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Escaping a provider with no export tool

General Discussion by brusselsdzire1 31 replies 6.7K views
brusselsdzire1

Member OP

7 #1

I recently found myself locked into a fictional provider—let us call them "Contabo"—with no export functionality whatsoever. Article 13 flashbacks aside, this is increasingly common post-GDPR enforcement gaps. Here is what I learned.

The cPanel scrape:
Most "custom" panels are still cPanel under the skin. I used 

wget --mirror --page-requisites
against the file manager. Ugly but functional. Check your robots.txt first; some providers block recursive fetching.

DNS records:
No AXFR? Use 

dig +short ANY example.com
repeatedly. Document everything. I maintain a spreadsheet for GDPR Article 30 records anyway, so this was trivial.

Email forwarding traps:
Contabo silently rewrote MX records on transfer-out requests. IMAP sync saved me.

imapsync --host1 contabo.com --user1 [email protected] --host2 interserver.net --user2 [email protected]

Run it twice. The first pass is never complete.

I am drafting a complaint with my DPA regarding the MX rewriting. Has anyone else encountered this hostage situation?

moebig

Member

RAID is not backup

#2

Wesh brusselsdzire1 ! Le server حلو , I feel you on the cPanel scrape incha'allah your new host has better uptime

I did same thing last year with a "custom panel" provider—turned out to be cPanel with CSS changed, kif kif . The DNS trap is real man, they had hidden SOA records that propagated for 48h after "release"

Pro tip : test your MX with 

dig +trace
before AND after, incha'allah you catch the rewrite

GDPR article 13 ... I still have nightmares from 2019 lol

RAID 1: because paranoia pays
CarlosBilby

Member

#3

This happened to me with OVHcloud! My VPS it crashed 3 times during the sync and I had to restart the imapsync hehe

The email forwarding trap is very bad, they changed my MX without warning nossa! I lost 2 days of emails caramba

I make the scrape more fast with parallel wget but my provider he blocked my IP after 10 minutes

Now I use InterServer, is very good, no problems

olya

Member

Always Free

4 #4

Pro tip: if you're doing this regularly, script the entire escape.

1. Enumerate all mailboxes via IMAP 

LIST "" "*"

2. Sync to temp Oracle Cloud free tier instance (4 OCPUs, 24GB RAM—permanent free tier, not trial)
3. Update DNS at registrar directly, bypass provider nameservers entirely
4. Verify with 
dig +short MX example.com @8.8.8.8

Heads up: some providers intercept port 25 outbound. Use IMAP-over-SSL for sync, then SMTP submission (587) from your new host.

I have a 12-step checklist for "hostage situations" now. The Oracle free tier VM costs nothing and gives you a clean intermediate landing zone.

licensing is a suggestion
MI

Member

#5

🚫 = mas brusselsdzire1 you tipo saved my life with that imapsync command

My old host did the MX rewrite too!

Now I sleep

Bruno22

Member

#6

Mano what a thread! This is the best "hostage situation" guide I ever see

I make a test with Vultr last month and they have ZERO export tool, is very good that you share this

The imapsync trick is gold, I will use for sure! No more lost emails

Bruno22 out! Kkkkk

ping so high I wave back
Nadia

Member

/dev/null enthusiast

#7

Contabo's data pipeline terminates at /dev/null—no dump, no tarball, not even a stderr stream to grep

/dev/null: full of good ideas
AD

Member

#8

Contabo tipo ZERO export tool, nem database dump tem

kenji3

Member

#9

Did anyone actually manage to get a clean database dump out of Contabo in the end?

Nadia said:
Contabo's data pipeline terminates at /dev/null—no dump, no tarball, not even a stderr stream to grep

I am still sitting on a legacy project there and phpMyAdmin is the only access I have. Export tab works but times out on anything over ~200 MB. I have been doing chunked SELECT INTO OUTFILE through a janky PHP script instead.

Has anyone tried just asking their support directly? I know it sounds naive but sometimes the "no export tool" line just means no self-service button.

conbini > datacenter snacks
Bruno22

Member

#10

I am staring at the same problem with KnownHost right now, no mysqldump access and phpMyAdmin is a white-label mess that times out on tables over 2 GB. I tried using the CLI client over SSH but they locked down outbound port 3306.

Nadia said:
Contabo's data pipeline terminates at /dev/null—no dump, no tarball, not even a stderr stream to grep
This is exactly where I am stuck. The cPanel scrape worked for files but the DB is the real hostage

ping so high I wave back

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