Migrating servers

[Bill Wilson]

I am thinking about migrating my older Gallery to the later version like many others. I've been reading the posts from this forum on the topic and I have an idea of what I want to try and wanted to get opinions on if this might work. Here are the steps...

Old version of Gallery: ??

1.  Launch a New Version of Gallery: 3.1.3 (Revival) and verify it works properly
2. Copy /var/www/Gallery/var/[albums-resizes-thumbs] from the old server to the new server.
3. Verify privileges
4. Export the Gallery table from the old server and import it into the new server

At this point, I begin to wonder what I'm missing because from all the posts I've read it cannot be this simple. What am I missing?

[J.R.]

Bill,

You're correct that "it's not that simple"... but you're on the right track. There are some gotchas I'll take point by point:

On 8/9/21 5:18 PM, Bill Wilson wrote:

I am thinking about migrating my older Gallery to the later version like many others. I've been reading the posts from this forum on the topic and I have an idea of what I want to try and wanted to get opinions on if this might work. Here are the steps...

Old version of Gallery: ??

Oh dear... not knowing the version of your old Gallery installation makes it impossible for you to use the "migration" module -- or to directly export the data from the old Gallery database directly into a new version's database. Why? Well, each major version of Gallery -- from Gallery 2 up through Gallery 3.0.9 -- and the latest Gallery 3.1.3 as well, have *slightly* different database structures. That's why there is a special "migration" process used to pull the data out of an older database structure and get it formatted into the new database structure used by Gallery 3.1.3, but since you don't  know what version your old Gallery is that's not an option.

So your idea to "export the Gallery table from the old server and import it into the new server" will not work. It's likely your only option at this point is to follow the rest of your plan with a different approach:

1.  Create / Launch a New Version of Gallery: 3.1.3 (Revival) and verify it works properly

OK, that's the right starting point.

1. Copy wwwGallery/var/[albums-resizes-thumbs] from the old server to the new server.

Copying the files from you old installation's  /var/albums will get you the original image files you uploaded to your old gallery. But you must download them into your local computer so you can then upload them into your new Gallery installation using its new non-Flash image uploader. Why? Gallery does a lot of behind-the-scenes processing of each uploaded image as it receives it and integrates it into new installation's retrieval and display system. So a direct manual copy of images from an old installation's   var/albums   directly into the new version 3.1.3  /var/albums    won't work. Oh sure, you can manually put them in there, but Gallery 3.1.3 won't be able to find or display them because they did not go through the behind-the-scenes upload processing.

The good news is that because of this there is no need to copy the files from you old   /var/resizes or   /var/thumbs    because those files will be automatically created when you upload each image into your new Gallery 3.1.3 installation.

Of course, depending on how many images you have in your old Gallery, re-uploading all of them like this can be a very time-consuming process. But it is foolproof and you can do it in small batches as your free time and energy permits. A side benefit is that as you go along, you may well decide that some of those old images don't really need to be put into your new gallery after all.

1. Verify privileges

If your new installation of Gallery 3.1.3 is working properly when you start  uploading images into it, then you will already have the correct permissions in place.

-- J.R.

[Bill Wilson]

I had suspicions there would be more to it than I thought and you verified that. Thanks for sharing your knowledge!

- Bill