Introduction:

This article teaches HOW-TO restore accounts from a crashed or failed HDD to a new one without moving and restore backups and losing a lot of time.

Explanation:

First of all plug the crashed HDD to USB and install a new system on the new HDD.

After installing the system and cpanel login as root to SSH and write these commands one after one:
1: rsync -vrplogDtH /oldHD/usr/local/apache/conf /usr/local/apache
2: rsync -vrplogDtH /oldHD/var/named /var
3: rsync -vrplogDtH /oldHD/home/* /home
4: rsync -vrplogDtH /oldHD/usr/local/cpanel /usr/local
5: rsync -vrplogDtH /oldHD/var/lib/mysql /var/lib
6: rsync -vrplogDtH /oldHD/var/cpanel /var
7: rsync -vrplogDtH /oldHD/usr/share/ssl /usr/share
8: rsync -vrplogDtH /oldHD/var/ssl /var
9: rsync -vrplogDtH /oldHD/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/mailman /usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty
10: rsync -vrplogDtH /oldHD/var/log/bandwidth /var/log
11: rsync -vrplogDtH /oldHD/usr/local/frontpage /usr/local
12: rsync -vrplogDtH /oldHD/var/spool/cron /var/spool
13: rsync -vrplogDtH /oldHD/root/.my.cnf /root
14: rsync -vrplogDtH /oldHD/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf /etc/httpd/conf

After finishing this: type the following!

1. cd /oldHD/etc
2. rsync -vrplogDtH secondarymx domainalias valiases vfilters exim* proftpd* pure-ftpd* passwd* group* *domain* *named* wwwacct.conf cpupdate.conf quota.conf shadow* *rndc* ips* ipaddrpool* ssl hosts /etc

Note: If you don’t have RSYNC then you should install it from:

http://www.samba.org/rsync/download.html

Or you could use “mv” instead of “rsync -vrplogDtH” but I recommend using RSYNC because I used it before on my server and it doesn’t make any errors or problems now or in the future.

All the files have been copied you shall now make the cpanel recognize again the old users, Run these scripts:

1: /scripts/upcp
2: /scripts/updatenow
3: /scripts/sysup
4: /scripts/exim4
5: /scripts/securetmp
6: /scripts/fixeverything
7: /scripts/easyapache

The last one may take a long time depending on your CPU and RAM speed.

After doing all of that if SSHD fails, then you have to login to WHM then go to Install a RPM and install opensshd-server, opensshd, opensshd-client then restart SSHD from WHM.

Then restart all the services:

1: /scripts/restartsrv httpd
2: /scripts/restartsrv cpanel
3: /scripts/restartsrv mysql
4: /scripts/restartsrv named
5: /scripts/restartsrv exim

After those steps you will face a small problem. Login to WHM then go to Reseller Cener, You will see that all the accounts under the root tab only and there is no other reseller or other plan !!!
Don’t get worry, It just needs to do something like refreshed, If you suspend an account it will be sorted under it’s reseller but you won’t suspend and unsuspend all the accounts, I found a simple way for doing that.

Login to WHM then click on Modify/Upgrade Multiple Accounts and mark all the accounts then just change the Language to be English or something else. Click on Reseller Center again. Waaw the account has been sorted under its resellers and all things are working properly right now

Note: Copied from http://blog.eukhost.com/webhosting/restoring-cpanel-server-from-crashed-harddisk-or-migrating-cpanel-servers/ but added some notes, modifications and FAQ.

FAQ:

How to know that you’re facing this problem and this article will help you ?
1. If you when on SSH a message appears contains
Message from syslogd@ at XXX XXX XX XX:XX:XX XXXX …
XXXXX kernel: journal commit I/O error
The first line XXX means date and the second line XXXXX means your server’s hostname.
and also when you try to write to file you can’t as the system puts the HDD on the read-only mode. You can solve this by rebooting the server also make FSCK to check the HDD. When you reboot and this problem still presist and happens again and again then your HDD can’t stand the errors happen on it. Then its time to swap it and follow this article steps.
2. When all of your websites have a 500 Internal Server Error.
Note: Keep in mind that it can be your suphp_log file is 2GB and can’t write any data then you have to rotate it.
3. When you logged to SSH and it appears that is 0 Users are in. (May not happen)
4. If you have cPanel.

