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Mastodon Backups Guide
A production Mastodon instance has several pieces of data that needs to be regularly backed up to protect against data loss.
Data that needs to be backed up regularly:
- PostgreSQL database
- User generated content (images, avatars, headers)
Data that needs to be backed up at least once:
- Mastodon application secrets (see Production Guide for more details)
In the following sub-sections, some suggestions on how to backup all of this data will be provided.
PostgreSQL database
Mastodon uses a PostgreSQL database as it's relational database. This database needs to be backed up regularly.
We will be providing two methods that can be used to backup your Mastodon PostgreSQL database.
wal-e
wal-e is a program that is, "designed to perform continuous archiving of PostgreSQL WAL files and base backups."
wal-e allows you to store the backups on services such as AWS S3 or it's work-alikes.
The documentation provided by wal-e is excellent, so it is recommended to read it for help with configuring wal-e.
wal-e configuration example
One example of a wal-e backup schedule and retention is to do daily base backups with retention of the last seven base backups into a AWS S3 bucket.
What this example looks like as a cron job:
@daily envdir /etc/wal-e.d/env /usr/local/bin/wal-e backup-push /var/lib/postgresql/9.5/
@weekly envdir /etc/wal-e.d/env /usr/local/bin/wal-e delete --confirm retain 7
pg_dump
pg_dump is an utility that comes with PostgreSQL that can be used extract the contents of a PostgreSQL database.
Here is how to use pg_dump to back up and restore a Mastodon PostgresSQL database:
As the mastodon user, create a backup.dump file:
pg_dump -Fc mastodon_production > backup.dump
To restore, first delete the database (make sure it is backed up first!):
dropdb mastodon_production
Then restore using createdb and pg_restore:
createdb -T template0 mastodon_production
pg_restore -Fc -n public -d mastodon_production backup.dump
You will want to make sure that Mastodon is not running during the backup/restore process.
pg_dump maintenance scripts
If you are looking for a pre-written set of scripts to maintain PostgreSQL backups using pg_dump, you can find them here.
User generated content (images, avatars, headers)
Day to day usage of a production Mastodon instance will result in user generated content such as images, user avatars and headers. This data needs to be backed up regularly.
If the Production Guide is used, this
content will be stored in /home/mastodon/live/public/system.
Various methods can be used to back up this directory, here are some:
- rsync to an offsite backup server
- Synced to an AWS S3 bucket using the AWS CLI tool
Mastodon application secrets
It is also highly recommended to keep your application configuration file .env.production backed up.
If you the Production Guide is used
this file is stored in /home/mastodon/live/.env.production.
That file contains application secrets used for things like 2 factor authentication and VAPID keys used for Web Push notifications.