Comic Site Migration to SQLite

Postgres was the database for my comic site but I chose to migrate to sqlite because it would:

• be easier to back up
• use less resources on my server
• be one less service to manage

I also don't get a lot of traffic so it wouldn't have an impact.

The process followed this general pattern:

1. Change the code to use sqlite instead of postgres. I'd maintain the same paths to the static resources so that I wouldn't have to move these (I stored static resources on the host).

2. Change the docker-compose yml file to:

   • Use a different local port for the sqlite instance
   • Use a different project name

3. Create a json dump from the production server using: python manage.py dumpdata --natural-foreign --natural-primary > /var/backups/comic_server/natural_dump.json

4. Change ansible to deploy the project to a different folder and run it.

5. Perform a migration and load the data with:

   python manage.py migrate
   python manage.py loaddata /var/backups/comic_server/natural_dump.json
   

6. Verify the new instance works.

7. Change nginx configuration to point to the new instance.

8. Turn down the old instance with docker-compose down. I'll clear out the volumes once I'm sure everything is ok.

Note: python commands run in the docker-compose container by first running: docker compose exec comic_server /bin/bash