Changing Hosts (Linux to Linux), maintaining permissions?
 

The trick? No ssh access in either place. Can't tar on old, untar on new. No cPanel or anything on the old server, cPanel on the new server. Can't backup site on old server and restore on cPanel (due to I have no idea what cPanels backup format is).

Is there a FTP or FXP client that will maintain permissions between the 2 servers?

Thanks

hmmm....tricky. Your best bet is probably going to be to set up some kind of tunnel over a protocol that *is* supported. For example, set up a TCP tunnel over the FTP port, then tar to the pipe on the sending end, and untar from the pipe on the receiving end. Google around for TCP tunneling stuff, you'll probably find something you can use.

The problem with doing all of that is he doesnt have SSH access.

I'm afraid you are pretty much out of luck. FTP the files to your PC and then re-ftp them to the new place and set permissions.

If you ask your host nicely maybe they will tar them up for you?

Without a secure shell, you right in your understanding of the limitations. But aurigus I think has the idea, and that is if the hot will ball them up for you. But seeing as you're leaving their servers, they may not want to, nor are they obligated to, do you any favours. Still, maybe if you ask them, they will just be nice people and help out a poor web manager in need.

Good luck to you.

Peace,

Pierre

SSH is not the only protocol that can be tunneled. The linux TCP stack has support for tunneling over an arbitrary pair of ports; it's just a matter of setting it up. Obviously tunneling through an SSH *session* is more secure, but it is definitely possible to instruct linux to pipe data from a shell process out an arbitrary TCP port, then receive that data on the other end from another arbitrary TCP port. Just because you'd be using the FTP *port* doesn't mean you're limited to the FTP *protocol*.

Hell, if you have FTP access, that implies that port 21 is open, in which case why not just run your ssh daemon on port 21 on both machines? There's no rule saying it has to be on port 22.

skaven, what you say is totally right, except, I dont have shell access. I dont have the access to setup that tunnel whatsoever :)



I just ended up ftping them all down to my local machine and then to the new host. FlashFXP allows you to set permissions recursivly, so that worked. I usually use FileZilla and they only allow single folder/files at a time.

Thanks for the suggestions tho.

I case this ever comes up again, here's a good tip to do things on a webhost, even without real shell access.

(It's evil, I know, but hey, it works)

http://www.gimpster.com/wiki/PhpShell

It's the PHP Shell, it lets you put up a webpage and login to it as your shell, it's horribly insecure, so only put it up when you want to do something on your hosts shell, and then take it down after you are finished.