Will that article help me completely solve this issue ?
Yes, It will completely help you solving this issue.

Is that article is tested ?
Yes, It’s tested on CentOS5 32-bit with cPanel/WHM.

What is the specifications of the machine that this article tested on ?
Dual Processor Quad Core Xeon 5430 – 2.66GHz (Harpertown) – 2 x 12MB cache
12GB of Ram
2 x 250GB HDD

What was the Apache, PHP and MySQL version when this problem presist ?
Apache 2.2.11
PHP 5.2.9
MySQL 5.0.81

Do Apache, PHP and MySQL have a hand in this problem ?
A little bit as the best tuning of Apache and MySQL would help this problem to not happen.

Do I have to be professional to do these steps ?
Not at all, These steps are so easy to follow and don’t need an expertised person.

How can I prevent this problem from happening again ?
Maybe you need more processor, more ram, tuning of Apache and MySQL and definitely a RAID cable to lower the number of errors on one HDD.

Will I face some problems when I follow these steps ?
Maybe you will face “File not found” problem but ignore it as it doesn’t matter.

Conclusion:

The data has been moved from the old HDD to the new one fastly and easily without losing time or data. Also there won’t be errors after doing these step as I explained. These steps has been tested before in my server when my HDD crashed. If you want this problem to end completely then you have to put 2HDDs at RAID to make them like mirrors to each other.

Ever since Google disclosed in January that Internet intruders had stolen information from its computers, the exact nature and extent of the theft has been a closely guarded company secret. But a person with direct knowledge of the investigation now says that the losses included one of Google’s crown jewels, a password system that controls access by millions of users worldwide to almost all of the company’s Web services, including e-mail and business applications.

The program, code named Gaia for the Greek goddess of the earth, was attacked in a lightning raid taking less than two days last December, the person said. Described publicly only once at a technical conference four years ago, the software is intended to enable users and employees to sign in with their password just once to operate a range of services.

The intruders do not appear to have stolen passwords of Gmail users, and the company quickly started making significant changes to the security of its networks after the intrusions. But the theft leaves open the possibility, however faint, that the intruders may find weaknesses that Google might not even be aware of, independent computer experts said.

The new details seem likely to increase the debate about the security and privacy of vast computing systems such as Google’s that now centralize the personal information of millions of individuals and businesses. Because vast amounts of digital information are stored in one place, popularly referred to as “cloud” computing, a single breach can lead to disastrous losses.

The theft began with an instant message sent to a Google employee in China who was using Microsoft’s Messenger program, according to the person with knowledge of the internal inquiry, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.

By clicking on a link and connecting to a “poisoned” Web site, the employee inadvertently permitted the intruders to gain access to his (or her) personal computer and then to the computers of a critical group of software developers at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. Ultimately, the intruders were able to gain control of a software repository used by the development team.

The details surrounding the theft of the software have been a closely guarded secret by the company. Google first publicly disclosed the theft in a Jan. 12 posting on the company’s Web site, which stated that the company was changing its policy toward China in the wake of the theft of unidentified “intellectual property” and the apparent compromise of the e-mail accounts of two human rights advocates in China.

The accusations became a significant source of tension between the United States and China, leading Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to urge China to conduct a “transparent” inquiry into the attack. In March, after difficult discussions with the Chinese government, Google said it would move its mainland Chinese-language Web site and begin rerouting search queries to its Hong Kong-based site.

Company executives on Monday declined to comment about the new details of the case, saying they had dealt with the security issues raised by the theft of the company’s intellectual property in their initial statement in January.

Google executives have also said privately that the company had been far more transparent about the intrusions than any of the more than two dozen other companies that were compromised, the vast majority of which have not acknowledged the attacks.

Google continues to use the Gaia system, now known as Single Sign-On. Hours after announcing the intrusions, Google said it would activate a new layer of encryption for Gmail service. The company also tightened the security of its data centers and further secured the communications links between its services and the computers of its users.

Several technical experts said that because Google had quickly learned of the theft of the software, it was unclear what the consequences of the theft had been. One of the most alarming possibilities is that the attackers might have intended to insert a Trojan horse — a secret back door — into the Gaia program and install it in dozens of Google’s global data centers to establish clandestine entry points. But the independent security specialists emphasized that such an undertaking would have been remarkably difficult, particularly because Google’s security specialists had been alerted to the theft of the program.

