Loading exported application database fails

If you’ve been using the default H2 application database that ships with Metabase, and want to migrate from the default H2 application database to a production database like PostgreSQL or MySQL/MariaDB, you’ll need to use the load-from-h2 command, which will fail if the database filename is incorrect.

How to detect this: When running the load-from-h2 command, you’ll see an error that looks something like:

Command failed with exception: Unsupported database file version or invalid file header in file <YOUR FILENAME> 

How to fix this: First, make sure to create a copy of the exported H2 database (see Backing up Metabase Application Data).

Next, check that the exported, application database file (the H2 database you exported) is named metabase.db.mv.db. H2 automatically adds a .mv.db extension to the database path you specify, so make sure the path to the DB file you pass to the command does not include the .mv.db extension.

For example, if you’ve exported an application database, and you want to load the data from that H2 database into a PostgreSQL database using load-from-h2, your command will look something like:

export MB_DB_TYPE=postgres
export MB_DB_DBNAME=metabase
export MB_DB_PORT=5432
export MB_DB_USER=<username>
export MB_DB_PASS=<password>
export MB_DB_HOST=localhost
java -jar metabase.jar load-from-h2 /path/to/metabase.db # do not include .mv.db

If you’re using Metabase Enterprise Edition, you should check out the Serialization feature to snapshot your application database. Serialization is useful when you want to preload questions and dashboards in a new Metabase instance.