How do I migrate Monetra from one server to another?

If the old server is online and accessible:
  1. Use the Monetra Installer to install the _latest_ version of Monetra and associated utilities on your new machine. The hardware type or OS type/version is irrelevant as we will be exporting the data in a platform-independent manner from the old production machine.
  2. Configure the new Monetra server.
    1. Generate a new database encryption key
      1. If using the Monetra Manager, it will prompt you to do this automatically.
      2. If you are not using the Monetra Manager, manually generate it using a command similar to
        /usr/local/monetra/bin/monetra_keygen
    2. If you have a modem (either for backup purposes or as your primary form of communication), configure it.
      1. If using the Monetra Manager, go to the modem section and select your modem from the list. You should query the modem to auto-populate the proper initialization string.
      2. If you are not using the Monetra Manager, edit /etc/monetra/main.conf and configure your modem. If you do not know where your modem resides, you may use the provided monetra_mdmquery command to locate it along with a proper initialization string.
  3. Configure your processing institution(s). For each processing institution you use, activate it and enable the connection priority for the different routes you want to use . In most instances, it should be pre-configured for you to use an internet gateway with dial-backup once you activate the processing institution. If you did not configure a modem in step 2, you should only need to remove dial from the active connection priority, otherwise you should be configured. You can use the Monetra Manger to do this or edit /etc/monetra/processors.conf directly.
  4. Configure any custom settings you desire (such as SMTP/email support or an external SQL database). No other configuration settings are required for production use though.
  5. Prevent any live transactions from going to your production Monetra server as anything sent past this point in time will not be migrated. It is also recommended, but not required that you settle any pending transactions at this point.
  6. Use the Monetra Administrator and log into your production server. Select the Import/Export option and specify a filename to generate which will contain all of Monetra's stored transaction history and merchant account information. The path provided is local to the Monetra server, regardless of if the Monetra Administrator is running on a separate machine. If you are on a Unix system, this path should be writable by the 'monetra' user account, so a filename like /tmp/monetra.exp is recommended. It is also recommended that you choose to encrypt the exported contents. Ensure you store the encryption key return in the response.
  7. Copy the exported datafile to your new server. If you are on a Unix machine, ensure it is readable by the 'monetra' user.
  8. Log into the new Monetra server using the Monetra Administrator, it will still have the default password of 'password'. Change to a new password when prompted. Go to the import/export screen and select the export file copied from the old server, if you encrypted the export copy the encryption key into the box provided, then click the Import button.
  9. Perform some basic sanity checks to ensure your data appears to exist (pull settled reports, etc).
  10. Point your live transactions to your new production server.
If the old server is offline, but Monetra's data files are still accessible:
  1. Ensure your new machine is running the same OS/version as the previous production server. Patch-levels though for the most part shouldn't matter.
  2. Determine the version of Monetra which was being run and the installation path which was used to perform the installation. To determine the version, you can evaluate the first line of your monetra.log.
  3. Use the Monetra Installer to install the exact same version of Monetra and the associated utilities to the _same_ installation path as the previous server.
  4. Copy the Monetra configuration files (main.conf, modules.conf, prefs.conf, processors.conf) from the old server to the new server. On Windows, the default path for these is typically C:\Program Files\Main Street Softworks\Monetra\etc … And on Unix, they are in /etc/monetra … If you are on a Unix system, ensure the files are owned by 'monetra' after copying.
  5. Copy the database encryption key, normally named my_monetra.key from your old server to the same path on your new server. On Windows, this is typically in C:\Program Files\Main Street Softworks\Monetra … and on Unix, it is typically in /usr/local/monetra … If you are on a Unix system, make sure it is owned by 'monetra' and only readable by the 'monetra' user account.
  6. Copy the database itself from your old machine to the new machine. If you are using our native database, copy the entire contents of the 'data' folder (C:\Program Files\Main Street Softworks\Monetra\data on Windows or /usr/local/monetra/data on Unix) to the same path on the new server. If on Unix, ensure all the files are readable and writable by the 'monetra' user. If you are using an external SQL database, migration of that data is up to you.
  7. Start Monetra, if there are any errors, evaluate the monetra.log to determine what they are.
  8. Use the Monetra Installer to upgrade to the latest version of Monetra. This is going to be necessary to receive support.
  9. Log in and take a look at some reports to ensure your data exists and is valid.