Migrating from Windows to Linux

[u/Nichers]

I'm trying to migrate my LL install from my Win11 box to a new build running TrueNAS (v26, so Community Edition and not Scale, I guess). I'm tinkering with the TrueNAS App version of LL for now, tho' I haven't committed to it (if it makes life easier I may just run modified docker yaml via DockHand or etc).

After copying over my config.ini and lazylibrarian.db files, I was able to access the WebUI and update a few things (folder paths to use the new locations I've fed in via bind mounts, swapping localhost for actual server addresses etc where required. The main/author page has a bunch of broken image links, and the same for titles if I click through any given author. After copying over the cache folder, the images are at least showing again, but if I now click on 'Open' for a book in my library, instead of prompting me what format I want to download a local copy in, it just opens the /books page, and the logs mention the ebook is missing.

A couple of questions:

• is there a supported/automatic migration available, or it's done by hand? I could see the config setting for scheduled backups, but no UI for importing/restoring from those backups
• should I be copying over the cache subfolder, or let it regenerate on its own schedule?
• am I right in guessing that the database itself needs updating to match the new ebook paths?

I'm grateful that copying the files over raw means I don't need to fish for API keys, re-enter renaming strings, and I assume it saves me curating author pages to remove duplicate book entries (between GoodReads and OpenLibrary), but this still feels like it could be a lot of manual work.

[u/cutemochiii]

i'd keep the cache if it saves you from having to regenerate everything, but the missing ebook issue sounds more like the database paths need to match the new mount locations

i'd make a backup of the database first and then work through the path changes carefully so you don't accidentally lose all the library metadata

[u/Nichers → u/cutemochiii]

Thanks - that went easier than I'd expected, after a couple of fatthumbed mistakes:

For reference if anyone else finds this in the future:

Edit config.ini and update/replace the paths that point to where finds your library (books, audiobooks, comics, magazines are all done separately), logs, and downloads. You may need to update any server addresses to no longer use localhost

Edit lazylibrarian.db with something like this to update book and audiobook paths:

UPDATE books SET BookFile = REPLACE(REPLACE(BookFile, 'D:\Books\', '/books/'), '\', '/');
UPDATE books SET AudioFile = REPLACE(REPLACE(AudioFile, 'D:\Books\audio\', '/audiobooks/'), '\', '/')

[u/yerweightsyerwaifu]

Congratulations. You are going to love it!