Created a NodeBB-Backup tool - Request For Feedback

jongarrison

I saw that version 0.8.0 was released. This is my second upgrade and I realized I should have a quick way to consistently run backups that would record the version that was backed up and time of the backup. I'm still new to Node.js and NodeBB so I thought I'd do it as a globally installable npm tool.

After installing the tool (npm install -g nodebb-backup) you just run it from your nodebb installation directory:

nodebb-backup

The version number captured is from package.json and the mongo info (yes, mongo only right now) is loaded from config.json. As described in the upgrade docs for NodeBB (https://docs.nodebb.org/vi/latest/upgrading/) it dumps the db and saves the /uploads directory. The db dump and /uploads copy are compressed into a tar named like this:

nodebb-backup-2015-09-01_2236-v0.7.3.tar
(which is saved to the directory above your nodebb install)

If this is useful to you, could you review the code and let me know if you think it is doing the right thing? Also, there are a number of additions that I think would be useful:

Be able to provide a path to place the resulting back up file
Redis support
Maybe be able to restore from a provided tar file?

Anything else? Thanks for looking.

Github: https://github.com/jongarrison/nodebb-backup
Npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/nodebb-backup

jarey

Great work. I think this would be more than useful to a lot of the users.

jongarrison

Cool, well it will be interesting to see if it gets used.

psychobunny

Nice idea. Maybe if you end up supporting both databases and also maybe a restore from backup option, it would be a cool plugin

exodo

sounds very good to me
posible enhancements?

maybe a cron to autorun all days or every hour etc
option to remove old backups from x days
scp copy to another server
-backup only db and not assets

good job

jongarrison

Hmm, yeah it would make sense as a full admin plugin with those other features. I'll put those features on the list.

Why you would only want the db without assets? The system isn't complete without both, right?

exodo

@jongarrison said:

Hmm, yeah it would make sense as a full admin plugin with those other features. I'll put those features on the list.

Why you would only want the db without assets? The system isn't complete without both, right?

assets its uploaded avatars , uploaded files if enabled and stuff, right?
maybe you want to save db each hour but you only want to save assets 1 time a day
also if you use imgur maybe no need for assets backups
just and idea anyways

jongarrison

@exo.do yeah, that makes sense to just get the critical stuff frequently.

Thanks for the feedback!

Aza Noriega

I just wonder, whether someone is interested in a guide of automatic incremental backing up NodeBB using rsnapshot on Linux-based servers? I mean not a tool, but a guide only. Because I have no intention yet to make neither the tool nor to contribute to the nodebb-backup tool.

And if I'll make the guide someday, it probably will be not for complete newbies, but for those who's able to (at least):

use terminal
completely understand what chown and chmod commands are for, and what * * * * * in cronejobs mean

p.s. When you're using rsnapshot, there is almost no difference which database you're using, Redis or MongoDB.

psychobunny

We're always happy to accept new contributions to our docs

julian

Yes, if we have 2 or more different backup strategies, we could have a whole section on backups for NodeBB...