“Re-seed from an old batch”

Symptom

You have content uploaded a while back. The original postage batch is approaching expiration — once it expires, storer nodes will start to garbage-collect the chunks. You want to extend the content’s life with a fresh batch.

Diagnose

First, confirm the content is still retrievable now — re-seeding requires the source chunks to be fetchable:

bee-check <ref> --bee https://my-bee.example --per-chunk

If status is retrievable (or partial with most chunks found), proceed. If everything is missing, re-seeding won’t help — you’d be re-uploading nothing.

Then buy a fresh batch (out of scope for bee-check):

# example via swarm-cli; adjust to your setup
swarm-cli stamp buy --depth 22 --amount 10000000 --label "renewal"

Note the new batch ID.

Fix

bee-check <ref> --reseed --stamp <new-batch-id> --bee https://my-bee.example

bee-check will:

1. Re-probe the reference (so you have a before-snapshot of which chunks needed fetching).
2. Pre-flight the new batch — refuses to proceed if it isn’t usable or has too little TTL.
3. Fire PUT /stewardship/{ref} — Bee re-fetches each chunk (locally or from the network), stamps it with the new batch, and pushes the freshly-stamped chunk back into the network.

Re-run bee-check after a few minutes to verify the content is retrievable on the new stamp. The old batch can now expire safely.

Cost note. Re-seeding consumes batch capacity. Make sure the new batch has enough depth/amount to cover the content. Bee will error mid-upload if the batch fills up.