However, having access to the original programmer’s instructions, or source code, could also provide technically skilled hackers with knowledge about subtle security vulnerabilities in the Gaia code that may have eluded Google’s engineers.

“If you can get to the software repository where the bugs are housed before they are patched, that’s the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,” said George Kurtz, chief technology officer for McAfee Inc., a software security company that was one of the companies that analyzed the illicit software used in the intrusions at Google and at other companies last year.

Rodney Joffe, a vice president at Neustar, a developer of Internet infrastructure services, said, “It’s obviously a real issue if you can understand how the system works.” Understanding the algorithms on which the software is based might be of great value to an attacker looking for weak points in the system, he said.

When Google first announced the thefts, the company said it had evidence that the intrusions had come from China. The attacks have been traced to computers at two campuses in China, but investigators acknowledge that the true origin may have been concealed, a quintessential problem of cyberattacks.

Several people involved in the investigation of break-ins at more than two dozen other technology firms said that while there were similarities between the attacks on the companies, there were also significant differences, like the use of different types of software in intrusions. At one high-profile Silicon Valley company, investigators found evidence of intrusions going back more than two years, according to the person involved in Google’s inquiry.

In Google’s case, the intruders seemed to have precise intelligence about the names of the Gaia software developers, and they first tried to access their work computers and then used a set of sophisticated techniques to gain access to the repositories where the source code for the program was stored.

They then transferred the stolen software to computers owned by Rackspace, a Texas company. Rackspace, which had no knowledge of the transaction, offers Web-hosting services. It is not known where the software was sent from there. The intruders had access to an internal Google corporate directory known as Moma, which holds information about the work activities of each Google employee, and they may have used it to find specific employees.

How this flew under the radar for nearly a week is beyond us, but the launch of Flash 10.1 for Android, BlackBerry and webOS has been pushed back to the second-half of this year.
This news comes straight from the mouth of Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen who casually slipped in news of the delayed release while discussing the formal launch of Creative Suite 5 with FOX Business. It’s definitely the sort of news that can run a lot of people’s lazy Sunday afternoons, but there is a consolation prize: Narayen said we’re going to see flash on tablet devices, presumably running Android and Chrome. Click on through the break to check out the video.

Last November we looked at OCZ’s Colossus 3.5 inch SSD range, and here we are only five months later the San Jose SSD manufacturer has unleased a new range of Colossus 3.5 inch SSDs. This time the top end of the range sports, dare we say, a colossus 1 TB model and as last time the range starts with a 120GB model. Here are the rest of the numbers on the latest OCZ SSDs.

* 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, 1TB capacities
* Internal RAID 0
* 128MB Onboard Cache
* Seek Time < .1ms
* Lightweight Aluminum Casing
* 146 (L) x 101.6 (W) x 25.4mm (H)
* Talks nicely with Windows 7, XP, Vista, and Linux
* Read: Up to 260 MB/s
* Write: Up to 260 MB/s
* Sustained Write: 220 MB/s (140 MB/s for 120GB model)
* Max IOPS: 15,000 (4K random)

Of course these models are not going to be cheap and over at Amazon, they sport the following price tags

OCZ Colossus 120GB – $431.48
OCZ Colossus 250GB – $820.05
OCZ Colossus 500GB – $1523.99
OCZ Colossus 1TB – $3539.81

But if you want super quiet, super swift data access then those price tags may not be too daunting.

According to Engadget, the site that scooped the pics, this prototype was “found on the floor of a San Jose bar inside of an iPhone 3G case” and supposedly features a front-facing camera and 80GB of internal memory. Here’s what we’re betting on… we do think this unit is actually real and not a fake, clone or anything else. But, we’re guessing it’s very — and we mean very — early along in the prototype phase. Not to say the final design isn’t all ready to go, but we’re guessing this isn’t it.
For starters, look at the seems in the aluminum casing. You think Apple, of unibody fame, would not have a single piece of machined aluminum for the bezel? Also, the phone appears to be flat, like, completely flat on both sides. That basically goes against almost all of Apple’s principles. Additionally, look at the back of the phone. It actually looks it’s supposed to be the front of the device. You can clearly see either a piece of glass or plastic that’s fitted into the case much like how the display is on an iPhone 3GS, or the display on the iPad. Look at the material around the sides of the back of the phone, you’ll see what we mean. So, we do think this is Apple-manufactured, we just don’t think this is anything close to what we’ll see announced in June. What do you guys think? Photo of the back of the device after the break, and hit Engadget for the rest of the photos!

