85 lines
3.3 KiB
Markdown
85 lines
3.3 KiB
Markdown
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# Mastodon Backups Guide
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A production Mastodon instance has several pieces of data that needs to be
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regularly backed up to protect against data loss.
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Data that needs to be backed up regularly:
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* PostgreSQL database
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* User generated content (images, avatars, headers)
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Data that needs to be backed up at least once:
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* Mastodon application secrets (see
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[Production Guide](../Running-Mastodon/Production-Guide.md) for more details)
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In the following sub-sections, some suggestions on how to backup all of this
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data will be provided.
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## PostgreSQL database
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Mastodon uses a PostgreSQL database as it's relational database. This database
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needs to be backed up regularly.
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We will be providing two methods that can be used to backup your Mastodon
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PostgreSQL database.
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### wal-e
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[wal-e](https://github.com/wal-e/wal-e) is a program that is, "designed to
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perform continuous archiving of PostgreSQL WAL files and base backups."
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wal-e allows you to store the backups on services such as [AWS S3](https://aws.amazon.com/s3/) or it's work-alikes.
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The documentation provided by wal-e is excellent, so it is recommended to read
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[it](https://github.com/wal-e/wal-e/blob/master/README.rst) for help with
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configuring wal-e.
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#### wal-e configuration example
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One example of a wal-e backup schedule and retention is to do daily base backups
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with retention of the last seven base backups into a AWS S3 bucket.
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What this example looks like as a cron job:
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```
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@daily envdir /etc/wal-e.d/env /usr/local/bin/wal-e backup-push /var/lib/postgresql/9.5/
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@weekly envdir /etc/wal-e.d/env /usr/local/bin/wal-e delete --confirm retain 7
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```
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### pg_dump
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[pg_dump](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.5/static/app-pgdump.html) is an utility that comes with PostgreSQL that can be used extract the contents of a
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PostgreSQL database.
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Please read the documentation page linked above for all relevant usage details.
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Here is an example:
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```sh
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# Dump Mastodon's PostgreSQL database into a SQL-script file
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pg_dump mastodon_production > mastodon_production.sql
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```
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If you are looking for a pre-written set of scripts to maintain PostgreSQL backups using pg_dump, you can find them [here](https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Automated_Backup_on_Linux).
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## User generated content (images, avatars, headers)
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Day to day usage of a production Mastodon instance will result in user
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generated content such as images, user avatars and headers. This data needs
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to be backed up regularly.
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If the [Production Guide](../Running-Mastodon/Production-Guide.md) is used, this
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content will be stored in `/home/mastodon/live/public/system`.
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Various methods can be used to back up this directory, here are some:
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* [rsync](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-rsync-to-sync-local-and-remote-directories-on-a-vps) to an offsite backup server
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* Synced to an AWS S3 bucket using the [AWS CLI tool](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/s3/sync.html)
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## Mastodon application secrets
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It is also highly recommended to keep your application configuration file
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.env.production backed up.
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If you the [Production Guide](../Running-Mastodon/Production-Guide.md) is used
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this file is stored in `/home/mastodon/live/.env.production`.
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That file contains application secrets used for things like 2 factor authentication and VAPID keys used for Web Push notifications.
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