Migrating Perforce data requires two steps: backup procedures and recovery procedures. Backup procedures must be performed on the source server and recovery procedures must be performed on the target server by Assembla operations team.
Backup Procedures
To migrate your Perforce data into Assembla, you must first back up your data:
Verify the integrity of your server
p4 verify //…It’s possible that you may want to use the -q (quiet) option with p4 verify. Using the -q option will ensure that you will product output only when errors are detected.
Running p4 verify before a backup ensures the state of the archives and allows you to spot any corruption before the backups.
Note: For large installations, p4 verify may take awhile to run. Additionally, other Perforce commands may experience impacted performance while p4 verify is running.
2. Make a checkpoint by invoking p4d with the -jc (journal create) flag, or by using the p4 admin command:
Use either p4d -jc or p4 admin checkpoint
If your site is very large, this step may take awhile
3. Before you back up any files, check that the checkpoint has been created successfully
Confirm that the checkpoint was correctly written to the disk by comparing the MD5 checksum of the checkpoint with the .md5 file created by p4d -jc
The checksum in the .md5 file corresponds to the checksum of the file as it existed before any compression was applied, and assumes UNIX-style line endings even if the service is hosted on Windows. (If your checkpoint file was created with the-z compression option, you may need to decompress it and account for line ending differences.)
4. Once you’ve confirmed that the checkpoint creation was successful, back up the checkpoint file, its .md5 file, the old journal file, and your versioned files
You never need to back up the db.* files. Your latest checkpoint and journal contain all the information necessary to re-create them. More significantly, a database restored from db.* files is not guaranteed to be in a state of transactional integrity. A database restored from a checkpoint is.
If you have used the p4 serverid command to identify your server with a server.id file, the server.id file (which exists in the server's root directory) must be backed up.
Recovery Procedures
Assembla operations team completes the recovery procedure and based on the effort involved you need to pay a service fee. To initiate the recovery procedure, please contact support team at support@assembla.com.
Need help? Contact us at support@assembla.com.