Restore from Backup

Hi pgplast,

Before you upgrade, make a backup of the entire old database and then the entire old cmsAdmin folder. (make sure you can tell which backups are the latest, because dates get overwritten when files are transferred.) 

That way you always have all files in their original form.

You may have to upload some of the new schema files to see the new fields in the sections, but again, if any issues arise you always have the old backup available.

Remember, its a bit more work, but you can always do a completely new parallel install in a new folder on your server and not delete the old installation until you've squashed any errors and you're happy with the result.

There's some more detailed information in my CMSB Cookbook in the recipes MOVE A CMSB SITE FROM ONE SERVER TO ANOTHER WITHOUT FEAR and IMAGES WON’T SHOW AFTER MIGRATING TO A NEW SERVER - THE FIX IS IN 

Hope that helps,

Jerry Kornbluth

Hi pgblast, 

If you restore a backup file on a site with a different table structure it will overwrite all the data and remove any new columns you created, but then when you click on "Section Editors" it will recreate any fields that exist in CMSB but not in the backup files.  But not the data.

It's always a bit tricky when your source and destination backup/restore targets are out of sync.  To be extra careful I'd make sure you have backups of both the old and new sites before making any changes.  

If you can let me know some more specific details on what you're trying to do and I can offer some suggestions if needed.

Dave:

Thanks for the response. What I am talking about is the following.

I have an application with  large number of tables originally created in CMSB. The old version of the application and the supporting database are currently live on a public server.

In order to update the client's old site, I earlier created an updated CMSB install on a VPS account we are using as a development machine and restored the blank database with a backup generated on the old public site using CMSB.

Since then, as I have re-written the application code on the development machine, I have needed to add some new fields to some of the development machine's tables. However, in the time since I first created the development version of the app, many data changes have taken place on the old machine.

I need to be able to get the data from the old machine onto the new and thought I could backup each table individually and then use that backup to "resore" the same table on the development machine. I was hoping that this process would add data from fields that the tables have in common and just leave new fields alone (or empty) on the new machine.

You appear to be saying that this is not the case, and that I will lose the new fields I added to the development database.

Is that correct?

Thanks.

Hi Dave:

Any followup thoughts on this issue?

Thanks

pgplast

Dave:

I was able to accomplish the move without difficulty.

To make things go more smoothly, I created the new fields for the tables in the old database before backing up and restoring on the new computer.

I suspect that this was unnecessary, but the process went smoothly and my data is successfully transfered.

Thanks for your help.