Off-host dumps were named by their time alone. Two instances sharing a bucket
(nothing forbids it, and it was safe for the account objects) overwrote each
other's dump at the same second of the same default schedule, and
latest --from-bucket restored whichever instance's dump was newest. Each
instance now uploads under database/<host of APP_URL>/, the object key (and so
the encryption's associated data) carries it, and the restore takes only this
instance's dumps: it refuses another's and names the instances it found,
unless --instance=<host> or the dump's full key says which one on purpose.
A restore killed outright (out of memory, docker kill) left its .restore- or
.download- directory, a whole database decrypted, in the backups directory,
where nothing removed it. A restore now removes them before it starts and on
SIGINT and SIGTERM, and the nightly retention sweeps any older than twelve
hours.
Pre-migration dumps were kept by count alone, so an install that updates
rarely kept its last two, and every account deleted since, indefinitely,
while the docs and the backups card stated the nightly retention as the
retention of deleted accounts. A pre-migration dump older than the oldest
nightly dump kept now goes, except the newest one, the way back from the
latest update, which stays until the next update. The card, the disaster
recovery guide and its variable table say so.
The recovery kit, "Keys the backups still need" and safeToDropRetiredKeys
read only the stored copies and the off-host account objects. After a
rotation the page called the old key safe to drop while every dump taken
before it, the pre-migration dumps that are the way back from an update
among them, could only be restored with that key: db-restore refuses a dump
whose active key is missing.
A dump now counts for the key its rows were written under, the manifest's
active key: a dump on this server while it is kept (read from the manifests),
an off-host one until the bucket's rule for database/ expires it, or
indefinitely when that rule cannot be read. The nightly run records the key
on its ledger row (migration 0489, database_backup_runs.active_key_id). The
encryption view and the kit list the dumps per key, in every locale, and the
rotation and backup runbooks say so.
A run that kept its dump on the volume and failed the upload is the newest
good dump and the newest failure at the same instant. Compared with ">", the
card showed no failure and readiness said fresh, night after night, while no
dump left the host.
The health read now carries the off-host leg separately: when the newest dump
reached the bucket, and the newest one that did not. One pure reading of it
(databaseDumpProblems) feeds both the backups card and the readiness model.
A configured bucket that missed the newest dump is attention (offhost_failed)
with the upload's error, and failing once the newest dump there is older than
36 hours (offhost_stale) or none ever arrived (offhost_never). The card shows
the refused upload and when the bucket last got a dump. A failure at the
instant of the newest dump for another reason, retention throwing, is now
shown too.
pg_restore reads the table of contents and exits; the read stream piped into
it stayed open on the dump. The long-lived worker checks one dump a night, so
every dump retention deleted stayed allocated until the worker restarted and
the backups volume filled. runTool no longer takes a stdin stream at all.
The image creates DB_BACKUP_DIR owned by the app user, so an install that
runs it without the backups volume could write there, and every nightly and
pre-migration dump landed in the container's own layer. The next update
threw them away while the admin page, the boot line and the readiness card
called them kept on this server.
A dump directory now counts as kept only when it survives the container:
inside a container (Docker, Podman, Kubernetes, a container cgroup or an
overlay root) the directory must sit on a mount of its own that is not a
tmpfs, read from /proc/self/mountinfo with a device-number fallback;
outside one, a writable directory is a disk. Otherwise no dump is written
there: the nightly run uploads off-host only and records not_persistent,
the pre-migration dump is skipped with a warning, the boot line says the
directory is inside the container, the backups page stops promising local
dumps and ignores local-only ledger rows, and readiness fails with no
bucket and notes the bucket-only setup otherwise.
The Unraid template gains a path for the dumps, the Unraid and TrueNAS
pages say why it is needed, and the restore drill first runs the stack
without the volume and checks that nothing is kept or claimed.
A database dump is the whole database at one moment, so an account deleted
since stays in the dumps taken before until they age out. The database row
on the backups card now says so with the numbers that decide it: how many
nightly dumps this server keeps, and after how many days the bucket's
lifecycle rule removes the off-host copies.
The lifecycle probe used to answer with the shortest expiry of any enabled
rule, whatever its prefix, so a rule scoped to the account copies read as
covering the dumps too. It now also answers for `database/` alone, counting
only rules whose filter takes in a dump's key (prefix, legacy prefix, an
And filter; a tag filter never matches untagged objects), and the card
warns when no rule covers that prefix: dumps there, and the deleted accounts
in them, would never be removed. The reading moved into its own module.
A lost host takes its local dumps with it, and the copy left is the one in
the bucket. `docker compose run --rm db-restore latest --from-bucket` now
lists `database/` in the bucket the BACKUP_S3_* variables name, takes the
newest dump whose manifest is there too (or the one named), downloads both
with the S3 client the image already ships, and continues as for any
off-host copy: opened with BACKUP_ENCRYPTION_KEY, checked against the
manifest, restored into an empty database. `list --from-bucket` shows what
is there. The sealed download is removed once it is opened.
The image build now proves the S3 client resolves from the shared module's
place in the tree, so the restore cannot lose it unnoticed.
The per-account copies roll one account back on the same server; nothing
the app made could rebuild a lost one. A scheduled job now runs pg_dump
over the whole database (every schema, pg-boss included) into
DB_BACKUP_DIR as healthlog-<UTC time>-daily.dump, with a manifest beside
it: app version and build, newest migration, Postgres version, size and
SHA-256, exact row counts of every table, and the fingerprints of the
keys the database needs.
The counts read the same exported snapshot pg_dump reads, so a dump
taken while the app writes still matches its manifest. The archive is
written as .partial, listed back with pg_restore --list, and renamed
after its manifest; a failed run leaves nothing named like a good dump.
Retention removes only files this job wrote, oldest first, and never
the newest good one (DB_BACKUP_KEEP, default 7; two pre-migration dumps).
With the off-host bucket configured, each dump and its manifest go up
under database/ in the envelope the account copies use, streamed. Every
run lands in the new database_backup_runs ledger (migration 0486), and
getDatabaseBackupHealth() answers the last good dump, the last failure,
whether the directory is writable and whether off-host is configured.
The boot readiness summary says where dumps go, or that none can be kept.
The dump, naming, retention and restore rules live in one plain ESM
module so the image's own scripts can share them without tsx.
Marc-André Bombeck