More details emerge. Learn about the new co-op play, psychic abilities and more.

April 14, 2010 – Last week, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment announced F.E.A.R. 3, the third entry in the first-person shooter horror franchise. F.E.A.R. 3, developed by Day 1 Studios, will once again follow the horribly twisted Alma and her ill-fated sons. Although we knew that co-op would be introduced this time around, exact details were scarce — until now. The latest issue of Game Informer illuminates a number of gameplay mechanics and plot points that were previously unknown. And from the sound of things, F.E.A.R. 3 will have a mix of action and suspense that fans of the series have come to expect.

For those unfamiliar with the F.E.A.R. franchise, the games revolve around the psychically gifted Alma and her two sons: Paxton Fettel (who also possesses psychic abilities) and the mysterious soldier known as Point Man. Players take control of Point Man in the first game and ultimately kill Fettel. In F.E.A.R. 2, players control a different soldier, Michael Becket, who is eventually assaulted by Alma so that she can give birth to his child. Nine months later, Point Man returns — with the ghost of Fettel in tow — in order to stop his mother from birthing a nightmarish creature.

F.E.A.R. 3 introduces “divergent co-op,” which is the term that Day 1 Studios applies to the sort of adversarial co-op that’s being designed for the game. Players will be able to control either Point Man or Fettel, but Fettel is an enemy. He can assist Point Man, but his agenda is unclear and players can decide to go off on their own and play without directly assisting the other.

Fettel will have access to a number of intriguing powers, including stun blasts and the ability to possess virtually any enemy in the game. Once Fettel has occupied an opponent, he gains control over their powers and can turn them on other enemies. Point Man, alternatively, will still be a more straight-forward soldier type, though Day 1 Studios is developing a first-person cover system which will be of great value to Point Man during a fire fight.

The developers note that they appreciated the Left 4 Dead Director system, which constantly adjusted the gameplay experience on the fly to keep every playthrough feeling fresh. Day 1 is attempting to do something similar with F.E.A.R. 3, as well as implement a scoring system which will encourage players to come back and replay the game.

F.E.A.R. 3 will also boast a competitive multiplayer element, as well as a purely single-player campaign for those interested in fighting Alma alone. If players opt for the single-player mode, Fettel will not be controlled by the AI, instead appearing only in cutscenes.

F.E.A.R. 3 is scheduled to launch this fall.

Steve Ballmer approached to create new game.

April 14, 2010 – Gamers may soon be able to help reduce the United States’ massive budget deficit.

In an effort to reduce the USA’s $12.8 trillion federal budget deficit, President Barack Obama’s fiscal commission co-chairman Erskine Bowles has asked Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer about creating a debt-reducing videogame, USA Today reports.

According to the report, the game would “enable anyone with a computer to take a stab at balancing the budget.” Democratic Senator Bob Kerrey said the game could even “go viral.”

“What you could get is support among the populace for the exceptionally unpopular things you need to do to solve this problem,” added Kerry, who help release his own budget-reducing game called Budget Shadows for PC in 1994 as chairman of the Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform.

Ars has a great technical article up about exactly how, when, and why Apple’s automatic graphics switching process occurs in its line of Macbook Pro laptops. For those not familiar with the automatic graphics switching technology, “the main goal…is to balance graphics performance with long battery life.” This battery saving, number-crunching goal is accomplished by toggling graphics processing tasks between two processors; a dedicated GPU, which consumes more power and provides high performance for applications that need it, and an integrated graphics processor, which consumes less power and does not provide high-end performance. Apple’s new graphics technology has been compared to NVIDIA’s graphics switching system — named Optimus. However, as Ars explains, they are different in two very important ways:

First… the switching is all handled automatically by Mac OS X without any user intervention (though there is actually a System Preference to deactivate it, if you choose). Apps that use advanced graphics frameworks such as OpenGL, Core Graphics, Quartz Composer or others will cause the OS to trigger the discrete GPU. So, when you are reading or writing Mail, or editing an Excel spreadsheet, Mac OS X will simply use the integrated Intel HD graphics. If you fire up Aperture or Photoshop, Mac OS X kicks on the NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M… The second way that it differs from Optimus is that the integrated graphics are powered down when the discrete GPU is active. This saves even more power than Optimus does, leading to a stated battery life as long as nine hours.

