Moving qB from Windows to Docker?

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Shadowhwk
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Moving qB from Windows to Docker?

Post by Shadowhwk »

I've been using qB on Windows for quite some time but now want to move it to a new system using a Docker container. I'm using unRAID and there are 2 Docker containers I’ve found that both seem to support qB with or without VPN. I’m OK with configuring the Docker to use my VPN but not sure of the best method to move when changing OS.

My main xquestion is how do I transfer my history/ratio/active/seeding torrents from my Win10 install to the Docker container? I did some web searches and looked through the Wiki but didn't find much. I suspect some of it will come when I migrate files from their Windows locations to their unRAID/Linux locations as per the FAQ:

Windows:

preferences:
%APPDATA%\qBittorrent = C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\qBittorrent
.torrent files, logs, etc:
%LOCALAPPDATA%\qBittorrent = C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\qBittorrent

GNU/Linux:

preferences:
~/.config/qBittorrent/
.torrent files, logs, etc (This is the standard XDG data folder):
~/.local/share/data/qBittorrent/

There will obviously be new paths to the incoming temp folder and the folder/drive(s) with completed/seeding torrents. There must be somewhere that I could edit the file locations to point to the new path(s) I mount in the Docker container. Moving the preferences/torrents/completed content is simple enough, but re-adding the torrents from the indexer(s) and specifying the new download location would be tedious.

Is there a way to batch edit the download location and change it from the old Windows path to the new mountpoint(s) in the Docker container? Or perhaps create some sort of alias or symbolic link so that paths like say 'E:\Complete' would be mapped to their replacement(s) in the Docker/unRAID environment?

It would be great if I could change the download location for all files in a particular drive/folder at once, but if I have to do it individually for each file, that's going to be just as tedious as re-adding the .torrent files from the indexer(s).

Any suggestions appreciated. Thanks!
Shadowhwk
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Re: Moving qB from Windows to Docker?

Post by Shadowhwk »

Still looking for any advice on this. I did think of one plan that might work for relocating about 200 completed torrents (about 7.5TB) that are still seeding. Those 200-ish completed torrents are on a network mapped drive from the Win10 box that's running qB. So that will leave me with 3 options:

1. Set the location for all of these files to the new network share and let qB move them itself. This is a painfully slow process and often kills any disk I/O needed to continue downloading and seeding torrents. The slowest of the options and would rely on qB running on the Win10 box to do all the moves. The new network share has already been my primary completed/seeding location for a few months so it's already a known location to qB.

2. Pause seeding of these files temporarily. While paused, copy the 7.5TB to a new folder on the new storage. Once copied, I disconnect the Win10 drive mapping (N: in my case) and recreate it but pointed to the new folder on my new storage array. Resume the paused files and leave them in this secondary folder for further seeding until they reach their ratio limit. Once everything has finished seeding, I can delete the secondary location. And new downloads/seeding will continue to use my new storage which is mapped as U:.

3. Pause seeding of these files temporarily. While paused, copy the 7.5TB to a temporary folder on the new storage. The temp folder should be on the same array as my current download/seeding location, i.e. as used by qB on Win10. Once copied, I disconnect the Win10 drive mapping (N: in my case) and recreate it but pointed to the temporary folder on my new storage array. Then in qB use 'Set Location' for the files to the new network share where the Docker container will be pointed (U: in my case). As both the temp folder and my current download/seeding folder are on the same storage array, the moves should be very quick, i.e. not moving the actual data but just re-pointing the directory entries for all of the files.

Option 3 is my preference as it allows me to consolidate multiple storage locations from within qB to the current download/seeding location that I continue to use. Variations on this can also be done for each of the USB attached drives that are also used by qB for more completed/seeding files. Instead of each drive letter being assigned by Win10 when mounting the USB drive, I'll use more temporary folders and map the drive to the same letter that Win10 used when connected via USB.

If I do this for all of my USB drives and mapped network drives, I can consolidate the completed/seeding into one folder. That should make moving from Win10 to the Docker container fairly simple as I will only have to change one path - from U: on Win10 to /Complete in the Docker container.

Thoughts? It's still a tedious process, but less work than copying all the files to my new storage and then manually re-adding the torrents from my indexers.
harryb382003
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Re: Moving qB from Windows to Docker?

Post by harryb382003 »

Were you ever able to find any joy on this?
Shadowhwk
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Re: Moving qB from Windows to Docker?

Post by Shadowhwk »

I did get it migrated but lost a few minor things. Nothing too serious, and it's been running fine since then, albeit using much newer versions of qBt now.
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