Backing Up and Migrating Nodes

Transfer your node to a new server, retaining the node identity, stats, and grandfathered status

Sometimes, you may want to migrate your node to a new computer or VPS, while maintaining the current node's identity, grandfathered status, and node stats.

In order to move your Presearch node to a new server, you need to back up the security keys of the node while it’s still running, copy them to the new server, stop the old node, run the Presearch Node Restore command on the new server, then start the node up on the new server.

For the steps below, old-server is the old server your node was running on, and new-server is the new server you are moving the node onto. Text surrounded by {} should be replaced with the proper actual value.

1. Login to the old-server via SSH (using the Terminal on macOS/Linux or PuTTY if you are on Windows) where your node is currently running. Make a copy of the security keys

   docker cp presearch-node:/app/node/.keys presearch-node-keys

2. Now stop the node running on old-server by running

   docker stop presearch-node ; docker rm presearch-node ; docker stop presearch-auto-updater ; docker rm presearch-auto-updater

3. Disconnect from old-server so you are back at your local command line.

4. Download the keys backup you just made from your old-server to your local computer:

   scp -r -P {old-server-port} {username}@{old-server-ip}:presearch-node-keys ~/

5. Upload the node security keys to new-server from your local computer:

   scp -r -P {new-server-SSH-PORT} presearch-node-keys {username}@{new-server-IP}:

6. Now login to new-server:

   ssh -p {new-server-SSH-PORT} {username}@{new-server-IP}

7. Run ls to confirm that you see the folder (presearch-node-keys) you uploaded in step 3

8. Let's now run the Node restore command:

   docker run -dt --rm -v presearch-node-storage:/app/node --name presearch-restore presearch/node ; docker cp presearch-node-keys/. presearch-restore:/app/node/.keys/ ; docker stop presearch-restore

   You'll see docker launch the restore code, which takes about 10 seconds to complete.

9. Once that's done, you can launch the node similar to how you would a new node:

   docker stop presearch-node ; docker rm presearch-node ; docker stop presearch-auto-updater ; docker rm presearch-auto-updater ; docker run -d --name presearch-auto-updater --restart=unless-stopped -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock presearch/auto-updater --cleanup --interval 900 presearch-auto-updater presearch-node && docker pull presearch/node && docker run -dt --name presearch-node --restart=unless-stopped -v presearch-node-storage:/app/node presearch/node && sleep 10 && docker logs presearch-node

   You should see the message info: Node is listening for searches... if all was started properly.

10. Refresh your dashboard, and you should see that your node is back online.

You can now remove the uploaded security key files from new-server:

rm -rf ~/presearch-node-keys

We recommend making a backup of all of your nodes' security keys.

Adapted from https://nabeards.com/posts/moving-a-presearch-node-to-another-server/, which also provides direction on managing and backing up multiple nodes at once.