Moving house — to a new machine, a new provider, or from a test server to the real one — means carrying the service, its data and its users to a new address, then pointing the app at it.
Before you start
Section titled “Before you start”The new server must have no Courier on it (~/courier must not exist), the port must be free, it needs
at least 400 MB of space, and it cannot be the server you are on. The dialog says which one fails.
Doing it
Section titled “Doing it”- Service status → More → Migrate to another server.
- Fill in the new address, the sign-in user and the port; the first connection needs that server’s password once.
- Click Start migration and leave the window open.
It stops the old service, packs the data, copies it across, unpacks it on the new machine, starts it there and checks it. Every device is offline while this runs — the service is stopped — and it usually takes a few minutes.
If it fails, and after it works
Section titled “If it fails, and after it works”- A failure puts the old server back the way it was, so you can fix the problem and run it again.
- On success the old service is stopped and kept from starting at boot; its data stays until you delete the service there.
- The app switches itself to the new server, keys and vaults included.
The one thing to change by hand
Section titled “The one thing to change by hand”The Obsidian plugin and the command-line tool still carry the old address. Change it to the new one there — once per device — and everything syncs again.
If the migration finishes but this computer cannot reach the new address yet, that is usually the new server’s firewall: open the port and click Check again on the service page. Nothing needs to be migrated twice.