Fediverse

The page here explains getting a database dump on a running instance (and how to restore): https://join-lemmy.org/docs/administration/backup_and_restore.html

Then just back up the other files in the volumes directory where Lemmy is installed (everything except postgres, which is what the database dump does).

The pictrs volume includes both the uploaded images and the image cache. I have no idea how to separate out the uploaded images so you don't have to back up the cache, I just back it all up.

this is the bash script I use to create backups

#! /bin/bash
# https://join-lemmy.org/docs/administration/backup_and_restore.html#a-sample-backup-script
now=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d_%H.%M.%S")

cd ~/lemmy && (docker-compose exec -T postgres pg_dumpall -c -U lemmy 1> dump.sql 2> dump.errors)
cd ~/lemmy && zip -r9 ~/bak-lemmy-$now.zip ./ --exclude "volumes/postgres/*"
rm -f ~/lemmy/dump.sql

it creates very small zip files as a result so it's very efficient

I made a cron for it to run every 3 hours, like

0 */3 * * * ~/lemmy/backup.sh