PaaS to Local Migration

Use this workflow when the real issue lives in Liferay Cloud (LCP) and a clean local setup is not enough.

ldev provides the LCP-specific data-transfer commands. For self-hosted production, see Reproduce a Production Issue Locally.

The end-to-end flow:

1. download the database backup from LCP
2. import it locally
3. optionally pull the Document Library
4. start local
5. triage and fix there first

1. Download the database from LCP

ldev db download --environment prd --project my-lcp-project

ldev db download uses the LCP CLI (lcp) under the hood and stores the backup under docker/backups. You need the LCP CLI installed and authenticated, and LCP_PROJECT / LCP_ENVIRONMENT set (typically in docker/.env).

2. Import it into local PostgreSQL

ldev db import --force

--force replaces the current local PostgreSQL data. db import does not require LCP — you can also import any local .sql, .gz, or .dump file:

ldev db import --file /path/to/backup.sql.gz --force

3. (Optionally) download the Document Library from LCP

ldev db files-download \
  --environment prd \
  --project my-lcp-project \
  --doclib-dest docker/doclib/production

If your files are not in LCP, move them manually and mount them yourself:

ldev db files-mount --path /path/to/manual/doclib

4. Start and inspect

ldev start
ldev doctor
ldev portal check

If the imported dataset is too large for practical local work, inspect the site inventory first so you can decide what to prune:

ldev portal inventory sites --site /actualitat --with-structures --limit 20

This scoped inventory is the exact view to use before pruning. For the full command reference, see Data and Deploy Commands.

Once you know which folders are oversized, run a dry-run prune:

ldev portal content prune --group-id 2710030 --root-folder 15588732 --keep 100 --dry-run

Apply only after checking the dry-run summary. If this becomes a repeated step in your local incident workflow, see Shrink Local Content.

5. Triage and fix locally

ldev logs diagnose --since 15m --json
ldev portal inventory page --url /home --json
ldev osgi diag com.acme.foo.web
ldev deploy module foo-web

6. Verify before any production action

ldev portal check
ldev logs diagnose --since 5m --json

The safety benefit of ldev here is concrete: a cloud incident becomes a local, testable workflow.