Backups

What to protect and how, per mode.

What lives where

Data	Postgres mode	Lite mode
All records (students, attendance, belts, invoices, settings)	Postgres volume	pglite_data volume
Uploaded files (photos, attachments, logo)	DATA_STORAGE_PATH mount	DATA_STORAGE_PATH mount

Back up both the database and the storage mount.

Lite mode

Automatic pre-migration snapshots

Before every migration the container snapshots the database into the pglite_backups volume (last 3 kept). These protect against failed updates — see the restore procedure in Lite Mode.

Scheduled snapshots (recommended, especially on an SD card)

Pre-migration backups don't protect against SD-card wear or power loss. Snapshot the volume on a schedule — weekly is a good baseline:

# /etc/cron.weekly/dojo-backup (on the host)
docker run --rm -v mitch-dojo_pglite_data:/data -v /var/backups/dojo:/backup alpine \
  tar czf /backup/pglite-$(date +%F).tar.gz -C /data .
# prune: keep the last 8
ls -1t /var/backups/dojo/pglite-*.tar.gz | tail -n +9 | xargs -r rm

Restore = stop the container, extract the archive into the volume, start.

Postgres mode

Use standard Postgres tooling against the db container:

# backup
docker exec mitch-dojo-db-1 pg_dump -U mitch mitch_dojo | gzip > dojo-$(date +%F).sql.gz

# restore
gunzip -c dojo-2026-09-17.sql.gz | docker exec -i mitch-dojo-db-1 psql -U mitch mitch_dojo

Schedule it the same way (host cron → docker exec), keep copies off the machine, and prune old dumps. Adjust the container name, user, and database name to your compose values.

Files

Sync the storage mount like any other directory — restic, rclone, or plain tar all work. If you use S3/Azure storage, the provider holds the files; still keep the database backup, since the DB rows are what map files to students.