Backup — Runbooks

Scheduled backups, restore procedures and disaster recovery.

Scheduled backups (cron)

# Daily at 3 AM
0 3 * * * cd /opt/aetheris && docker compose exec -T postgres pg_dump --username=aetheris --dbname=aetheris --format=custom > /backups/aetheris-$(date +\%F).dump

Restore procedure

1. Stop the web app

docker compose stop web worker

2. Restore the database

cat backup.dump | docker compose exec -T postgres pg_restore \
  --username=aetheris --dbname=aetheris --clean --if-exists

3. Restart

docker compose up -d

4. Verify

curl -sS http://localhost:8000/health
curl -sS -o /dev/null -w '%{http_code}\n' http://localhost:3000/login

Disaster recovery

If the entire host is lost:

1. Install Docker on a new machine.
2. Clone aetheris-app, restore .env.
3. Restore PostgreSQL from backup.
4. docker compose up -d --build.

What's NOT in the backup

• Docker images (re-pulled on docker compose up --build)
• Node modules (re-installed on npm ci)
• TLS certificates (re-issued by Certbot)

See also: Backup overview, Upgrades.