The fanbase is still large, but the Lemmy community hasn’t quite caught up yet, and now there is a transitional period where the audience is smaller.

  • Bilbo BagginsEnglish
    1•1 year ago

    I’m using the easy Lemmy script to run the docker instance. How do I take a backup of a running docker instance.

    The backups I’ve done so far are full shard backups. But I don’t have a way to automate that.

    • @Dave@lemmy.nzEnglish
      2•1 year ago

      The page here explains getting a database dump on a running instance (and how to restore): https://join-lemmy.org/docs/administration/backup_and_restore.html

      Then just back up the other files in the volumes directory where Lemmy is installed (everything except postgres, which is what the database dump does).

      The pictrs volume includes both the uploaded images and the image cache. I have no idea how to separate out the uploaded images so you don’t have to back up the cache, I just back it all up.

    • @Die4Ever@programming.devEnglish
      1•1 year ago

      this is the bash script I use to create backups

      #! /bin/bash
# https://join-lemmy.org/docs/administration/backup_and_restore.html#a-sample-backup-script
now=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d_%H.%M.%S")

cd ~/lemmy && (docker-compose exec -T postgres pg_dumpall -c -U lemmy 1> dump.sql 2> dump.errors)
cd ~/lemmy && zip -r9 ~/bak-lemmy-$now.zip ./ --exclude "volumes/postgres/*"
rm -f ~/lemmy/dump.sql

      it creates very small zip files as a result so it’s very efficient

      I made a cron for it to run every 3 hours, like

      0 */3 * * * ~/lemmy/backup.sh
      • Bilbo BagginsEnglish
        1•1 year ago

        I figured out how to do this with docker container, but that’s not ideal for a script.

        Using docker compose it just fails with: Service “postgres” is not running container #1

        I can see lemmy-easy-deploy if I do: docker compose ls

        The service name is postgres in the docker-compose.yml file. Any idea what the issue might be?