Backing up and restoring data - Ballsdex-Team/BallsDex-DiscordBot GitHub Wiki

There are 4 places where data unique to your bot is stored:

• config.yml contains your basic settings
• admin_panel/media contains all the assets you have uploaded through the admin panel
• All data is stored in a PostgreSQL database
• Automatic backups of the database are available in pgbackups

Manual backups/transfers

This is if you want to proceed to a complete backup of everything, or transfer your bot to a different machine.

First, make sure your bot is fully turned off. Do docker compose down if you're running Docker.

• The config.yml can simply be copied. Be careful not to share it as it contains your bot token!
• Same for admin_panel/media, you can create a zip archive with all its contents
• You can also transfer pgbackups if you wish to preserve backups too.

Then you must make a dump of the database.

Creating a database dump

• With Docker: docker compose up -d postgres-db && docker compose exec pg_dump -U ballsdex ballsdex > data-dump.sql
• Without Docker: pg_dump -U ballsdex ballsdex > data-dump.sql (replace username and database name where appropriate)

This will generate a file data-dump.sql which you need to preserve, containing all the data.

Importing a database dump

• With Docker: docker compose up -d postgres-db && cat data-dump.sql | docker compose exec -T postgres-db psql -U ballsdex ballsdex
• Without Docker: psql -U ballsdex ballsdex -f data-dump.sql

This will print a lot of lines such as INSERT or ALTER TABLE. Check the logs to ensure no errors were produced.

[!WARNING] This only works if the database is completely empty!

If you messed up and wish to reset the database to redo the import, follow this.

Restoring a backup

If you accidentally deleted something important, or your database became corrupted, you can restore a backup. They are located in the pgbackups folder.

First, you must wipe the database. Then, locate the backup file you want to use (we will assume it's named ballsdex-latest.sql.gz and follow the instructions according to your OS.

macOS/Linux

• With Docker: docker compose up -d postgres-db && zcat ballsdex-latest.sql.gz | docker compose exec -T postgres-db psql -U ballsdex ballsdex
• Without Docker: zcat ballsdex-latest.sql.gz | psql -U ballsdex ballsdex

Windows

Open the ballsdex-latest.sql.gz using 7zip and extract the resulting .sql file. Move it to your bot's folder, then:

• With Docker: docker compose up -d postgres-db && cat data-dump.sql | docker compose exec -T postgres-db psql -U ballsdex ballsdex
• Without Docker: psql -U ballsdex ballsdex -f data-dump.sql

Wiping the database

If you need to reset the PostgreSQL database (importing data, restoring a backup), do this:

• With Docker: docker compose down --volumes
• Without Docker: psql -U ballsdex ballsdex -c "DROP SCHEMA public CASCADE; CREATE SCHEMA public;"

[!CAUTION] This is irreversible, be extra sure that your backups are there!