Backup and Restore BookStack Instance

Backup and Restore 

 https://www.bookstackapp.com/docs/admin/backup-restore/ 

 While BookStack does not currently have a built-in way to backup and restore content, it can usually be done via the command line with relative ease. 

 Please note the below commands are based on using Ubuntu. If you are using a different operating system you may have to alter these commands to suit. 

 

 Backup 

 There are two types of content you need to backup: Files and database records. 

 Database 

 The easiest way to backup the database is via  mysqldump : 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 # Syntax

## Only specify the `-p` option if the user provided has a password

mysqldump -u {mysql_user} -p {database_name} > {output_file_name}

# Example

mysqldump -u benny bookstack > bookstack.backup.sql

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 If you are using MySQL on Ubuntu, and are using the  root  MySQL user, you will likely have to run the command above with  sudo : 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 sudo mysqldump -u root bookstack > bookstack.backup.sql

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The resulting file ( bookstack.backup.sql  in the examples above) will contain all the data from the database you specified. Copy this file to somewhere safe, ideally on a different device. 

 Files 

 Below is a list of files and folders containing data you should back up. The paths are shown relative to the root BookStack folder. 

 

 .env  - File, contains important configuration information. 

 public/uploads  - Folder, contains any uploaded images. 

 storage/uploads  - Folder, contains uploaded page attachments. 

 themes/  - Folder, contains any configured  visual/logical themes . 

 

 Alternatively you could backup up your whole BookStack folder but only the above contain important instance-specific data by default. 

 The following command will create a compressed archive of the above folders and files: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 tar -czvf bookstack-files-backup.tar.gz .env public/uploads storage/uploads

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The resulting file ( bookstack-files-backup.tar.gz ) will contain all your file data. Copy this to a safe place, ideally on a different device. 

 

 Restore 

 If you are restoring from scratch follow the  installation  instructions first to get a new BookStack instance set-up but  do not run the  php artisan migrate  installation step when installing BookStack . You may need to comment this command out if using an installer script. 

 If you are using a docker-container-based set-up, restore the database before running the BookStack container. An example of the process using a linuxserver.io-based docker-compose setup can be seen  in our video here . 

 Database 

 To restore the database you simply need to execute the sql in the output file from the  mysqldump  you performed above. To do this copy your database SQL backup file onto the BookStack or database host machine and run the following: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 # Syntax

mysql -u {mysql_user} -p {database_name} < {backup_file_name}

## Only specify the -p if the user provided has a password

# Example

mysql -u benny -p bookstack < bookstack.backup.sql

# If using the root user on Ubuntu you may

# have to run the above with root permissions via sudo:

sudo mysql -u root bookstack < bookstack.backup.sql

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 If you are restoring to a new version of BookStack you will have to run  php artisan migrate  after restore to perform any required updates to the database. 

 Files 

 To restore the files you simply need to copy them from the backup archive back to their original locations. If you created a compressed  bookstack-files-backup.tar.gz  archive as per the backup instructions above you can simply copy that file to your BookStack folder then run the following command: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 tar -xvzf bookstack-files-backup.tar.gz

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 If you get errors during the above command it may be due to permissions. Change permissions so you can write to the restore locations. 

 After a backup of the files you should reset the permissions to ensure any write-required locations are writable by the server. The locations required for this can be found in the  installation instructions . 

 Configuration (.env File) 

 During a restore, you may end up merging various configuration options between your old and new instance  .env  files, to get things working for the new environment. For example, it’s common to use the old  .env  settings for most things but use database settings from the  .env  file of a newly created instance. 

 One thing to be aware of is that you should use the  APP_KEY  value of the old  .env  file since this is used for various features like the encryption of multi-factor authentication credentials. Changing the  APP_KEY  may cause such features to break. 

 URL Changes 

 If you are restoring into an environment where BookStack will run on a different URL, there are a couple of things you’ll need to do after restoring everything: 

 

 Within the  .env  config file update the  APP_URL  value to exactly match your new base URL. 

 Run the  “Update System URL” command  to update your database content to use your new URL. 

 

 If you migrated web-server configuration files, you may also need to tweak those to correctly use the new URL.