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How to move to another server

  • Ensure you have enough disk space on the new server.
  • Check if you have enough CPU power and RAM on the new server.
  • Create the user who is the owner of the OpenKM files ( $TOMCAT_HOME folder). This user is usually named “openkm” ( more info at Installing on Ubuntu and Debian), but a different user may have been chosen during installation.
  • Update the OS.

It is important that, while moving the data between the two servers, no changes are made on the old server. That’s why it is a good practice to stop OpenKM.

The database connection is configured in the “openkm.properties” file (in the $TOMCAT_HOME folder). In the following sample the user is named “openkm” with password “openkm” and the connection URL is “jdbc:mariadb://localhost:3306/okmdb?autoReconnect=true&useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=UTF8&nullNamePatternMatchesAll=true”:

# Database connection
spring.datasource.driver-class-name=org.mariadb.jdbc.Driver
spring.datasource.url=jdbc:mariadb://localhost:3306/okmdb?autoReconnect=true&useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=UTF8&nullNamePatternMatchesAll=true
spring.datasource.username=openkm
spring.datasource.password=openkm

The command below explains how to back up the MySQL and MariaDB database. The database is usually named “okmdb”:

Terminal window
$ mysqldump -h localhost -u openkm -popenkm okmdb > okmdb.sql
  • Install the same database engine on the new server.
  • Create the database user with the same credentials ( more info at Installing on Ubuntu and Debian ).
  • Copy the okmdb.sql file to the new server.
  • Restore the backup.

The sample below explains how to restore a MySQL or MariaDB database. Again, the database is usually named “okmdb”:

Terminal window
$ mysql -h localhost -u openkm -popenkm okmdb < okmdb.sql
  • Copy the TOMCAT_HOME folder to the new server. We suggest keeping the same original folder path on the destination (otherwise you would need to perform extra configuration steps).
  • Set the owner and permissions for the TOMCAT_HOME folder on the new server (usually the user named openkm).

The sample below shows how to copy it (from the old server to the new server):

Terminal window
$ rsync -avh --progress --stats /home/openkm/tomcat-8.5.69 root@newServer:/home/openkm/tomcat-9.0.79

The sample below shows how to set the owner (you need to execute as root):

Terminal window
$ chown openkm:openkm -Rf /home/openkm/tomcat-8.5.69

The minimum required packages are ( more info at Installing on Ubuntu and Debian):

  • ImageMagick
  • Ghostscript
  • LibreOffice
  • Tesseract OCR engine (remember the language packs required in your environment)
  • If the new server has less RAM than the old server, check the $TOMCAT_HOME/bin/setenv.sh file and adjust it accordingly.
  • Check the openkm.log file for the startup process and look for possible errors.
  • If the new server has a different number of cores, you need to check the value of the configuration parameters named “text.extraction.threads” and “text.extraction.batch”.
  • Open the administration interface at http://localhost:8080/openkm/management/ and run a repository checker (this action may take a long time to complete).
  • Check the preview of different document types (PDF, Microsoft Office).
  • Check the thumbnails of different document types (PDF, Microsoft Office).
  • Create a folder.
  • Upload a new document.
  • Download a previously existing document.