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Migrating to a new server installation

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Preparation

New server

Set up your new server as described here; follow the installation procedure until you have created a database.

Heads up to users

Inform your users of an upcoming interruption to your service. To ensure data consistency, your server needs to be offline during some steps of the migration processes.

You may also find these addons useful for communicating with your users prior to the migration process:

blackout
notifyall

Storage

Check your storage backend with bin/console storage list in the root folder. The output should look like this:

Sel | Name
-----------------------
     | Filesystem
 *   | Database

If you are not using Database run the following commands:

bin/console storage set Database to activate the database backend.
bin/console storage move to initiate moving the stored image files.

This process may take a long time depending on the size of your storage and your server's capacity. Prior to initiating this process, you may want to check the number of files in the storage with the following command: tree -if -I index.html /path/to/storage/.

Cleaning up

Before transferring your database, you may want to clean it up; ensure the expiration of database items is set to a reasonable value and activated via the administrator panel. Admin > Site > Performance > Enable "Clean up database" After adjusting these settings, the database cleaning up processes will be initiated according to your configured daily cron job.

To review the size of your database, log into MySQL with mysql -p run the following query:

SELECT table_schema AS "Database", SUM(data_length + index_length) / 1024 / 1024 / 1024 AS "Size (GB)" FROM information_schema.TABLES GROUP BY table_schema;

You should see an output like this:

+--------------------+----------------+
| Database           | Size (GB)      |
+--------------------+----------------+
| friendica_db       | 8.054092407227 |
| [..........]       | [...........]  |
+--------------------+----------------+

Finally, you may also want to optimise your database with the following command: mysqloptimize -p friendica-db

Going offline

Stop background tasks and put your server in maintenance mode.

If you had set up a worker cron job like this */10 * * * * cd /var/www/friendica; /usr/bin/php bin/worker.php run crontab -e and comment out this line. Alternatively if you deploy a worker daemon, disable this instead.
Put your server into maintenance mode: bin/console maintenance 1 "We are currently upgrading our system and will be back soon."

Dumping DB

Export your database: mysqldump -p friendica_db > friendica_db-$(date +%Y%m%d).sql and possibly compress it.

Transferring to new server

Transfer your database and a copy of your configuration file config/local.config.php.copy to your new server installation.

Restoring your DB

Import your database on your new server: mysql -p friendica_db < your-friendica_db-file.sql

Completing migration

Configuration file

Copy your old server's configuration file to config/local.config.php. Ensure the newly created database credentials are identical to the setting in the configuration file; otherwise update them accordingly.

Cron job for worker

Set up the required daily cron job. Run crontab -e and add the following line according to your system specification */10 * * * * cd /var/www/friendica; /usr/bin/php bin/worker.php

DNS settings

Adjust your DNS records by pointing them to your new server.

Troubleshooting

If you are unable to login to your newly migrated Friendica installation, check your web server's error and access logs and mysql logs for obvious issues.

If still unable to resolve the problem, it's likely an issue with your installation. In this case, you may try to an entirely new Friendica installation on your new server, but use a different FQDN and DNS name. Once you have this up and running, take it offline and purge the database and configuration file and try migrating to this installation.

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