This is an updated version (02-02-2024)
This manual is a transcript of the way that I have made a backup of my Mastodon instance. Please make sure you are careful and use your brain while following this manual.
Preparing the backup folder
- Log in as root
-
cd /home/mastodon
-
mkdir backups
-
cd backups
Making the backups
- Database (three steps)
su - mastodon cd /home/mastodon/backups pg_dump -U mastodon mastodon_production -F t > DATE_FILENAME.tar Example: pg_dump -U mastodon mastodon_production -F t > 2024-02-02-mastodon_production.tar
- Settings file (one step)
cp /home/mastodon/live/.env.production /home/mastodon/backups/DATE_.env.production Example: cp /home/mastodon/live/.env.production /home/mastodon/backups/2024-02-02-.env.production
- Redis (two steps)
exit cp /var/lib/redis/dump.rdb /home/mastodon/backups/DATE_dump.rdb Example: cp /var/lib/redis/dump.rdb /home/mastodon/backups/2024-02-02-REDIS-dump.rdb
You can now check your backups folder to see if all three files are present. This is also a good moment to copy the backup files to another, safe, location.
If you wish to backup your assets like images and stuff (User-uploaded files), backup the folder named “public/system”. Keep in mind that this folder can be rather large. Actually, it can become rather massive.
