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P4 Server Administration Documentation | 2025.2

# Move between different byte orders that use the same text format

If the internal data representation (big-endian vs. little-endian) convention differs between the two machines (for example, Linux-on-x86/SPARC), but their operating systems use the same CR/LF text file conventions, you can still simply move the server root directory tree to the new machine.

Although the versioned files are portable across architectures, the database, as stored in the `db.*` files, is not. To transfer the database, you will need to create a checkpoint of your P4 Server on the old machine and use that checkpoint to re-create the database on the new machine. The checkpoint is a text file that can be read by a P4 Server on any architecture. For more details, see Create a checkpoint.

After you create the checkpoint, you can use `tar`, `cp`, `xcopy.exe`, or any other method to copy the checkpoint file and the depot directories to the new machine. (You don’t need to copy the `db.*` files, because they will be re-created from the checkpoint you took.)

1. On the old machine, use `p4 verify` to ensure that the database is in a consistent state.
2. On the old machine, stop `p4d`.

3. On the old machine, create a checkpoint:

       p4d -jc checkpointfile

4. Copy the contents of your old server root (`P4ROOT`) and all its subdirectories on the old machine into the new server root directory on the new machine.

   (To be precise, you don’t need to copy the `db.*` files, just the checkpoint and the depot subdirectories. The `db.*` files will be re-created from the checkpoint. If it’s more convenient to copy everything, then copy everything.)

5. On the new machine, if you copied the `db.*` files, be sure to remove them from the new `P4ROOT` before continuing.

6. Re-create a new set of `db.*` files suitable for your new machine’s architecture from the checkpoint you created:

       p4d -jr checkpointfile

7. Start `p4d` on the new machine with the desired flags.
8. Run `p4 verify` on the new machine to ensure that the database and your versioned files were transferred correctly to the new machine.

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