CREATE DATABASE friendicadb;
CREATE USER 'friendica'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '<password>';
GRANT ALL ON friendicadb.* TO 'friendica'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

The creation of th DB apparently worked as expected.

Preparing to move the DB

Changing the #storage backend to reduce DB size.

Admin panel:

Helpers-page information

Moving storage via SSH

¿correct?:

mkdir /var/www/html/storage
./bin/console config storage.name = Filesystem
./bin/console config storage.filesystem_path = storage
./bin/console storage move

rootname@VPShosting:/var/www# mv html html_01.bak
rootname@VPShosting:/var/www# git clone https://github.com/friendica/friendica.git -b stable html

rootname@VPShosting:/var/www# mv html html_01.bak
rootname@VPShosting:/var/www# git clone https://github.com/friendica/friendica.git -b stable html

…ᘛ⁐̤ᕐᐷ jesuisatire bitPickup

2023-11-08 17:16:40

Partical re-installation/redo of the following steps

It looks like somehow because of this unfinished step the installation went wrong and when browsing to the friendica installation a blank page was displayed.
After redoing the steps of installation from the github pull of friendica the web page displayed Service unavailable.
Their for I'm going to redo the steps from the certbot installation to the gitpull

¡Update - solved!

The tutorial by @Hank G ☑️ states that:

Tutorial wrote:

With the default Apache installation the /var/www/ directory is owned by root. We will want to instead make this whole directory and sub-directory to be owned by the Apache process’s user www-data.

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www

We will now want to execute the rest of the commands as that user so we execute the sudo command on the bash shell to make all subsequent command execute as the www-data user in the root of the /var/www directory.
Next we are going to use the fact that the default Apache site that is already configured is looking for the /var/www/html directory. We will move the original default site to a backup location.

I missed that important detail and didn't changed to the user www-data so the new git pulls didn't work as expected.

Switching to user www-data and than performing the steps of git pull and adjustments to the friendica installation apparently everything worked out:

rootname@VPShosting:/var/www# cd /var/www
rootname@VPShosting:/var/www# -u www-data bash

www-data@VPShosting:~$ ls -l

git clone https://github.com/friendica/friendica.git -b stable html/code]
www-data@VPShosting:~$ [code]cd html

rootname@VPShosting:/var/www#

Browsing now to the web page the friendica installation verification screen is visible.

Eventually the old local.config.php file has to be adapted to the new server.

At this point all changes to be able to switch from the old to the new server should be done.

• DB merged
• file storage merged
• local.config.php merged

To set old server into maintenance mode enter via SSH and browse to your friendica installation:
rootname@oldserver:/friendicarootdir/~# bin/console maintenance 1

Check that the server is set to maintenance by browsing to your domain on the web:

Go to your name server provider and change the IP to the new server.

certbot wrote:

Please enter the domain name(s) you would like on your certificate (comma and/or
space separated) (Enter 'c' to cancel):

If you want to check the installed certs on your server you can do this by typing:
rootname@ubuntu:~#certbot

If everything went well now your new server should be up and running.

spoilerAlert: I get a blank page.

…ᘛ⁐̤ᕐᐷ jesuisatire bitPickup

2023-10-17 15:00:13

Install Certbot and Setting up HTTPS:

sudo snap install core; sudo snap refresh core
sudo snap install --classic certbot

sudo ln -s /snap/bin/certbot /usr/bin/certbot

sudo certbot --apache

Last step:
Updating the local.config.php file and uploading it to the new server.
This will activate the new VPS server of your friendica node!

Allocate local.config.php in the PuTTy privkey.pem folder: /home/user/.VPShosting

user@localPC:~/.VPShosting$ nano local.config.php

Adapt local.config.php for the new VPS server setting:

<?php
// Local configuration
// If you're unsure about what any of the config keys below do, please check the static/defaults.config.php for detailed
// documentation of their data type and behavior.
return [
	'database' => [
		[s]'hostname' => 'subdomain.oldhosting.com:3306',[/s]
		'hostname' => 'yourfriendicadomain.com', <-- THIS WAS WRONG!!
		'hostname' => 'localhost',
		'username' => 'friendicadb',
		'password' => '[b]changedPassword[/b]',
		'database' => 'friendicadb',
		'charset' => 'utf8mb4',
	],
	// ****************************************************************
	// The configuration below will be overruled by the admin panel.
	// Changes made below will only have an effect if the database does
	// not contain any configuration for the friendica system.
	// ****************************************************************
	'config' => [
		'php_path' => '/usr/bin/php',
		'admin_email' => 'youradmin@email.com',
		'sitename' => 'Friendica Social Network',
		'register_policy' => \Friendica\Module\Register::CLOSED,(or OPEN)
		'max_import_size' => 200000,
	],
	'system' => [
		'url' => 'https://yourfriendicadomain.com',
		[s]'basepath' => '/apps/friendica',[/s]
		'basepath' => '/var/www/html',
		'default_timezone' => 'AnyTime/AnyWhere',
		'language' => 'en',
	],
];

