Transitioning to Grist Builder Edition#

Grist Builder Edition supersedes the AWS Marketplace offer based on Omnibus.

Transitioning Grist documents#

It is possible to copy your Grist documents to Builder Edition.

  1. Take note of the EMAIL variable under ~/grist/gristParameters.
  2. Start a Grist Builder Edition instance.
  3. Follow the instructions to run the bootstrap script, using the value of EMAIL for the DEFAULT_EMAIL value. See here for more details pertaining to this variable.

You do not need to run docker compose up, but it can be helpful to verify your configuration before proceeding.

By default this should create an empty directory at /home/grist/persist/grist in the Grist Builder Edition EC2 instance. The following files from the Omnibus offer should be copied over into this directory:

  • ~/grist-persist/home.sqlite3
  • The entire ~/grist-persist/docs directory

Also see “What files does Grist store?” for an explanation of what these files are.

There are a couple of standard methods to copy files across EC2 instances.

EBS Volume#

You may use a multi-attach EBS volume. With this method, you mount the volume to both machine images and use it to store or copy the files across instances. Ideally, you may mount the EBS volume at /home/grist/persist/grist in the target EC2 instance.

scp#

The traditional method to copy files across instances is scp, a file transfer mechanism over the SSH protocol. A small complication is that the user to copy to, grist in the target EC2 instance, by default does not have an SSH login enabled. We recommend copying into the default ubuntu user, log in to the Grist Builder Edition EC2 instance, and then moving the files over from the ubuntu user into the grist user at the persist location. Make sure file ownership is transferred too, using the chown command.

Transitioning Grist users#

New users may need to be created in Grist Builder Edition corresponding to the user in the Omnibus offer. Grist identifies users by their email address.

For users that logged in via Google, Microsoft, or any other OpenID Connect provider, setting up the corresponding OIDC provider in the target EC2 instance is enough. This can be enabled in the environment file /home/grist/.env in the Grist Builder Edition EC2 instance.

For users that logged in via Dex’s built-in email/password combination, their login credentials can be transferred to Authelia in Grist Builder Edition. Consult the file /home/grist/persist/users_database.yml in the Grist Builder Edition EC2 instance for details.