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Backing up appdata

Featured Replies

Are there any plans to implement some kind of backup option for appdata created by dockers ?

 

Some of the dockers (particularly mariadb, just a random example) generate a lot of data and i'm just thinking it might be an idea to have a backup to the array option for appdata, somewhere in the webui would be awesome.

People have been making some scripts but my suggestion is that you should be able to create loopback image files for appdata as well.

 

This way to backup the most of the docker eco system you would stop docker and backup the docker image and the appdata image. if we looked at template location as well we would have a complete portable solution.

I can't agree more, I have asked about this several times and even tried the script thing (with mixed results), but I really think that critical data like this needs a simple fail safe gui based method of backup.

People have been making some scripts but my suggestion is that you should be able to create loopback image files for appdata as well.

 

This way to backup the most of the docker eco system you would stop docker and backup the docker image and the appdata image. if we looked at template location as well we would have a complete portable solution.

 

So here's a little secret.  Specify this as your appdata folder when creating a docker:

 

/var/lib/docker/appdata/appname

 

Substitute appname for your app.

 

This will keep all application data inside the image file as well.  The appdata folder will be created automatically the first time you add an application with this path specified.

I wodner if this is something we should be recommending to everyone. The only gotchas are the big disk hoarders like Plex and Kodi but there is an elegance to having one img file contain all the data.

 

In two minds if this or two seperate image files would be better. Suspect the later.

  • Author

People have been making some scripts but my suggestion is that you should be able to create loopback image files for appdata as well.

 

This way to backup the most of the docker eco system you would stop docker and backup the docker image and the appdata image. if we looked at template location as well we would have a complete portable solution.

 

So here's a little secret.  Specify this as your appdata folder when creating a docker:

 

/var/lib/docker/appdata/appname

 

Substitute appname for your app.

 

This will keep all application data inside the image file as well.  The appdata folder will be created automatically the first time you add an application with this path specified.

 

will that survive an update of the image though ?

People have been making some scripts but my suggestion is that you should be able to create loopback image files for appdata as well.

 

This way to backup the most of the docker eco system you would stop docker and backup the docker image and the appdata image. if we looked at template location as well we would have a complete portable solution.

 

So here's a little secret.  Specify this as your appdata folder when creating a docker:

 

/var/lib/docker/appdata/appname

 

Substitute appname for your app.

 

This will keep all application data inside the image file as well.  The appdata folder will be created automatically the first time you add an application with this path specified.

 

will that survive an update of the image though ?

No.  It won't. Which is why its not the default.

  • Author

People have been making some scripts but my suggestion is that you should be able to create loopback image files for appdata as well.

 

This way to backup the most of the docker eco system you would stop docker and backup the docker image and the appdata image. if we looked at template location as well we would have a complete portable solution.

 

So here's a little secret.  Specify this as your appdata folder when creating a docker:

 

/var/lib/docker/appdata/appname

 

Substitute appname for your app.

 

This will keep all application data inside the image file as well.  The appdata folder will be created automatically the first time you add an application with this path specified.

 

will that survive an update of the image though ?

No.  It won't. Which is why its not the default.

 

yeegads, i won't be doing that anytime soon then, one of the key things i really like about dockers is the data outside of the container, if your image file goes tits up or i make a hash of an update to the container, my data is still there.

Is till think there is mileage in having appdata in a container. For instance for me at least I find appdata contains a bunch of caches e.g kodi art, polipo files, ubooquity art etc

 

These amount to crazy number of files (300k+) but relatively small GB totals. backing up these as a image file will be much slicker for most users.

 

I also suggest that once you have a better mechanism to mount img files in general it opens the door to all sorts of other things like encrypted image files and snapshotting within the image

  • Author

Is till think there is mileage in having appdata in a container. For instance for me at least I find appdata contains a bunch of caches e.g kodi art, polipo files, ubooquity art etc

 

These amount to crazy number of files (300k+) but relatively small GB totals. backing up these as a image file will be much slicker for most users.

 

I also suggest that once you have a better mechanism to mount img files in general it opens the door to all sorts of other things like encrypted image files and snapshotting within the image

 

do you mean a separate image for appdata for all containers ?

Yes thats my thought.

 

So not only coould you now have a more than one docker img to change about with you could also have matching appdata images

 

i.e.

production_dockers.img <> production_dockers_appdata.img

 

dev_dockers.img <> dev_dockers_appdata.img

 

as these appdata images would be btrfs you could eventually also have version snapshotting in them as well for extra goodness

  • Author

Could be a good idea with snapshots etc... as long as the interface is user-friendly.

 

With the dynamix webui now the unraid "experience" is a whole magnitude better and is getting closer to being appliance like all the time, which i think is a really good thing.

 

 

Agreed, In its most basic form when a user defines the docker img file they would just also define the appdata img.

How would the appdata.img work in terms of those apps that need a config edit like ddclient for instance?

 

As an end user, I would love a way to backup my appdata but I also love the accessibility and transparency of the current system.

Sorry, should have made myself clearer, if the config files are within and .img file, how do I get access to it to edit them? 

  • Author

if we're talking in terms of backups , then you don't edit the config files in the backup, you edit them as normal and next time backup runs the edited versions are saved.

Gotcha, so the current system would remain, but backups would be done to an appdata.img.

 

Makes sense, thanks for clearing it up.

  • Author

Gotcha, so the current system would remain, but backups would be done to an appdata.img.

 

Makes sense, thanks for clearing it up.

 

 

even if it were some kind of live img for appdata etc and config files were included in the image, the image must be writable in real time to allow saving/updating data on the fly. given that then editing config files should be doable.

 

but i'm not certain of that aspect of NAS' idea, i think he's more qualified to comment on it than my ramblings, lol.

  • 1 month later...

Did anybody get any sort of working backup strategy for appdata?

 

ijuarez had an accidental deletion of his appdata and docker.img and it's made me think long and hard about it.

 

I could live with losing docker.img but the loss of my appdata folder would be a very bitter pill to swallow.

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