Backing up and restoring Redmine¶

• Table of contents
• Backing up and restoring Redmine
  • Backup
    • Backing up database
      • MySQL
      • PostgreSQL
      • SQLite
    • Backing up attachments
    • Sample backup script
  • Restore
    • Restoring a database
      • MySQL
      • PostgreSQL
      • SQLite

Backup¶

Redmine backups should include:

• Database
• Attachments (stored in the files directory under the installation directory by default)

Backing up database¶

MySQL¶

The mysqldump command can be used to backup the contents of your MySQL database to a text file. For example:

/usr/bin/mysqldump -u <username> -p<password> -h <hostname> <redmine_database> > /path/to/backup/db/redmine.sql

You can find <username>, <password>, <hostname>, and <redmine_database> in the file config/database.yml. <host_name> may not be required depending on your installation of the database.

PostgreSQL¶

The pg_dump command can be used to backup the contents of a PostgreSQL database to a text file. Here is an example:

/usr/bin/pg_dump -U <username> -h <hostname> -Fc --file=redmine.sqlc <redmine_database>

You can find <username>, <hostname>, and <redmine_database> in the file config/database.yml. <hostname> may not be required depending on your installation of the database. The pg_dump command will prompt you to enter the password when necessary.

SQLite¶

SQLite databases are all contained in a single file, so you can back them up by copying the file to another location.

You can determine the file name of SQLite database by looking at config/database.yml.

Backing up attachments¶

All file uploads are stored in attachments_storage_path (defaults to the files/ directory). You can copy the contents of this directory to another location to easily back it up.

WARNING: attachments_storage_path may point to a different directory other than files/. Be sure to check the setting in $RAILS_ROOT/config/configuration.yml to avoid making a useless backup.
This file may not exist (status: Redmine v5.0.4), it exists a template $RAILS_ROOT/config/configuration.yml.example to change
the standard values, copy this file and rename it to $RAILS_ROOT/config/configuration.yml.
In my installation via Debian package, the attached files are stored in
/var/lib/redmine/default/files.
You can find this folder by file search, attach a file to wiki-page or add a document to a project and look for "*_filename.filextention", in my case the stored file start with 12 digits: <yymmddhhmmss>.
Interesting is also where the file Gemfile.lock is located, for me it was two levels above in the folder hierarchy: /var/lib/redmine/
Keep also in mind, you may you have plugins installed that my have a different storage location, in my case it is the plugin DMSF.

Sample backup script¶

Here is a simple shell script that can be used for daily backups (assuming you're using a MySQL database):

# Database
/usr/bin/mysqldump -u <username> -p<password> <redmine_database> | gzip > /path/to/backup/db/redmine_`date +%Y-%m-%d`.gz

# Attachments
rsync -a /path/to/redmine/files /path/to/backup/files

Restore¶

Restoring a database¶

MySQL¶

For example if you have a gziped dump file with the name 2018-07-30.gz, then the database can be restored with the following command:

gunzip -c 2018-07-30.gz | mysql -u <username> --password <redmine_database>
Enter password:

PostgreSQL¶

When the option -Fc of the command pg_dump is used like it is at the above example then you need to use the command pg_restore:

pg_restore -U <username> -h <hostname> -d <redmine_database> redmine.sqlc

otherwise a text file can be restored with psql:

psql <redmine_database> < <infile>

SQLite¶

Copy the database file from the backup location.