Backup and restore account data
Backup and restore account data
| Issue ID: | 803 |
| Issue Category: | feature |
| Component: | core |
| Priority: | major |
| Status: | active |
| Assigned: | evan |
| Milestone: | 0.7 |
| Keywords: | dataportability user-migration |
I think everyone will agree that openness is the single most important feature of Laconica. If I were dissatisfied with how identi.ca was being ran, I could simple move to another open microblogging site, or even start my own. But what about my content and contacts?
I think it is important that users be able to move their account to a new server. Perhaps this could be implemented by an export feature, which would allow a user to dump their contact subscriptions and posts into a xml file, which could then be uploaded at the new host.
I big plus would be the ability to automatically switch one's subscribers to the new host. For security reasons, perhaps a random code could be generated, which would have to be posted to the old account for the subscriber re-subscription to take place.
Updates
#1
Full content export could also be very useful for backup purposes.
#2
Keyword gardening. See TicketKeywords#dataportabilitykeyword.
#3
Laconica is approaching 0.8 but this ticket is still open.
is it still in the roadmap ?
P.S. sorry for my english
#4
The current [http://identi.ca/doc/faq/ identi.ca FAQ] states that one goal is autonomy and that one can "take your data and the source code and set up your own server (or move your account to another one)." If this is possible, I have been unable to locate how/where via identi.ca's help.
I understand this a feature request and not a bug, however, this request has been open for 13 months now. One solution could be to remove that statement from the FAQ until this feature is available.
#5
I have to agree it's still troubling this ticket is still open. I realized today I hadn't done a backup of my identica data in a while, grabbed the RSS, and realized the data was incomplete. [http://identi.ca/conversation/2419745#notice-2428689 Evan said a while back that RSS/FoaF was the way to do a backup]. If so, can we at least get an FAQ entry somewhere that explains how to use RSS/FoaF to get a FULL backup?
#6
Importing and exporting from atom is currently the best bet. We are planning on making it much easier, like a couple clicks from the personal page. importing and exporting the subscribers is the tough bit
#7
2503 is a near-duplicate of this, maybe counts as duplicate.
#8
Version 0.9.7, to be pushed tonight, has a backup/restore feature. There is also experimental support for a "live move" -- moving a user transparently between sites. There are some really tricky aspects to this, and I think it's probably worth our time investigating them.
#9
Renamed this request
#10
The experimental backup feature, at least as deployed on identi.ca as of today, does not work. I press the button, browser spins for a while, then I get returned a blank page. I appreciate your efforts to try and get this working, and I realize the feature is experimental. However, I am increasingly using identi.ca for very important conversations about software freedom issues with community members. I assume it's a *good* thing that identi.ca is being used in this way, as it shows the value of status.net for the free software community. However, the fact that screen scraping is the only backup solution to grab large threads of conversations to save them is a serious problem. Is coding on the solution the only way the community can help fix this problem? What do you need us to do to solve this?
#11
The feature seems to work on small accounts, eg I only have a few notices on unlimited.status.net and http://unlimited.status.net/main/backupaccount does obtain me a a file called mlinksva.atom that looks plausible (haven't tried to do anything with it). On identi.ca (where I have ~6k notices) it times out.
Looking through the code, the callstack looks something like this:
https://gitorious.org/statusnet/mainline/blobs/master/lib/useractivityst... renderEntries()
https://gitorious.org/statusnet/mainline/blobs/master/lib/atom10feed.php getString()
https://gitorious.org/statusnet/mainline/blobs/master/lib/useractivityst... UserActivityStream()
https://gitorious.org/statusnet/mainline/blobs/master/actions/backupacco... sendFeed()
I can see why it might timeout on large accounts. Don't know whether there is tuning that could be done to make it work for somewhat larger accounts than it works with now. Seems the only thing sure to work generally would be to run separately and have user download backup when complete. It seems there is already a script to generate the same file
https://gitorious.org/statusnet/mainline/blobs/master/scripts/backupuser...
Backup requests would have to be queued somewhere, above script invoked on queue, users notified of where to download backup from. There is probably a better solution, and it may have problems, that's just the stupid obvious possible solution.
#12
Backup and Restore doesn't work with 1.0.0alpha5.
I've generated a backupfile from http://status.davidhaberthuer.ch/ and wanted to import the resulting atom file (which can be provided on request) into http://davidhaberthuer.status.net/, where I'm currently testing 1.0.0alpha5.
http://davidhaberthuer.status.net/main/restoreaccount tells me that the "Feed will be restored" and that I should "...wait a few minutes for results". But even after half an hour I don't see any imported notices from the backup.
#13
I've had accounts on identi.ca, the SN cloud, and now my own hosted instance of SN. I would like to at some point merge these accounts into my instance, ideally bringing my subscribers with me :)
As it stands now, the backup feature does not work for me. I get files of varying sizes, sometimes 2MB, sometimes 4, sometimes 12, and none of them import successfully to another instance.
#14
Using 1.0.0beta3, the import doesn't work for me. Says "Not an Atom feed." Looking at the atom file exported from identi.ca, it looks like it has stopped in the middle. The end of the file is an <entry> for a notice just 6 months ago, when my account goes back much longer. Each time I export, I get a file which is a different size, but always around 550K.
#15
As of release 1.0.1 neither the backup nor restore features appear to be exposed to the user interface under settings => profile => right-hand sidebar links.
Somewhat shocking that 3.5 years later dataportability is still incomplete. Users can't switch nodes without having to trash their account and start all over.
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