[Feature Request]: Ability to export and import NodeDB or single nodes to a device.

[jkrauska]

Platform

Cross-Platform

Description

somewhat related to #8226

When replacing node hardware it would be nice to be able to Export a NodeDB from old node and Import it back in to a new node.

With the ability to edit the NodeDB, this lets you maintain favorites and pre-populate public keys for nodes you communicate with, etc.

It also provides an input for testing of NodeDB scaling and fuzzing. (mocking the equivalent of hearing nodeInfo packets)

[jkrauska]

Wrote a PR to export in python cli.
meshtastic/python#836

not a firmware issue, as android app can do all this.

[HarukiToreda]

how would this work though? even if you transfer the contacts over to another node, they won't recognize the private keys generated on the original which means you might not be able to message any of them due to mismatch keys. I could be wrong, but that was the explanation give to me a while back when this was mentioned.

[jkrauska]

how would this work though? even if you transfer the contacts over to another node, they won't recognize the private keys generated on the original which means you might not be able to message any of them due to mismatch keys. I could be wrong, but that was the explanation give to me a while back when this was mentioned.

there's another use case of just establishing a list of favorite nodes a lot faster than needing to listen to them (for replay logic)

in terms of private messges:

my understanding of public key encryption is that having the destination public keys would let you /send/ a message from yourself that only the recipient could decode. they wouldn't be able to /reply/ to you until they had seen your key, but that could be manually sent, etc.

the main goal is to pre-populate the nodeDB vs needing to wait hours to be mesh "aware".

[jkrauska]

closing this request though as it's perfectly possible to dump a nodeDB via the mestastic python cli. and there's a way to import nodes, so this isn't necessary at a FIRMWARE issue.