The graphics switching process, and the balancing act between horsepower and watt usage, is the future of high-performance mobile computing… that is, until better batteries start being produced. We’ve got the full article, in all its nerdy, technical glory, linked up for you.

Ex-Ensemble developer Dusty Monk says Ensemble Studios spent three years developing a WOW killer–before Microsoft suddenly pulled the plug.

In July 2005, evidence surfaced that Age of Empires developer Ensemble Studios was working on a Halo-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Two weeks after Microsoft closed Ensemble in September 2008, reports surfaced that the project in question had been set in the Halo universe. Apparent art assets from the game surfaced, showing a sci-fi world which bore a resemblance to the wildly popular fantasy MMORPG World of Warcraft.

Two years later, a former Ensemble developer has pulled back the curtain on the stillborn Halo MMORPG to IncGamers. Ex-Ensemble Studios member Dusty Monk, who founded indie shop Windstorm Studios last March, told the game site that Microsoft had planned for the Halo MMORPG to be a full-on competitor to WOW.\

What made Ensemble think they could take on the biggest MMORPG in world? Money, for one. Microsoft allocated $90 million to develop the project, and given its deep pockets, would’ve likely given more. Secondly, its tight-knit team had confidence. Ensemble had success taking on Blizzard’s real-time-strategy games, and had studied its opponent enough to think it could compete against WOW. Third and foremost, it had Halo, unquestionably one of the most popular brands in gaming.

Unfortunately, after over three years in development, the project was undone by one little white box–and a lot of office politics. “There was a bit of a changing of the guard at Microsoft at this time,” Monk explained to IncGamers. “Microsoft, from its gaming division, was really changing directions. They were looking really hard at the Nintendo Wii and they were really excited by the numbers that the Wii was turning. This was about the time that Microsoft decided that its Xbox platform and Xbox Live Arcade really needed to go more in the direction of appealing to a more casual, broader audience.”

As a result, the Halo MMORPG–code-named “Titan”–was quietly canceled in 2007 and eventually, Ensemble itself was closed down. Ironically, some of the game’s former developers found jobs at WOW developer Blizzard Entertainment, and Monk feels that many of the game’s concepts can be found in the DNA of other MMORPGs.

“We were developing a cover system. This cover system is in Star Wars: The Old Republic,” explained Monk. “We had the idea of quests…between 2004 and 2007, before Warhammer Online had been released…where you could participate and pull [characters] together without having to be on the same team. This would be a public quest that everyone in a particular area could work on. That idea went into Warhammer Online.”

Panel of judges finds that Wii, GameCube gamepads don’t infringe upon technology developed by Texas-based Anascape, denying $21 million claim.

Nintendo’s been battling Texas-based Anascape for nearly four years at this point over certain technology that’s used in the game company’s controllers. In 2008, an Eastern Texas jury found that while Nintendo’s console generation-defining Wii Remote and Nunchuk hadn’t infringed upon Anascape’s patents, the Wii’s Classic Controller, as well as the GameCube’s WaveBird and standard controllers had.

The verdict would have cost Nintendo up to $21 million in damages–were the company to lose its appeal. Such will not be the case, as the publisher announced today that the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled in its favor. According to the court’s decision, the aforementioned controllers did not infringe upon Anascape’s US Patent No. 6,906,700, which deals with technologies ranging from analog sensors to tactile feedback.

“In 2008, the jury determined that the Wii Remote and Nunchuk did not infringe,” said Nintendo of America general counsel Rick Flamm in a statement. “Today the Federal Circuit’s ruling confirmed that none of Nintendo’s controllers infringe. We appreciate that our position has been vindicated.” Nintendo also emphasized that the Court of Appeals reversed the jury’s decision in full.