DB Portability Question

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I think I may have a big problem. Not knowing much about Beets or Docker/Containers but not wanting to set Beets up on my Windows machine I figured out how to get it up and running on my QNAP NAS and its Docker implementation. The NAS is where my music is stored.

In setting it up I had to define a few paths/locations. It seems as if my lack of knowledge has come back to bite me a bit.

I did not set it up so my Beets install could “see” my actual music root directories. Up to this point I’ve been copying in large groups of files to the Beets locations and processing them. I’m pretty happy with the results. I’ve then copied those results back out to my main music directory hierarchy. Note copied not moved…via standard means outside of Beets. So what I have is everything to date both in a place that Beets can see it and the Beets results copied out to my music location, which Beets can’t see.

The more I read the Beets documentation the more I feel I’m not going to be able to use functionality like move, copy and export.

I’m thinking it might be best to cut my losses now and make a fresh install of Beets such that it can see my actual music directories.

Sorry for the long winded problem. Now my question. Can I copy the DB form the “old” install to the “new” install and perform some sort of move/copy/export? The goal would be to use the several thousand tracks I’ve already processed.

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If you want to keep ‘raw’ imports alongside ‘processed’ beets folders, look into freezetag:

You’re asking if you can copy the beets.sqlite file to the new install location. My guess is yes. You may need to run beet update and remove any of the missing files.

I don’t think this will help you, but you can probably mess with the beets db using a sqlite editor. Make tons of backups of your DB and music first.

https://sqlitebrowser.org/

I’m thinking it might be best to cut my losses now and make a fresh install of Beets such that it can see my actual music directories.

Can’t emphasize enough how important it is to understand beets before diving in. Play around with a few dozen tracks, sure, but don’t go all in until you understand it and what your goals are. Starting ‘fresh’ can be a new nightmare if you aren’t clearly cutting over from old to new. I have 2 or 3 half-baked beets folders because I never made a clean switch.

tldr: backup, backup, backup.

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