Hosted Frustration

[Markpyro]

So, my host, Powweb, is switching servers. They have this whole process for "migrating" the sites between servers, and honestly, I have no idea what's going on. They have this test, that keeps failing, and I'm not sure what it does, despite my repeated readings of the information provided. Well, since it keeps failing, It doesnt move my site, and now I'm getting nagging emails telling me to get a move on. I was hoping that this was a commonly practiced procedure, and If I described it, I could get more information and help, and I could fix anything so my site could actually pass the test and be moved.

Heres the information on the test:

About the Automated QA Process

Our automated QA process works as follows:
1. A script requests the file located at the primary domain on your account.
2. It stores the output of that request, then mines all the links on the page and stores those. The script throws out links pointing outside your site.
3. The script requests the files located at those links and repeats the process until it has requested and stored the outcome of the first 50 links.
4. The script then repeats the process for the site located at http://yourusername.powweb.com, spoofing the technical information so that our server responds as if it were hosting your domain.
5. Once all the links have been stored, our script compares the results between the two platforms. Bypassing any known, valid changes (to paths or other platform-specific patterns), if any discrepancy is found between the two files, the script registers the test as a failure.

And here are some results from said test:
http://pyrom.net/temp/QAtest.bmp


First of all, what is this test?
Second, do I have to worry about all those errors? What do they mean?
Third, How can I fix the errors?

[hammocksleeper]

QA is Quality Assurance. Your host is switching servers and so it needs to transfer all the data over to the new servers. This "test" is a way of testing if the switch will cause your site to break or not. The test copies your site data to the new server, using a spider-type method that searches out links to other pages within your domain. Then it compares the copied files with the originals. In your case, it failed so your site will break when they switch, unless they fix something. I don't think you have to worry about the errors, it sounds like a problem on their end. If your links in the site are all weird with funky pathnames and stuff you might try going through and simplifying it all, but like I said there's not much chance that it's your problem.

[Markpyro]

Makes sense, but why would they need to perform the test? If all the files are the same, then why should they be any different when on a different server?

[Jeff]

I'm glad I saw this topic. I've used PowWeb for some of my sites for years now, and I also went through their migration process. What their tool does is goes through the links on your sites and checks if they will work the same on the new platform. Some things like server paths, MySQL info, etc. are automatically fixed. The problem is that their tool doesn't work so well when using htaccess for multiple domains/subdomains or PHP index files. I had some of the same problems. Make sure you have backups of all of your files and databases and have support do the migration anyway despite the errors. Once switched over, keep an eye on your sites and check for problems. Also start using the new server names as well as the old for FTP and email so nothing gets lost in the transition. You can find the info on their site but basically it's ftp.powweb.com, pop.powweb.com, and smtp.powweb.com.

Good luck :)

[Markpyro]

Thanks ^_^. I have backups of all my files, not together, but I dont think it'd be too much work to arrange everything again. So, with the errors, should I just go ahead tell it to perform the migration?

[Jeff]

Yes, there's not a lot you can do until you migrate and see what actually needs to be fixed. Hopefully not a lot. You can use the CGI Error Log in the new OPS to help troubleshoot after the migration, and I'd be glad to help as well. They want everybody migrated by the end of the month so I wouldn't wait.