Tracks

Hi,

From reading a number of posts here, I am a lot less technically savvy that most of this community, so please forgive me if this is a poor idea…

I am running Tracks in a virtual server.  The virtual server was packaged by Bitnami (http://www.bitnami.org).  Since I have have almost no Linux administrative knowledge, being able to download a VM image and just have Tracks running, is great for me.

I started with 1.71.  Shortly after I started using Tracks, version 1.72 came out.  Bitnami, packaged 1.72 and I installed it, as a new virtual machine, on my server.  However, I had no idea how to move my data from the 1.71 virtual machine to the 1.72 virtual machine.  So I posted in the Bitnami.org support forums:

http://bitnami.org/forums/forums/tracks/topics/upgrading-virtual-installing-and-keeping-data#post_10221

One of the admins over there, has been trying to help me move my data.  I think were were able to get the data moved, but I am unable to use my old credentials to log into the 1.72 server, but that is *not* why I am posting here…

I think that it would be useful if the administrator of a Tracks server could specify a path, including a different server IP, for the Tracks data.  I think this would be useful for non-linux savvy people, like myself.  Once we get a virtual server running (I have VMware), then with organizations like Bitnami packaging a “plug and play” image for us, we could, rather easily, upgrade to new versions of the application and still be able to access our data.  Also for me (and perhaps others), this gives me the option to back up my Tracks data separately from my virtualized Tracks server.

Thanks for your consideration.

data migration between installations is unfortunately not easy if you’re not tecnicallly savvy.

I believe Bitnami is using MYSQL. Then it is easy to do by using mysqldump to backup the 1.7.1 database and importing it in your 1.7.2 database. There are no database changes between 1.7.1 and 1.7.2 so this should be enough.

I you use sqlite as a database, the database is a file that you can copy between VM’s.

you can configure tracks to use a database on another server. You can configure this in /path/to/tracks/config/database.yml. You will need to use a networkable database like MySQL (sqlite will not do this).

I hope to find the time to get export/import working so that you have another option to get your data from one installation to another.