Nextcloud: Move old notes to a new installation?

General Discussion
1

Hello.

I was asked for help with an older Dietpi installation: The Raspi3B only shows a red light, but does not boot from USB-SDD or SD-card anymore. This configuration was made about 3-5 years ago by a person who is no longer available. There is (of course) no documentation or other information. :clown_face:

I connected the SSD to a Windows PC and used “Diskinternals Linux Reader” to find the remaining data (many notes *.txt and some other files).

My idea was to set up another computer (X86 Thin-Client) and simply copy the notes *.txt into the directory “\mnt\dietpi_userdata\nextcloud_data\admin\files\Notes\”. I managed to do this via SFTP, but despite restarting, the “new” Nextcloud does not show me these notes. In addition, new notes are created with the extension *.md (for MarkDown?).

So: How do I get these about 300 files “activated” without having to manually create a new note for all of them?
(My “customer” is 83 years old, so I won’t give him any instructions on “backup” and “documentation”. He is a nice neighbor and I just want to help him.)

Cheers,
Lelo

2

Have you ever tried to connect the old SSD to another Linux/DietPi system? That would be much better than trying to read data from an ext4 partition using Windows :slight_smile: If the data were accessible, you could try to transfer it to a new installation. You could also check which Debian + NextCloud version was in use.

3

After copying the files manually, you probably need to scan them:

4

@Joulinar: I don’t understand why it should be better to restore data from a Linux system than from a Windows system - the data itself is not changed. And the old, unknown configured system should not be restored either (explicit statement of the owner: “Only save my data and setup a fresh new system").

@StephanStS: Your tip provided exactly the quick solution I was looking for. Thanks for the hint. :+1:

My personal solution for this issue:

  • The Linux SSD was connected to a Windows PC via USB adapter.
  • The free application “Diskinternals Linux Reader” was used to find the old data in the Linux file system and back it up locally.
  • Using the free application “WinSCP”, the recovered data was copied to the new target system via SFTP protocol (beforehand, it was ensured that “OpenSSH Server” (and NOT “Dropbear”) was selected under “dietpi-software” and there under “SSH Server” - otherwise SFTP is not possible).
    • Then a new scan had to be triggered on the target system:
    • Change to the Nextcloud directory:
      ~ cd /var/www/nextcloud
    • Initiate the new Netcloud file scan:
      ~ sudo -u www-data php occ files:scan -all

The users new fresh system (a refurbished DELL Wyse 5070) is now up and runinng, the owner is happy to have his data rescued, and I have another IT-Job to do regularly (doing Backups).

Cheers,
Lelo

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