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Migrating to Akkoma

Why should you migrate?

aside from actually responsive maintainer(s)? let's lookie here, we've got:

  • custom emoji reactions
  • misskey markdown (MFM) rendering and posting support
  • elasticsearch support (because pleroma search is GARBAGE)
  • latest develop pleroma-fe additions
  • local-only posting
  • automatic post translation
  • the mastodon frontend back in all its glory
  • probably more, this is like 3.5 years of IHBA additions finally compiled

Actually migrating

Let's say you're very cool and have decided to move to the cooler fork of Akkoma - luckily this isn't very hard.

You'll need to update the backend, then possibly the frontend, depending on your setup.

Backup diverging features

As time goes on Akkoma and Pleroma added or removed different features and reorganised the database in a different way. If you want to be able to migrate back to Pleroma without losing any affected data, you’ll want to make a backup before starting the migration.
If you're not interested in migrating back, skip this section (although it might be a good idea to temporarily keep a full DB backup just in case something unexpected happens during migration)

As of 2024-02 you will want to keep a backup of:

  • the entire chats and chat_message_references tables

The following columns are not deleted by a migration to Akkoma, but a migration back to Pleroma or future Akkoma upgrades might affect them, so perhaps back them up as well:

  • the birthday of users and their show_birthday setting
  • the expires_at key of in the user_relationships table (used by temporary mutes)

The way cached instance metadata is stored differs, but since those will be refetched and updated anyway, there’s no need for a backup.

Best check all newer migrations unique to Akkoma/Pleroma to get an up-to-date picture of what needs to be kept.

From Source

If you're running the source Akkoma install, you'll need to set the upstream git URL then just rebuild - that'll be:

git remote set-url origin https://akkoma.dev/AkkomaGang/akkoma.git/
git fetch origin
git pull -r
# or, if you're on an instance-specific branch, you may want
# to run "git merge stable" instead (or develop if you want)

And compile as usual.

From OTP

This will just be setting the update URL - find your flavour from the mapping on the install guide first.

export FLAVOUR=[the flavour you found above]

./bin/pleroma_ctl update --zip-url https://akkoma-updates.s3-website.fr-par.scw.cloud/stable/akkoma-$FLAVOUR.zip

When updating in the future, you can just use

./bin/pleroma_ctl update --branch stable

Database Migrations

WARNING - Migrating from Pleroma past 2022-08

If you are on Pleroma stable >= 2.5.0 or Pleroma develop, and have updated since 2022-08, you may have issues with database migrations.

Please first roll back the given migrations:

./bin/pleroma_ctl rollback --migrations-path priv/repo/optional_migrations/pleroma_develop_rollbacks -n5

MIX_ENV=prod mix ecto.rollback --migrations-path priv/repo/optional_migrations/pleroma_develop_rollbacks -n5

Applying Akkoma Database Migrations

Just run

./bin/pleroma_ctl migrate

MIX_ENV=prod mix ecto.migrate

Frontend changes

Akkoma comes with a few frontend changes as well as backend ones, your upgrade path here depends on your setup

I just run with the built-in frontend

You'll need to run a couple of commands,

./bin/pleroma_ctl frontend install pleroma-fe --ref stable
# and also, if desired
./bin/pleroma_ctl frontend install admin-fe --ref stable

mix pleroma.frontend install pleroma-fe --ref stable
mix pleroma.frontend install admin-fe --ref stable

I've run the mix task to install a frontend

Hooray, just run it again to update the frontend to the latest build. See above for that command.

I compile the JS from source

Your situation will likely be unique - you'll need the changes in the forked pleroma-fe repository, and either merge or cherry-pick from there depending on how you've got things.

Common issues

The frontend doesn't show after installing it

This may occur if you are using database configuration.

Sometimes the config in your database will cause akkoma to still report that there's no frontend, even when you've run the install.

To fix this, run:

./bin/pleroma_ctl config delete pleroma frontends

mix pleroma.config delete pleroma frontends

which will remove the config from the database. Things should work now.

Migrating back to Pleroma

Akkoma is a hard fork of Pleroma. As such, migrating back is not guaranteed to always work. But if you want to migrate back to Pleroma, you can always try. Just note that you may run into unexpected issues and you're basically on your own. The following are some tips that may help, but note that these are barely tested, so proceed at your own risk.

First you will need to roll back the database migrations. The latest migration both Akkoma and Pleroma still have in common should be 20210416051708, so roll back to that. If you run from source, that should be

MIX_ENV=prod mix ecto.rollback --to 20210416051708

Then switch back to Pleroma for updates (similar to how was done to migrate to Akkoma), and remove the front-ends. The front-ends are installed in the frontends folder in the static directory. Once you are back to Pleroma, you will need to run the database migrations again. See the Pleroma documentation for this. After this use your previous backups to restore data from diverging features.