Transferring machine history to a new Pi?
This quick guide will help you through the process.
What all do I need?
This guide assumes you have 2 or more WORKING Raspberry Pi SBCs and are simply trying to transfer your Moonraker DB (filament usage, hours printed, e-stop count, etc) to a new Raspberry Pi running Klipper, Moonraker, and Mainsail/Fluidd. This is typically done because you have sourced a better/newer/faster SBC and want to retain your machine’s history after migration.
Got my 2 Pi’s working, now what?
First, it’s helpful to be either at a standalone computer (slicing computer, laptop, whatever) that’s on the same networks as both of your SBCs.
I will be referring to the old machine as OLD.local and the new machine as NEW.local. “.local” addresses are used if you have a network setup that uses the Bonjour service. If .local addresses do not typically work for you, you’ll need to know the IP address for each SBC we are working with. Assume OLD.local is OLD.IP and NEW.local is NEW.IP. (IP addresses can be found for each machine by running ifconfig in the command line and looking for the number next to inet under wlan0 or eth0, depending on if you’re connected wirelessly or via ethernet cable.)
Now we can begin.
By default, the Moonraker database is located in ~/.moonraker_database and typically contains 2 files. Be sure to check OLD.local’s moonraker.cfg file to see if you have it defined as something else with database_path:. If you do have a different path defined, use that instead.
SSH into OLD.local with ssh USER@OLD.local where USER is the username you’ve set it to (username is pi by default).
By default, .moonraker_database is hidden, but located in the “Home” directory (~). If you’re not sure you’re in the right directory, use the cd command to change directory to where the database would be located. e.g. cd ~
Before we continue, it’s a good idea to stop Moonraker on both devices using sudo service moonraker stop so the database files aren’t being written to during transfer.
On NEW.local, it would be wise to remove the database folder entirely, as we will be transferring the database from OLD.local. Be sure you are SSH’d into NEW.local have Moonraker stopped, and use rm -rf .moonraker_database to delete the database folder.
Using SCP, we will now transfer the database from OLD.local to NEW.local with scp -r .moonraker_database USER@NEW.local:~. This will use the secure transfer protocol to transfer the files from the old SBC to the new one. You will need to provide the password for USER (default is raspberry) for the transfer to take place.
Be sure to check that the transfer was successful by looking for .moonraker_database on NEW.local with ls -a in the home directory (~).
If everything transferred, go ahead and bring up the Moonraker service again with sudo service moonraker restart and check if Moonraker is back up and running by opening Mainsail/Fluidd in your browser.
Assuming everything went well, congrats! That’s all there is to it.
Something went wrong, Moonraker isn’t coming back up!
If Moonraker is failing to load, that most likely means it’s not recognizing OLD.local’s database as a database. There is a “working” fix for this.
You’ll need to stop the Moonraker service on both machines (see above) and install a tool called lmdb-utils with sudo apt install lmdb-utils on both machines.
Once you’ve got that, on OLD.local use the command mdb_dump -f backup.txt -a .moonraker_database to backup the database as a text file named backup.txt.
Still using OLD.local use SCP again to transfer backup.txt to NEW.local with scp backup.txt USER@NEW.local:~ The file will now be in NEW.local’s home directory (~).
SSH into NEW.local and remove the files inside .moonraker_database by using cd .moonraker_database to move into the folder and use rm -rf data.mdb and rm -rf lock.mdb to delete the files. Now, use cd ~ to move back into the home directory and run the command mdb_load -f backup.txt -s -T ~/.moonraker_database to forcefully load the database file into Moonraker. After that’s done, use sudo service moonraker restart and check everything is working in Mainsail/Fluidd.
This is a fix that worked for me, I’m not responsible for any lost data that may occur while following this guide.
Special thanks to Arksine, as well as Th33xitus, who helped me figure this out.