Success! How-to: Moving from one machine to another with v5 pip and rsync

[Chris Alemany]

Hi all.

I take up plenty of bandwidth with questions and things so I thought I’d share a success in case it helps others.

Last night I upgraded an old iMac and installed Debian 11 on it.

Today I moved my newly installed v5b10 pip venv over using rsync from a RPi (Debian) onto the iMac with just a few commands so I thought I’d share:

— All operations are on the destination (iMac) unless specified —

1) create a new user with same name and home path as old (eg. /home/weewx)

2) login to the new user and follow the v5 pip install method but *only* this steps. (I only tested this on Debian)

i) sudo apt update

ii) sudo apt install python3-pip -y

iii) sudo apt install python3-venv -y

iv) python3 -m venv ~/weewx-venv

v) source ~/weewx-venv/bin/activate

vi) python3 -m pip install weewx (see note* below)

vii) sudo cp ~/weewx-data/util/systemd/weewx.service /etc/systemd/system

note*: It is crucial to install weewx on the source in case there are subtle difference in the underlying systems. I ran up against this when weewx reported after rsync-ing that ephem was not installed when the system reported it was.

3) Use rsync to bring over only the files that have not been recreated on the new system. I transferred the entire user directory since it had other things I used and stored in support of weewx.

rsync -avz --ignore-existing we...@the.ip.address.here:/home/weewx/ /home/weewx/

4) If you have a remote server setup for web display, now is the time to make sure your passwordless ssh keys are in order from new weewx server to the remote server.

5) In a different terminal window, login to the *Old System* and Stop weewx

6) *On the Destination System* : Finalize the startup items and Start weewx

i) sudo systemctl daemon-reload

ii) sudo systemctl enable weewx

iii) sudo systemctl start weewx

You’re done.

As far as I’m concerned, this is a huge step up in terms of portability and ease of use for weewx. Congrats to all who are making v5 happen. Great work and thank you.

Chris

https://alberniweather.ca

https://mstdn.ca/@alberniweather.ca