Someone probably will say that they can make a simple script in some minutes to do this kind of things. Actually you don’t need to recreate the wheel, the operating system have supplied such an utility already, the command is rename, it’s part of the util-linux package.

With the help of this command, it’s a very easy work to bulk rename files.
But, note that this command is a little different by systems.
Here we’ll show the usage examples for rename in both Redhat / CentOS and Debian / Ubuntu.

1, Batch rename files in Redhat / CentOS
For the scenario we mentioned above, it can be done like this:

$ rename .html .htm *

It renames all files in current working directory that match *.html* to *.htm*.
Note that only the first matched occurrence will be modified. If there’s a file called abc.html.abc.html, after renamed once, the new name is abc.htm.abc.html, not abc.html.abc.htm.

2, Bulk rename files in Debian / Ubuntu
The command here in Debian are quite different which makes it more powerful and professional.
I’ll show two examples with explaination:

$ rename -n 's/.html$/htm/' *

-n means no action will be applied, it will shows detailed information on what files would have been renamed:

$ rename -n 's/.html$/.htm/' abc.html.abc.html
abc.html.abc.html renamed as abc.html.abc.htm

The expression regunation here is in Perl style, which means you can apply multiple actions at one time, like this:

$ rename 's/.html$/htm/, s/css/css.backup/, s/jscript/js/' *

For more details you can raise a forum thread here at our support forum.

The general steps are:

• Stop the vserver in question

It can be done by this command: “vserver <server name> stop”

• Rename the /vservers/<server name> directory

By default it’s in /vservers, and on some self-crafted versions, it might be re-defined to other path like /var/lib/vservers. Simply you just need to use mv command to rename the issued vserver.

• Rename the /etc/vservers/<server name> directory

The directory /etc/vservers is much like a system wide configuration directory for vservers, you can use mv to rename specified directory as well.

• Update some softlink in /etc/vservers/<server name>

update link: /etc/vservers/<server name>/run -> /var/run/vservers/<server name>
update link: /etc/vservers/<server name>/vdir -> /etc/vservers/.defaults/vdirbase/<server name>
update link: /etc/vservers/<server name>/cache -> /etc/vservers/.defaults/cachebase/<server name>
Pay some attention to relative path issue, otherwise these links might get broken, there’s an example, the current working directory is /etc/vservers/mars:

joseph@galaxy:/etc/vservers/mars$ ln -s -f /etc/vservers/.defaults/vdirbase/mars vdir

• Update link: /var/run/vservers.rev/<server XID> -> /etc/vservers/<server name>

Please note that this just an update by fixing the dead link, and there’s no need to create a new XID.

• Reset hostname for vserver in question

Basically you just need to modify /etc/vservers/<server name>/uts/nodename before starting the issued vserver, and get other host name related settings modified when system booted.

joseph@galaxy:/etc/vservers$ grep mars -R mars/ 2>/dev/null -l
mars/uts/nodename
mars/vdir/etc/hosts
mars/vdir/etc/pam_ldap.conf
mars/vdir/etc/mailname
mars/vdir/etc/hostname

Now, It should start properly. If any issue encountered, please don’t hesitate to raise a forum thread at our community forum.