Backups

A complete backup has three parts:

1. PostgreSQL: pages, revisions, collaboration snapshots, users, metadata, and audit history.
2. The object store: the attachment bytes. A database-only restore leaves attachment links broken.
3. The .env file: database, auth, and S3 credentials.

Take all parts close together and keep them as one recovery set. For a consistent raw-volume snapshot, use a short maintenance window and stop application writers first:

docker compose stop web server collab

Take a database backup

docker exec nilovon-wiki-postgres pg_dump -U postgres nilovon-wiki \
  | gzip > database-$(date +%F).sql.gz

Take an attachment backup

With the bundled RustFS service, stop it before archiving its raw data volume, then restart the stack after both backup parts are complete:

docker compose stop rustfs
docker run --rm \
  -v nilovon-wiki_nilovon-wiki_rustfs_data:/data:ro \
  -v "$PWD":/backup \
  alpine tar czf /backup/attachments-$(date +%F).tar.gz -C /data .
docker compose up -d

For an external S3 service, use that provider's versioned backup or object-copy tooling instead. Copy the backup set off the wiki host; a backup on the same machine is not disaster recovery.

Restore

Restore into a fresh stack. Never extract an archive over a running or non-empty RustFS volume. Put the original .env in place first, then restore attachment storage:

docker compose down
docker volume rm nilovon-wiki_nilovon-wiki_postgres_data nilovon-wiki_nilovon-wiki_rustfs_data
docker volume create nilovon-wiki_nilovon-wiki_rustfs_data
docker run --rm \
  -v nilovon-wiki_nilovon-wiki_rustfs_data:/data \
  -v "$PWD":/backup \
  alpine sh -c 'cd /data && tar xzf /backup/attachments-2026-07-09.tar.gz'
docker compose up -d postgres rustfs rustfs-init

Restore PostgreSQL after it is healthy:

gunzip -c database-2026-07-09.sql.gz \
  | docker exec -i nilovon-wiki-postgres psql -U postgres nilovon-wiki
docker compose up -d

Verify several attachment downloads after the restore, not only the database health endpoint.

Automatic database dumps

docker compose --profile backup up -d backup

This writes nightly database dumps to nilovon-wiki_nilovon-wiki_backups and applies BACKUP_KEEP_DAYS retention. It does not copy attachment bytes or move either volume off-host; schedule those separately.