There isn't a simple and quick way of backup and restore, so I wrote one.

[ddyykk]

Support guidelines

• I've read the support guidelines
• My request is not listed as a very good idea, but unfortunately...
• I've used the search and this has not been requested before.

Description

• I have read the docs of this app, I use it for quite a long time, and I like it.
• I run it on my home server, a mini pc with Debian installed.
• I run it in docker containers.
• Sometimes I have power outage or SSD damage concern. (And I have encountered power cut, luckily the SSD wasn't broken)
• The backup methods in the docs is not straight forward enough to me. I think a good app like this should have a easier backup method.

Solution

https://gist.github.com/ddyykk/84bc588d6de1d346fbf473af49c34cf0

• I wrote this one to backup everything in the docker containers, verify the password of MariaDB and the contents.
• Restore is also easy. Once finished installation using docker-compose in a new environment, run the restore script, providing the path of the backup tar.gz file. And it shall work like your old machine.

What are alternatives?

No response

Additional context

No response

[JC5]

Hey, thanks for starting this discussion.

This is very cool! I'll link to it from the documentation for sure.

What you could do, is put the scripts up at https://gist.github.com/. This will allow people to reply to them, and you can edit them too.

Cheers,
James

[ddyykk]

Good idea, have updated the link in the post to gist.

Cheers.

[MrCaringi]

thanks a lot!

[madindehead]

I run Firefly III using a postgresql database. How easy would it be to create a postgresql version of this backup script? Or to add the steps into the current script with some conditional checks?

[ddyykk]

I don't use postgreSQL, so I can't test it. Anyway I asked ChatGPT to answer your question. Here is what it gives. Let me know it works or not.
Restore-Firefly-PostgreSQL.sh
Backup-Firefly-PostgreSQL.sh

[madindehead]

I don't use postgreSQL, so I can't test it. Anyway I asked ChatGPT to answer your question. Here is what it gives. Let me know it works or not. Restore-Firefly-PostgreSQL.sh Backup-Firefly-PostgreSQL.sh

Thanks for this. Finally managed to get around to testing it.

When I run the script, the verification section fails with the following message: ERROR: Required table 'users' not found in database dump!

I think it's because PostgresSQL can only run CREATE TABLE inside psql. This is likely going to require some changes to verify the backup properly.

pgdump can also be used for the export, so might be a different process overall.

[fbuetler]

For postgres, I'd recommend to use docker-postgres-backup-local:

  backups:
    image: prodrigestivill/postgres-backup-local:18
    restart: always
    user: postgres:postgres
    depends_on:
      - db 
    env_file: 
      - db.env
    environment:
      - POSTGRES_HOST=db
      - POSTGRES_PORT=5432
      - POSTGRES_EXTRA_OPTS=-Z1 --schema=public --blobs
      - SCHEDULE=@daily
      - BACKUP_DIR=/backups
      - BACKUP_ON_START=TRUE
      - BACKUP_KEEP_DAYS=7
      - BACKUP_KEEP_WEEKS=4
      - BACKUP_KEEP_MONTHS=6
      - HEALTHCHECK_PORT=8080
    networks:
      - firefly_iii
    volumes:
      - ./backups:/backups

For mysql, there is a similar project called docker-mysql-cron-backup.

[madindehead]

Thanks - I will take a look at this.

[ddyykk]

Backup-Firefly-PostgreSQL.sh
Restore-Firefly-PostgreSQL.sh
Modified script, if you want to give a try.

[sespiros]

Thanks for the scripts! I added a clean step in the restore script in order to drop whatever initial tables firefly created after container creation. Without that restoring failed with multiple errors. These are my final scripts (for PostgreSQL):

Backup-Firefly-PostgreSQL.sh
Restore-Firefly-PostgreSQL.sh