So, after making the assumption that I had now backed up everything I needed from my old  server, I gave the hosting company the word to rebuild the server and crossed my fingers……the next morning there was an email in my inbox with new log in details.

Step 4, Familiarise Yourself
As my new server had Plesk installed – and its been a while since I have seen a fresh install of this OS – I thought I would have a quick look around.

Check how many domains I am allowed (to make sure the licence is correct), the version number of everything running (php, Apache andMySQL). Finally I ran the updater to make sure everything was as new as possible. With this sorted I can start rebuilding.

Step 5, The Rebuild
Because I knew that the upload was going to take a considerable amount of time due to my home connections upload speed I decided to just use scp with the root user and move the files afterwards, this way I can keep busy in the mean time. So with this started I began setting up the accounts. Using Plesk I simply set up the account, database and email addresses associated with each account. For the account password and email passwords I just set default ones and then replaced them directly from the command line from the saved hash’s that I had backed up already. The database names and passwords were set from the list I had harvested from config files – and with all of this done I went for a cup of tea and some TV!

Some time later when the upload was complete I untarred each file and using mv copied the files into the home directory and then uploaded each database in turn with the command

mysql -u [dbuser or root] -d [Database name] <[filename].sql

enter the password and off it goes.

Then using the guide in my previous post I rebuilt the mailboxes, all seemed to have gone well, so now for step 6!

Step 6, Testing
A quick web check of each website and an email to each address (having them in a list before hand really helps with this one). Finally, an email to all those that use my server to ask them to check that their logins work.

The one mistake I made when rebuilding was forgetting that the untarred files would probably need a different group and user to what they had before, this was no huge hurdle when I realised my mistake, and a few chowns later I had a fully functional server with its updated OS.