Upgrading to ArangoDB 3.0

Please read the following sections if you upgrade from a previous version to ArangoDB 3.0. Please be sure that you have checked the list of changes in 3.0 before upgrading.

Migrating databases and collections from ArangoDB 2.8 to 3.0

ArangoDB 3.0 does not provide an automatic update mechanism for database directories created with the 2.x branches of ArangoDB.

In order to migrate data from ArangoDB 2.8 (or an older 2.x version) into ArangoDB 3.0, it is necessary to export the data from 2.8 using arangodump, and then import the dump into a fresh ArangoDB 3.0 with arangorestore.

To do this, first run the 2.8 version of arangodump to export the database data into a directory. arangodump will dump the _system database by default. In order to make it dump multiple databases, it needs to be invoked once per source database, e.g.

# in 2.8
arangodump --server.database _system --output-directory dump-system
arangodump --server.database mydb --output-directory dump-mydb
...

That will produce a dump directory for each database that arangodump is called for. If the server has authentication turned on, it may be necessary to provide the required credentials when invoking arangodump, e.g.

arangodump --server.database _system --server.username myuser --server.password mypasswd --output-directory dump-system

The dumps produced by arangodump can now be imported into ArangoDB 3.0 using the 3.0 version of arangodump:

# in 3.0
arangorestore --server.database _system --input-directory dump-system
arangorestore --server.database mydb --input-directory dump-mydb
...

arangorestore will by default fail if the target database does not exist. It can be told to create it automatically using the option --create-database true:

arangorestore --server.database mydb --create-database true --input-directory dump-mydb

And again it may be required to provide access credentials when invoking arangorestore:

arangorestore --server.database mydb --create-database true --server.username myuser --server.password mypasswd --input-directory dump-system

Please note that the version of dump/restore should match the server version, i.e. it is required to dump the original data with the 2.8 version of arangodump and restore it with the 3.0 version of arangorestore.

After that the 3.0 instance of ArangoDB will contain the databases and collections that were present in the 2.8 instance.

Adjusting authentication info

Authentication information was stored per database in ArangoDB 2.8, meaning there could be different users and access credentials per database. In 3.0, the users are stored in a central location in the _system database. To use the same user setup as in 2.8, it may be required to create extra users and/or adjust their permissions.

In order to do that, please connect to the 3.0 instance with an ArangoShell (this will connect to the _system database by default):

arangosh --server.username myuser --server.password mypasswd

Use the following commands to create a new user with some password and grant them access to a specific database

require("@arangodb/users").save(username, password, true);
require("@arangodb/users").grantDatabase(username, databaseName, "rw");

For example, to create a user myuser with password mypasswd and give them access to databases mydb1 and mydb2, the commands would look as follows:

require("@arangodb/users").save("myuser", "mypasswd", true);
require("@arangodb/users").grantDatabase("myuser", "mydb1", "rw");
require("@arangodb/users").grantDatabase("myuser", "mydb2", "rw");

Existing users can also be updated, removed or listed using the following commands:

/* update user myuser with password mypasswd */
require("@arangodb/users").update("myuser", "mypasswd", true);

/* remove user myuser */
require("@arangodb/users").remove("myuser");

/* list all users */
require("@arangodb/users").all();

Foxx applications

The dump/restore procedure described above will not export and re-import Foxx applications. In order to move these from 2.8 to 3.0, Foxx applications should be exported as zip files via the 2.8 web interface.

The zip files can then be uploaded in the “Services” section in the ArangoDB 3.0 web interface. Applications may need to be adjusted manually to run in 3.0. Please consult the migration guide for Foxx apps.

An alternative way of moving Foxx apps into 3.0 is to copy the source directory of a 2.8 Foxx application manually into the 3.0 Foxx apps directory for the target database (which is normally /var/lib/arangodb3-apps/_db/<dbname>/ but the exact location is platform-specific).