PDS MOOver Info

Info

PDS MOOver is a set of tools to help you migrate to a new PDS. The creator or host of this tool will not be able to help you recover your account if something goes wrong. So be advised you and your PDS admin may be on your own besides helpful answers and understand the risk you take in doing an account movement.

Precautions

Migrations can be a potentially dangerous operation. It is recommended to follow these few steps to protect your account and identity.

• During migration make sure to do not leave the page
• It is recommended to use a desktop computer for this process due to the amount of time it can take.
• Your account is not actually fully moved over to the new PDS till you receive a code in your email and enter it on PDS MOOver, this is the final step.
• Your data will not be deleted from Bluesky(or your previous PDS) during migration. If you find you are missing any pictures or videos after the move you can use the Missing tool to recover those from your previous PDS.

At the end of your migration and before you move you will be asked if you'd like to sign up for PDS MOOver's backup service and to add a rotation key. Both of these are recommended and secure your account if your PDS ever goes down, allowing for account recovery.

Backups

PDS MOOver now supports backups. These are automated backups of your account saving your repo (posts,likes,etc), and your blobs(picture/videos) from your AT Proto account to a cloud base object store (S3). This is a free service for individual accounts and stores the backups on PDS MOOver's servers. These backups will happen every 24 hours from the time you sign up. We are expecting to lower this as we see how the service does. On login, you will be asked if you'd like to add a rotation key to your account. It is highly recommended to do this if you do not already have one. This is the only way you can recover your account in the event of a PDS failure or rogue account takeover

Just like your AT Proto data, your backedup data is also public. You can access your data much the same way you do on your PDS by calling these endpoints. Since these behave much the same as the PDS they are public.

• /xrpc/com.atproto.sync.getRepo?did={your did} to get a copy of your repo's CAR export
• /xrpc/com.atproto.sync.getBlob?did={your did}&cid={cid of the blob}

Restore

Backups without a restore option aren't very good backups. So to pair well with our new backup service PDS MOOver now also offers recovery of your account and restoring from a backup. To use this you must have your Private Rotation Key. You can add one to your account either after migration or during backups sign up. This recovery process follows much the same process as out line in Adversarial ATProto PDS Migration blog post by @retr0.id.

I'm here for Blacksky, Is there a video guide?

@sharpiepls.com has made an amazing video guide on how to use PDS MOOver to move your bluesky account to blacksky.app.

I can't log in?/Says my account is deactivated?

When you move to a non Bluesky PDS you have to do an extra step on login.

1. On the Sign in screen for bsky.app or on the app click the top input titled "Hosting provider" and has a globe icon and says Bluesky Social"
2. Click the tab labeled custom
3. In the input for server address you put the same URL you used for the new PDS URL with the https:// like so https://example.com
4. Click done and enter your new handle(or email) and password

My account says Invalid Handle?

It's a bit of a bug sometimes. I'm not sure what causes it, but usually mentioning your handle in a post or reply fixes it. Like @fullhandle.newpds.com, may or may not highlight it blue and autofill it but make sure you have the full handle and the @ like that. Can also check your handle with the Bluesky Debug Page. If you see green, and it says one of them pass you should be fine and just may take a while to update.

!!!!!HELP!!!!!

If you're having issues with PDS MOOver first of all, I'm very sorry. I have tested this to the best of my ability, but PDS migrations do come with risks. I would recommend getting with the owner of the PDS and seeing where the account stands with tools like pdsls.

The tool is designed to be able to be re ran IF you set the Advance Options flags.For example, lets say if it created the account, repo is there but some blobs are missing. You can uncheck everything but "Migrate Missing Blobs", "Migrate Prefs", and "Migrate PLC record" and it will pick up after the account repo migration. It is odd in the fact that all the fields are required. That's just to cut down on logic to hopefully cut down on bugs. If you don't ever see the "Please enter your PLC Token" and enter the token sent to your email, you can just forget about it and call it a day if it's too much. Your old account is still active and working.

Why doesn't PDS MOOver have xyz for migrations?

PDS MOOver was designed to pretty much be the goat account migration with a UI. Like in this post. Keeping it simple and hard fails if anything goes wrong to hopefully cover most use cases.

Alright account migrated, now what?

Welcome to your new PDS! You can login to your new PDS on Bluesky's login screen by selecting "Hosting provider" and entering your PDS url. I also recommend making sure you are signed up for our backups and have a recovery key that you control in case your PDS disappears overnight you can regain your account.

Why is it so SLOW?

Everything happens client side, and the blob uploads take a while. Nothing runs in parallel. Blob uploads happen one at a time; once one is done, the next goes. This is done just to keep it as simple as possible and to hopefully limit the chance of failures on uploads. My personal account takes about 20-30ish mins to move with 1,700ish blobs at 800mb on a 1gig internet connection.

Can I check out the code anywhere?

Yep! PDS MOOver is 100% open source and can find the code on tangled.sh. Also, if you're a developer, and you want to fork the code for a new UI. PDS MOOver's logic is all in one js file. Just take it and its dependencies and have at it.