Portiger Docs
Operations

Backup, update, uninstall

Three operations that touch the whole installation rather than one stack. Each of them says what it is about to do before it does it.

The Backup and Restore page: a manual backup card with a passphrase generator, a restore from file card, a storage location card with destination and path, and a scheduled backup card with period, time and how many to keep.
Backup: where snapshots are written, what goes in them, and the schedule that takes them.

Backup

A backup is one encrypted snapshot of the whole installation: stacks and their Compose snapshots, settings, users, licence, notification rules and the encrypted secrets. A switch adds the contents of named volumes - the actual database and file data - which makes a full restore possible even if a volume has been deleted, and makes the file much larger.

The passphrase is not recoverable. A snapshot is encrypted with your passphrase and the owner's email address. Lose the passphrase and the backup cannot be opened - not by you and not by us. The page will generate one for you and will not let you continue until you confirm you have saved it somewhere safe.

Backups are written to one storage location, shared by manual and scheduled ones: a directory on this server, chosen with a browser that shows which directories are writable.

Scheduled backups

Daily, weekly or monthly, at a time you choose, keeping the last 3, 7, 14 or 30. The schedule has its own passphrase, stored encrypted on the server so the run can use it unattended. Scheduled backups are part of the Max plan; manual ones are on every plan.

Restore

Restore from a snapshot in the storage location, or by uploading a file kept off-server. It asks for the owner email and the passphrase, and then - before you can confirm - works out and shows the impact: which stacks exist now that did not exist when the snapshot was taken, and would therefore be stopped and permanently removed. If any would be lost the confirm button says how many, and a separate acknowledgement has to be ticked. When none would be lost it says that too: only settings and history roll back.

Update

portiger update

The update comes from the signed apt repository. Before anything is replaced the database is backed up automatically; migrations run when the new version starts. That automatic snapshot is separate from your own backups and is taken whether or not you have a schedule.

Uninstall

portiger uninstall

Removes the service and the packages, and asks what to do with the data directory rather than deciding for you. Take a backup first and copy it off the machine: a snapshot left in the data directory is no use if the directory goes with it.

Reclaiming disk instead

When the problem is disk rather than the installation, the answer is Cleanup under Settings, not an uninstall: it shows what the engine is holding and what of that is reclaimable, and prunes stopped containers, unused images, unattached networks, anonymous volumes or the build cache, per kind. A recurring sweep can run the safe ones on a schedule; that schedule is part of Team and above.

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