Backup and Restore Procedures

Last updated: 2025-12-13

This document outlines the procedures for backing up and restoring services and their data.

Service Directory Backups

The primary method for backing up a service's configuration and data is by using the archiveme.sh script. This script creates a compressed tar.gz archive of a service's directory from /mnt/docker-storage/appdata and moves it to /volume1/docker/Archived configuration.

How to Back Up a Service

Navigate to the appdata directory:
```
cd /mnt/docker-storage/appdata
```
Run the archiveme.sh script:
```
./archiveme.sh <service-name>
```
For example, to back up the emby service:
```
./archiveme.sh emby
```
Follow the prompts: The script will compress the directory and then ask if you want to delete the source folder. It is recommended to keep the source folder unless you are decommissioning the service.

How to Restore a Service

Locate the backup file: The backup files are located in /volume1/docker/Archived configuration.

Extract the backup:

tar -xzf /volume1/docker/Archived\ configuration/<archive-name>.tar.gz -C /mnt/docker-storage/appdata/

This will extract the service's directory into the appdata directory.

Start the service:

cd /mnt/docker-storage/appdata/<service-name>
docker-compose up -d

Database Backups

MariaDB/MySQL

The central MariaDB server on 192.168.1.251 should have its own backup strategy. However, you can also create a manual backup of a specific database using mysqldump.

Backup:

mysqldump -h 192.168.1.251 -u <user> -p <database-name> > <database-name>.sql

Restore:

mysql -h 192.168.1.251 -u <user> -p <database-name> < <database-name>.sql

PostgreSQL (Docker Containers)

For PostgreSQL databases running in Docker containers, you can use pg_dump to create a backup.

Backup:

docker-compose exec -T <db-container-name> pg_dumpall -c -U <user> > dump.sql

For example, to back up the mealie database:

docker-compose -f /mnt/docker-storage/appdata/mealie/docker-compose.yaml exec -T mealie_postgres pg_dumpall -c -U mealie > mealie_dump.sql

Restore:

cat mealie_dump.sql | docker-compose -f /mnt/docker-storage/appdata/mealie/docker-compose.yaml exec -T mealie_postgres psql -U mealie

SQLite

SQLite databases are single files. The archiveme.sh script automatically backs up these files as part of the service directory backup. To restore a SQLite database, you just need to restore the service directory.

Automated Backups

The archiveme.sh script is a manual process. For automated backups, consider using a tool like ArchiveForge, which is already running on this system. ArchiveForge can be configured to automatically back up service directories on a schedule.

Refer to the ArchiveForge documentation for more details on its configuration.

3 KiB Raw Blame History