Data and backups¶

Everything HouseCairn writes is in the /data volume:

Path	Content
`/data/db.sqlite3` (and `-wal`, `-shm`)	The SQLite database, unless `DATABASE_URL` points to PostgreSQL.
`/data/secret_key`	The key that signs sessions and tokens, mode 600. Losing it signs everyone out; keep it secret.
`/data/media/`	Uploaded files.
`/data/backups/`	Copies made by the `backup` command below.

Files are owned by 10001:10001 and readable by that user only. If you mount a host directory instead of a named volume, give it to that user first: sudo chown -R 10001:10001 /srv/housecairn.

Back up¶

Back up /data in one of two ways:

Cold copy, the simplest: stop the container, copy the volume, start it again.

docker compose stop housecairn
docker run --rm -v housecairn_housecairn-data:/data:ro -v "$PWD":/backup \
  debian:stable-slim tar -czf /backup/housecairn-data.tar.gz -C /data .
docker compose start housecairn

(The volume name is <project>_housecairn-data; docker volume ls shows it.)

Online copy of the database, while HouseCairn runs, with SQLite’s backup API (the same as sqlite3 db.sqlite3 ".backup ..."):
```
docker compose exec housecairn python -m housecairn.entrypoint backup
# prints /data/backups/db-<UTC date and time>.sqlite3
```
Then copy /data/backups/, /data/secret_key and /data/media/ off the machine. Remove old copies from /data/backups/ yourself.

With PostgreSQL, back up the database with pg_dump, and /data for the key and the uploaded files.

Restore¶

To restore, stop the container, put the files back in the volume (owned by 10001:10001), and start it.

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