Uploading with PuTTy private .pem key:
user@localPC:~/.VPShosting$ scp -i privkey.pem local.config.php USER@SERVER:/var/www/html/config/local.config.php

first move the phpmailer.config.php file to the friendica config folder:
rootname@VPShosting:~# mv /var/www/html/addon/phpmailer/config/phpmailer.config.php /var/www/html/config/phpmailer.config.php

edit the phpmailer configuration file already located in the friendica config folder:
rootname@VPShosting:~# nano /var/www/html/config/phpmailer/config/phpmailer.config.php

<?php
// Warning: Don't change this file! It only holds the default config values for this addon.
// Instead overwrite these config values in config/addon.config.php in your Friendica directory
return [
	'phpmailer' => [
		// smtp (Boolean)
		// Enables SMTP relaying for outbound emails
		'smtp' => false,
		// smtp_server (String)
		// SMTP server host name
		'smtp_server' => 'smtp.example.com',
		// smtp_port (Integer)
		// SMTP server port number
		'smtp_port' => 25,
		// smtp_secure (String)
		// What kind of encryption to use on the SMTP connection.
		// Options: '', 'ssl' or 'tls'.
		'smtp_secure' => '',
		// smtp_port_s (Integer)
		// Secure SMTP server port number
		'smtp_port_s' => 465,
		// smtp_username (String)
		// SMTP server authentication user name
		// Empty string disables authentication
		'smtp_username' => '',
		// smtp_password (String)
		// SMTP server authentication password
		// Empty string disables authentication
		'smtp_password' => '',
		// smtp_from (String)
		// From address used when using the SMTP server
		// Example: no-reply@example.com
		'smtp_from' => '',
	],
];

<?php
// Warning: Don't change this file! It only holds the default config values for this addon.
// Instead, copy this file to config/phpmailer.config.php in your Friendica directory and set the correct values there
return [
	'phpmailer' => [
		// smtp (Boolean)
		// Enables SMTP relaying for outbound emails
		'smtp' => true,
		// smtp_server (String)
		// SMTP server host name
		'smtp_server' => 'mail.ProviderDomain.com',
		// smtp_port (Integer)
		// SMTP server port number
		'smtp_port' => 587,
		// smtp_secure (String)
		// What kind of encryption to use on the SMTP connection.
		// Options: '', 'ssl' or 'tls'.
		'smtp_secure' => 'tls',
		// smtp_port_s (Integer)
		// Secure SMTP server port number
		'smtp_port_s' => 465,
		// smtp_username (String)
		// SMTP server authentication user name
		// Empty string disables authentication
		'smtp_username' => 'admin@yourFriendicaDomain.com',
		// smtp_password (String)
		// SMTP server authentication password
		// Empty string disables authentication
		'smtp_password' => 'CHANGED-EmailPassword',
		// smtp_from (String)
		// From address used when using the SMTP server
		// Example: no-reply@example.com
		'smtp_from' => 'admin@yourFriendicaDomain.com',
	],
];

creat a copy of the MySQL DB
rootname@VPShosting:~# mysqldump -u username -p database_to_backup > backup_name.sql

install automysqlbackup
rootname@VPShosting:~# sudo apt-get install automysqlbackup
rootname@VPShosting:~# sudo automysqlbackup

listing automysqlbackup folders
rootname@VPShosting:~# cd /var/lib/automysqlbackup
rootname@VPShosting:~# /var/lib/automysqlbackup# ls
daily monthly weekly

listing daily backed up files:
rootname@VPShosting:~# ls -R /var/lib/automysqlbackup/daily

to have a look at automysqlbackup, as is there is no tweaking neccesary:
rootname@VPShosting:~# nano /etc/default/automysqlbackup

Result of checking changes applied after getting blank page in the first installation attempt:

There was an error message in the apache status message, there for the following files were edited to change the server name from ubuntu to yourdomain.com.

127.0.1.1 yourdomain.com yourdomain
127.0.0.1 localhost

#ServerName www.example.com
ServerName yourdomain.com

#ServerName www.example.com
ServerName yourdomain.com

Access over sFTP:

me in a previous post wrote:

https://squeet.me/display/962c3e10-2165-2dbe-eb37-5f6322325636
"My access is over SSH with puTTy[/url] created public/private keys, no password.
Can I create sFTP access with for example filezilla and if so how?"

Raroun wrote:

sFTP should work out of the box with any Application that supports private key authorization - like scp or FileZilla.

I never managed to make fileZilla work with the puTTy keys.
:(

¡Houston!
@Hank G ☑️ @Friendica Support

I completed all the steps of the tutorial and added what I supposed was necessary to move an existing friendica server to a new VPS but when I browse to the domain I get a blank page. The file /VERSION is displayed correctly.
To check if the basic installation as described in the the tutorial would be working I renamed and moved all specific details of the merging intend like local.config.php and the storage folder but I still get a blank page instead of the friendica communications server setup page.

The only error I can find is the following, any ideas or hints how to solve this?

Apache could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1