These instructions are for v5.x and later. If you are following this guide for an earlier version please use sharelatex instead of overleaf in path names and SHARELATEX_ prefix instead of OVERLEAF_ for environment variables.
We'd love to hear from you! If you'd like to share with us how many files you migrated over, their overall volume, and how long the migration took email .
This guide will walk you through the migration from on-disk storage to an S3-compatible object storage. It refers to sections of the introduction document on the .
Requirements
A S3 compatible object storage to talk to, see for options
Free disk space for migrating existing data, about the current on disk size
A maintenance window for doing the actual migration
A full backup, including the config, to enable restoring from it
Estimate the disk size needed for the migration
We can use du for calculating the current disk usage:
docker exec sharelatex \
du --human-readable --max-depth=0 /var/lib/overleaf/data/user_files
docker exec sharelatex \
du --human-readable --max-depth=0 /var/lib/overleaf/data/template_files
In case you do not have sufficient disk space available on the current server, try attaching another disk to the server.
The history directories already have the correct layout. You can upload directly from the bind-mounted source folder, which does not require any additional disk space.
Migration steps
Step 0 shutdown the instance
We need to make sure that all user/template files will get migrated. It is best to shut down the instance to avoid missing newly uploaded files.
Please see our guide on performing a consistent a backup for the shutdown procedure.
Step 1 rewrite directory layout
We need to rewrite the directory layout of project files for uploading them to S3. The directory layout for local storage in filestore is <project-id>_<file-id> and the directory layout in S3 is <project-id>/<file-id>.
In the following, /srv/overleaf-s3-migration is used for storing the files in the new directory layout.
We can make use of tar for rewriting the layout:
mkdir -p /srv/overleaf-s3-migration/user_files \
/srv/overleaf-s3-migration/template_files
docker exec sharelatex \
tar --create --directory /var/lib/overleaf/data/user_files . \
| tar --extract --directory /srv/overleaf-s3-migration/user_files \
--transform=sx_x/x
docker exec sharelatex \
tar --create --directory /var/lib/overleaf/data/template_files . \
| tar --extract --directory /srv/overleaf-s3-migration/template_files \
--transform=sx_x/xg
Step 2 upload the files
Depending on your preference, you can use the minio mc S3 client or the aws cli for uploading the files to your S3 compatible object storage.
aws cli
Here you should replace overleaf-user-files, overleaf-template-files, overleaf-project-blobs and overleaf-chunks with the names of your S3 buckets.
Also replace /srv/overleaf-bind-mount with the local path of the /var/lib/overleaf bind-mount. By default, this is ~/overleaf_data in a docker-compose.yml deployment and <toolkit-checkout>/data/overleaf when using the Toolkit.
We are using the server alias "s3" here, you may have picked another name.
mc mirror /srv/overleaf-s3-migration/user_files s3/overleaf-user-files
mc mirror /srv/overleaf-s3-migration/template_files s3/overleaf-template-files
mc mirror /srv/overleaf-bind-mount/data/history/overleaf-project-blobs s3/overleaf-project-blobs
mc mirror /srv/overleaf-bind-mount/data/history/overleaf-chunks s3/overleaf-chunks
Step 3 start the instance pointing at S3
For Docker Compose deployments, you can also remove the bind-mount for the data directory from the volumes section.
You can now start the instance and validate the migration:
can preview binary files in the editor
can compile a PDF with images
can upload new files
Rolling back
You can roll back the migration gracefully in reversing the steps:
Shutdown the instance
Mirror back the files by flipping the sequence of source/destination
Write new files back into the local directory using an inverse transform
Restart the instance with the old configuration
# When using aws cli
aws s3 sync s3://overleaf-user-files /srv/overleaf-s3-migration/user_files
aws s3 sync s3://overleaf-template-files /srv/overleaf-s3-migration/template_files
aws s3 sync s3://overleaf-project-blobs /srv/overleaf-bind-mount/data/history/overleaf-project-blobs
aws s3 sync s3://overleaf-chunks /srv/overleaf-bind-mount/data/history/overleaf-chunks
# When using minio mc
mc mirror s3/overleaf-user-files /srv/overleaf-s3-migration/user_files
mc mirror s3/overleaf-template-files /srv/overleaf-s3-migration/template_files
mc mirror s3/overleaf-project-blobs /srv/overleaf-bind-mount/data/history/overleaf-project-blobs
mc mirror s3/overleaf-chunks /srv/overleaf-bind-mount/data/history/overleaf-chunks
# Write files into local Server CE/Server Pro
tar --create --directory /srv/overleaf-s3-migration/user_files . \
| docker exec --interactive sharelatex \
tar \
--extract \
--keep-old-files \
--directory /var/lib/overleaf/data/user_files \
--transform=sx./xx --transform=sx/x_x \
--wildcards '*/*/*'
tar --create --directory /srv/overleaf-s3-migration/template_files . \
| docker exec --interactive sharelatex \
tar \
--extract \
--keep-old-files \
--directory /var/lib/overleaf/data/template_files \
--transform=sx./xx --transform=sx/x_xg \
--wildcards '*/*/*/*/pdf-converted-cache/*' \
--wildcards '*/*/*/*/pdf' \
--wildcards '*/*/*/*/zip'
The first transform removes the top level folder. The 2nd transform changes the directory layout to a flat one. The wildcards ensure that only files are extracted, not their parent (project) folders.
Add all the S3 related variables to your config, as detailed in the section in the setup guide.
