Backups

[inigochoa]

Hey!

Amazing work with your images! I have a few questions regarding backups. Hope this is the right place for them.

1. Are we supposed to backup volumes?
2. In that case, how should we do those backups?
3. In the PostgreSQL image there is a cron task to generate a backup. How could we restore the database?

Thank you very much!

[11notes]

1. Yes. If you don’t, you will lose all your data if the storage gets corrupted. You also need backups to go back in case you made a mistake and deleted something. Have at least a daily backup to some other storage and also a backup off-site (cloud, friends house, portable USB HDD).
2. There are different tools available to you to do this. You can use Restic for instance or more advanced tools like Veeam. I personally prefer Veeam, but restic works well for most too.
3. Restoring a DB for my image simply means unpacking the backup and replacing the entire content of /postgres/var with it, since I use pg_basebackup and not pg_dump.

[inigochoa]

Understood.

But how does it comply with the RTFM/linux/container/docker/volumes.md idea? If every volume should be bind. How are we suposed to do backups? Shouldn't some volumes be mounted?

On the other hand, I'm using your PostgreSQL image and I really like it. However, I think the documentation could be clearer regarding how to perform incremental backups (whether any additional configuration is required beyond setting up the cron job) and how to perform a restore. I think these points could be explained more clearly.

[11notes]

But how does it comply with the RTFM/linux/container/docker/volumes.md idea? If every volume should be bind. How are we suposed to do backups? Shouldn't some volumes be mounted?

Named volumes can be backup the exact same way as any other volume. Check your backup utility you are using how to perform a backup of a named volume.

On the other hand, I'm using your PostgreSQL image and I really like it. However, I think the documentation could be clearer regarding how to perform incremental backups (whether any additional configuration is required beyond setting up the cron job) and how to perform a restore. I think these points could be explained more clearly.

The image does not offer incremental backup, only full backup with retention. Yes, restore should and could be mentioned, that is correct, I just assumed users would read the documentation for this purpose. I’ll see if I can add a section and even a restore command to the init script if need be.

[inigochoa]

Thank you for the reply. Understood. I mentioned incremental backups because the postgres images says so in it's readme file:

It allows for incremental backups too if enabled

Hope this can be added in some future release. As for now, i will stick with my current backup system.

Thank you so much!

[11notes]

Thanks for mentioning the:

It allows for incremental backups too if enabled.

That was indeed the case, but isn't anymore, because WAL is too complex for most, but I guess since Postgres 17 has inc. backups via pg_basebackup I can check it out again.

[inigochoa]

Thanks for the replies. You're doing a great job. Keep it up.