Contribution [HOW-TO] Migration of Plesk roundcubemail to new server

[Tobias Sorensson]

Server operating system version

Ubuntu 22.04

Plesk version and microupdate number

18.0.61 Update #3

Here is a step by step guide how i migrated roundcubemail contacts etc to new server.

Step 1.
export the old servers roundcubemail db with this command on the old server
plesk db dump roundcubemail > /root/roundcubemail_old_server_db.sql

Step 2.
Download the /root/roundcubemail_old_server_db.sql to you´r pc.

Step 3.
go into the new server and get into Plesk DB you can do this by going to Tools & Settings -> Database Servers Press on the phpmyadmin logo to the right of the MariaDB server and locate the database roundcubemail make a backup of this db incase someting gose wrong.

Step 4.
go to Import and upload the roundcubemail sql backup that you saved in Step 2. i left everything else as default and then i got a success message that everything was imported correctly.

Step 5.
Success! all the users contacts got imported correctly

i dont understand why plesk cant just try and import the db themsenf when you use the migration tool. but alas this works

 

[Kaspar@Plesk]

Thank you for sharing! We actually have a resources section on the forum for guides like these. Maybe you like to add your guide there too?

i dont understand why plesk cant just try and import the db themsenf when you use the migration tool. but alas this works

We would like that too. However Roundcube can change their database structure with new releases. Which makes migration between different RC versions very difficult. Which is why Roundcube migration and restoration aren't part of the Plesk backups and the Pleks migrator.

 

[ChristophRo]

i dont understand why plesk cant just try and import the db themsenf when you use the migration tool. but alas this works

There are certain caveats, like that your procedure ONLY works properly when migrating to a brand new server and do it all at once.
But if you already have some accounts running on the new server, this will screw up big time. The same if you migrate in batches.

That being said, it would be quite easy to export and import the Roundcube settings on a per user basis. (like only three or four sql queries required)
Also, the year long Plesk argument of different database structures making Roundcube migrations difficult is quite moot, as it's simply not true.
I've migrated many Roundcube webmails (on Plesk Servers and others) in the past 10+ years and never ever run into a database structure problem.
The relevant 'users', 'identities', 'contacts' and 'contactgroups' tables that hold the configurations are still the same or only got some new columns added.

Edit: OK, one thing I may have left out are Roundcube installations with more than the default enabled extensions.
These can get a bit more tricky...