes will take 24 – 48 hours to take effect, but I’ve actually never seen them take more than an hour or two. I can’t promise that’ll always be the case for you, though. If you want to check that your nameserver switch has taken effect yet, look up your site’s whois info. What I’ve found to be the quickest and easiest way is to type whois mikeneedsajob.com into a *nix command line, and the nameservers will be listed right there. If you’re on a Mac, just type that right into the terminal window. Otherwise, your Linode is a Linux server, remember, so you can just SSH onto it, and type it into the SSH window.
Once your whois is showing that your nameservers are now pointing to Linode, then your site should now be served from your Linode. Hooray! To double check that you’re in fact seeing your Linode-hosted version, FTP into your Linode and change your index file slightly (add an extra period somewhere on the site). If you see the change on the live site, then you know you’re live. If you’re like me and ran this little test the second after whois showed your nameservers were changed, don’t be distraught if you don’t see your change yet. For some reason, it took my site a few minutes to fully realize where it’s new home was.
finishing touches
TEST! Click around your site, make sure nothing is broken. Going from one version of PHP to another might cause problems. Having a new file structure on your server could definitely cause problems, particularly if you ever reference files or directories by their full server path. Grep the site for your old server structure. To be honest, I’m a novice when it comes to using grep for it’s full potential, so I just use this structure and it always seems to work:
grep -lr "some string to search for" *
This will run a search inside of the directory you’re currently in and all of its child directories (so you should probably cd into your v1 directory before running the search). That particular query will only look for text inside of the files, it will not search filenames, directory names, or metadata. Your search string can be something like “public_html” or “usr” if you’re looking for instances of file structure mentions.
potential problems
I’ll add more problems here if I run into more as I finish migrating the rest of my sites, but so far this is the only one I’ve run into.
Mike Needs A Job had a few vanity URL rewrites, and various other .htaccess wizardry, and none of it was working after the migration. I also was testing the migration of a WordPress site, and its custom permalink structure was all sorts of screwy for the same reason. After lots of searching and troubleshooting, I figured out that Apache doesn’t have mod_rewrite enabled by default. I followed Linode’s suggested Apache install and setup procedures and it never said anything about mod_rewrite, so I’m guessing this is the case for everybody when they first get set up.
To fix it, I followed the instructions on this page. Apache’s available modules are in the /etc/apache2/mods-available/ directory, and in it there should be a file named something like rewrite.load. To enable it, type:
a2enmod rewrite
You don’t need to type the extension in when doing the enable command. Just to be sure the enable will take effect, go ahead and restart apache (remember, type /etc/init.d/apache2 reload). If you don’t see the rewrite.load file in the mods-available directory, then it might already be enabled which you can check by going into /etc/apache/mods-enabled/.
Well, I hoped all of this helped somebody. Let me know if you have any questions or need clarification anywhere. And good luck!
4 Comments »