Migrating images & gems

[Samuel Reynolds]

At 2003-06-26 04:21 PM +0100, David Bayly wrote:
>Pictures are easy; the masters are always in the website tables if you 
>uploaded them thru Manila originally.  The copies in the static folder are 
>duplicates, so you need to tell Manila not to use the url to the dumped 
>files. There's no way to do from Manila as far as i know, but my 
>Manilafixer plugin can do it. <http://www.baylys.com:8080/help/manilafixer/>
>
>Gems are never placed in the website table, so you are out of luck. You 
>will need to upload them again, effectively making new gems. 
>Unless  someone else has a tool for that. manilafixer can load a folder 
>worth of files that placed into the gems folder manually (or by FTP) but 
>the names it generates will likely not match your existing gems, so that 
>doesn't help.

If your paths are the same (i.e., if you're just replacing one
server with another at the same IP address, and the disk path of
Frontier and the Gems folder are the same on the two servers),
you can simply copy the gems folder(s) from one server to the
other when you move the site(s).

Or, a more complicated approach...

>Gems are never placed in the website table, so you are out of luck. You 
>will need to upload them again, effectively making new gems. 
>Unless  someone else has a tool for that.

Version 2.0 of the Filer plugin allows files to be stored in the
website table (though it's not recommended if you have a lot,
because the .root file gets huge). It will also convert Gems to
Filer (when activated) and from Filer to Gems (when deactivated),
with appropriate file moving (between disk locations or between
disk and GDB). The server admin determines where files are stored
(on disk or in site), both globally and on a per-site basis.

So the following should work (after installing Filer on both servers,
of course)...
1. Enable Filer on the site.
2. In the Filer Control Panel, change the site settings to store files
    in the site. Wait for the file-move tasks to be processed (quick).
3. Uninstall the site from the server.
4. Export the site table.
5. Import the site table on the new server.
6. In the Filer Control Panel, change the site settings to store
    files back on the disk (or turn off Override for the site).
    Again, wait for the file-move tasks to be processed.

There may still be some issues with shortcuts; I believe for
Gems<-->Filer conversions Filer converts shortcuts, but I'm
not certain. If you want to try this approach, let me know,
and I'll review the code.

BTW, *do* use the latest version of Filer.

URL: http://plugins.weblogger.com/filerPlugin

- Sam