Q about backing up workspace

General
4

We wouldn't print out a large message in the log advising you to do it if we didn't think it was important.

If you don't set your own credentialSecret in your settings file, then you are using a randomly generated key. If anything happens to lose that generated key, you won't be able to decrypt your credentials file ever again and you'll have to re-enter any credential properties through-out your flow.

By setting your own key, you know what it is and will be able to restore things should something go awry.

In terms of restoring a system with those files, the basic process would be:

  1. copy those files back in ~/.node-red on the new device
  2. run npm install in the ~/.node-red directory in order to reinstall all of the extra nodes you had (they are all listed in the package.json file, which is why you backed that up)
  3. run Node-RED.

You may find you need to hardcode the flow file name in your settings file to ensure it picks up the right file.

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