Advice about moving from CPanel

Cpanel heavily customises itself when you install it, my advise, spin up a second node, configure that, I wouldn't choose centos since it's packages are old, (cpanel uses it's own packages), then migrate your sites to the new node.

Might look at Ubuntu then.

I'm aware CPanel is well-customized, but mailboxes, databasing, accounts, presumably are standard and can be pushed to another account outside a software interface at either end. There's lots of information about transferring from one panel brand to another, but I'm not finding anywhere to start moving from a panel brand to nothing.

Though it does look like Virtualmin can import Cpanel accounts and then be uninstalled, maybe that's the way to go.

Web files are kept in /home/ with publicly accessible ones in /home//public_html it's just a case of copying those over.

For databases run mysqldump -A –opt -u root -p | gzip > dump.sql.gz it will prompt for your mysql root password put it in then copy the dump.sql.gz file to the new server and run gunzip dump.sql.gz && mysql -u root -p < dump.sql it will again ask you for your root password.

That'll dump your databases and import them to the new server.

I'm not sure how cpanel handles mail so can't comment there without looking at a cpanel install.

You won't find many articles on moving from Cpanel to any other type of server. The main reason for that is because it touches EVERYTHING. Like obs said, cPanel heavily customizes itself, which also makes it extremely difficult to move it to anything else. As for mail, its Exim+Maildir. If you are going to continue to try to sell hosting, you would be better off keeping cPanel, as most people looking for a run-of-the-mill hosting provider or a reseller package will expect you to be using cPanel.

@Praefectus:

most people looking for a run-of-the-mill hosting provider or a reseller package will expect you to be using cPanel.

He's right about that, clients tend to like control panels, and cpanel is one of the prettier ones, people like pretty!

However if you're providing a fully managed service then you don't need cpanel since clients shouldn't log in anyway :)

I'm aware what CPanel does to the OS, but if accounts can be ported to other brands then clearly it's possible to dig parts out, hopefully without too much effort if only the fundamentals are needed.

Thanks for your help, sounds like mail is going to be the biggest fly in the ointment. I'll run up another stock CentOS install and see if I can get anywhere.