Moving Rocket.Chat data to different hard drive

Community Support
1

Description

I have Rocket.Chat running on Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS through Snap. I would like to move the data (but not the entire snap) to another hard drive. So far this is what I have tried:

Backup Rocket.Chat

sudo service snap.rocketchat-server.rocketchat-server stop
sudo snap run rocketchat-server.backupdb
sudo service snap.rocketchat-server.rocketchat-server start

Allow removable media

sudo snap connect rocketchat-server:removable-media

Stop Rocket.Chat and mongodb

sudo service snap.rocketchat-server.rocketchat-server stop
sudo service snap.rocketchat-server.rocketchat-mongo stop

Create directory on external drive to hold Rocket.Chat data

sudo mkdir /mnt/mountpoint/rocketchat-server-data

Move common directory from Snap directory to the external drive

sudo mv /var/snap/rocketchat-server/common /mnt/mountpoint/rocketchat-server-data/common

Replace Snap common directory with sym link to it’s new location on the external drive

sudo ln -s /mnt/mountpoint/rocketchat-server-data/common /var/snap/rocketchat-server/common

Start mongodb and Rocket.Chat

sudo service snap.rocketchat-server.rocketchat-mongo start
sudo service snap.rocketchat-server.rocketchat-server start

However, upon starting everything, RocketChat is unable to connect to mongodb:

May 07 15:28:16 hostname rocketchat-server.rocketchat-server[4281]: Was unable to connect to Mongo.  Please make sure Mongo has started successfully: sudo systemctl status snap.rocketchat-server.rocketchat-mongo to view logs: sudo journalctl -u snap.rocketchat-server.rocketchat-mongo
May 07 15:28:16 hostname systemd[1]: snap.rocketchat-server.rocketchat-server.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
May 07 15:28:16 hostname systemd[1]: snap.rocketchat-server.rocketchat-server.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
May 07 15:28:17 hostname systemd[1]: snap.rocketchat-server.rocketchat-server.service: Service hold-off time over, scheduling restart.
May 07 15:28:17 hostname systemd[1]: snap.rocketchat-server.rocketchat-server.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 7.
May 07 15:28:17 hostname systemd[1]: Stopped Service for snap application rocketchat-server.rocketchat-server.
May 07 15:28:17 hostname systemd[1]: Started Service for snap application rocketchat-server.rocketchat-server.
May 07 15:28:17 hostname rocketchat-server.rocketchat-server[4518]: Mongo is not available, can't start. Waiting 10 seconds and trying again

In response, I attempted changing permissions of the common directory (only temporarily) with:

sudo chmod -R 777 /mnt/mountpoint/rocketchat-server-data/common

I then restarted everything but received the same error message. Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks!

Server Setup Information

  • Version of Rocket.Chat Server:
  • Operating System: Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS
  • Deployment Method:
  • Number of Running Instances: 1
  • DB Replicaset Oplog:
  • NodeJS Version:
  • MongoDB Version:
  • Proxy:
  • Firewalls involved:
2

Through lots of testing and some research I have learned that snap does not allow access outside snap directory via sym links. Does anyone have any ideas on how to either allow access outside of the snap directory or move the snap directory? I’ve tried a few things with Apparmor but with no success.