Backup & Restore¶

Creating Backups¶

Manual Backup¶

# Create a backup to the default location (~/.tuitbot/backups/):
tuitbot backup

# Create a backup to a custom directory:
tuitbot backup --output-dir /path/to/backups

# List existing backups:
tuitbot backup --list

# Keep only the 5 most recent backups:
tuitbot backup --prune 5

Scheduled Backups (cron)¶

Add to your crontab (crontab -e):

# Daily backup at 2 AM, keep 7 days:
0 2 * * * /usr/local/bin/tuitbot backup && /usr/local/bin/tuitbot backup --prune 7

For systemd timer:

# ~/.config/systemd/user/tuitbot-backup.timer
[Unit]
Description=Tuitbot daily backup

[Timer]
OnCalendar=*-*-* 02:00:00
Persistent=true

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

# ~/.config/systemd/user/tuitbot-backup.service
[Unit]
Description=Tuitbot backup

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/tuitbot backup
ExecStartPost=/usr/local/bin/tuitbot backup --prune 7

Restoring from Backup¶

Validate First¶

# Check if a backup is valid without restoring:
tuitbot restore ./backup.db --validate-only

Restore¶

# Stop the running server/daemon first:
systemctl stop tuitbot

# Restore (interactive confirmation):
tuitbot restore ~/.tuitbot/backups/tuitbot_20240115_020000.db

# Restore without confirmation:
tuitbot restore ~/.tuitbot/backups/tuitbot_20240115_020000.db --force

# Restart:
systemctl start tuitbot

The restore process: 1. Validates the backup file (tables, integrity check) 2. Creates a safety backup of the current database 3. Atomically replaces the database file 4. Cleans up WAL/SHM files

Pre-Migration Backups¶

Every time init_db() runs (server startup, tuitbot run), a pre-migration backup is automatically created if the database already exists. These are stored in ~/.tuitbot/backups/ with a pre_migration_ prefix. Only the 3 most recent are kept.