Feature Request: Scheduled Backup/Export

[onceuponathyme]

It would be great if we were able to schedule a daily global backup/export which:

• Has configurable scheduling (via presets or cron)
• Has configurable retention (e.g. keep last 7 exports)
• Contains the user data, user configurations, and GPS points of all users, as well as accounts/OIDC, and admin configuration, basically a complete backup of the app state so that service can be fully restored in the event of data loss (presumably this would be only accessible to admins, and could optionally be encrypted for privacy reasons)
  • Another solution could be to hook into the existing per-user export feature to export each user's configuration, export the admin configuration, and then zip it all together into a single file.
• Backed up to a single timestamped file in a /backups directory that can be mounted.

I understand there is an Export feature, although it's per user and without a way to schedule it.

This would allow external backup tools to pick up the file without the use of specific DB tools, and the container doesn't have to be downed to copy the DB files.

[tess1o]

Hello,

I'm gonna improve user's Export functionality with export type = GeoPulse. It's a custom format with user's data: gps points, favorite locations, reverse geocoding data, timeline settings, etc. It needs to be updated since latest features are not added there (weather samples, notes, etc).

Additionally I will add Admin Settings export - all global configuration (OIDC provider, registration settings, weather settings, reverse geocoding settings, etc).

Maybe as a final result I will add global export/import that will include each user's export with type = GeoPulse and Admin configuration in a single zip file. Not sure about this, need to do deeper impact analysis.

Not sure about scheduled imports by cron - where to store them? What about the rotation? Too many small things I'd need to think and care about, not sure if it worth it. At least if I implement rest endpoint (export/impot) for full server configuration + user's data then anyone can implement any custom solution to use that rest endpoint via API Tokens - https://geopulse.cc/docs/api/api-tokens (API tokens are used for authorization in REST API).

External tools which do full Postgres dump work great - I use them in my "production" setup. I personally use https://databasus.com/
I already have some initial Backup and Restore doc page but I feel it needs to be updated: https://geopulse.cc/docs/system-administration/maintenance/backup-restore

[onceuponathyme]

All these enhancements to the export system are great.

I do still see a benefit in being able to schedule it though, at the very least implement a configurable time every day in lieu of cron. In terms of storage location, programs like Immich and Home Assistant just dump it into a /backup folder in the configuration root, which can be bind mounted to expose it. These programs also expose a relatively simple "keep last X backups" field.

I did read the Backup and Restore docs. I don't know about anyone else, but deploying external tools or scripting is a bit too overwhelming for me to accomplish something as ordinary as a backup. Instead, I just point my simple GUI file-based backup tool to a folder and tell it to snapshot that and send it to cloud storage.