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folkzone:history:migration

Migration: nitro to casa

On 2026-10-13 the entire folk.zone stack moved from nitro (AMD FX-4130 desktop, 192.168.1.67) to casa (ThinkPad X270, 192.168.1.85). Nitro is now a workstation; the dormant hiatus services' data remains stored there.

Approach

  • No destructive step on nitro until casa was proven. The nitro stack stayed stopped-but-intact afterward as the rollback path.
  • Backups verified on three machines (nitro, casa, and a third machine) before any service was touched.
  • The router was the cutover switch: WAN :80/:443 port-forward rules moved from 192.168.1.67 to 192.168.1.85. DNS never changed because *.folk.zone already pointed at the public IP.

What Moved

  • The single server/docker-compose.yml stack: every service plus the shared Caddy reverse proxy
  • Named volumes rsynced across: app data, databases, the DokuWiki pages dir (this wiki is bind-mounted, so it went live on sync)
  • .env secrets copied by hand
  • The wiki, homepage source, and scripts under ~/homelab/

What Did Not

  • The dormant hiatus services (Mastodon, Lemmy, Forgejo, Pixelfed, BookWyrm): their configs and data stayed in server/dormant/ on nitro
  • cafe's own stack (fanfiction.lol), which is a separate machine
  • A duplicate folkzone stack left running on cafe from before the migration: leftovers, worth stopping

Lessons

  • A single compose file plus named volumes meant the entire stack could be moved with one rsync.
  • The Caddyfile inode bug bit during the move: an rsync-replaced file means caddy reload sees no diff. Restart the container. See Caddy Autosave Not Loading Config.
  • Using a laptop as a server worked: lower power draw, a built-in UPS in the battery, and no fan noise. See vivobook for the same approach applied deliberately.

See Also

folkzone/history/migration.txt · Last modified: by 127.0.0.1