Move backups to block storage instead of copy#3060
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StevenMaude
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May 13, 2026
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summary: I have one question about maybe making the backup more robust. Otherwise, the changes look fine.
| cp --preserve=mode,timestamps "$BACKUP_FILEPATH.zst" "$BLOCK_BACKUP_DIR" | ||
| cp --preserve=mode,timestamps "$SANITISED_BACKUP_FILEPATH.zst" "$BLOCK_BACKUP_DIR" | ||
| mv "$BACKUP_FILEPATH.zst" "$BLOCK_BACKUP_DIR" | ||
| mv "$SANITISED_BACKUP_FILEPATH.zst" "$BLOCK_BACKUP_DIR" |
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question: Since I think this involves a different filesystem, the mv is presumably a full copy operation, if I'm right?
If so, is it worthwhile to verify, either using rsync or hashing the files before and after, that the files have correctly copied, as a guard against faulty hardware?
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Good point rsync -av --remove-source-files ?
Database backups use significant space on the main volume of dokku3. To save space on the main drive, and to improve our storage capacity, we want to move the backups storage to DigitalOcean Block Storage. Now that we have seen the backups successfully copy across in production, we can remove the source files don't need to exist in both places. This will free up space. `rsync` takes checksums after the transfer before deleting the local copy and will return non-zero in the event of failure, notifying us via Sentry. I think it makes sense that the backup generation, sanitisation, and compression will continue to be done locally as the local file system access is likely faster than doing everything directly in block storage. Cleaning up the existing backup folder can be done manually to free the space once we see that this has worked.
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Part fixes #2910.
Database backups use significant space on the main volume of dokku3. To save space on the main drive, and to improve our storage capacity, we want to move the backups storage to DigitalOcean Block Storage.
Now that we have seen the backups successfully copy across, we can change the
cpcommand to amv, as the backups don't need to exist in both places. This will free up space.I think it makes sense that the backup generation, sanitisation, and compression will continue to be done locally as the local file system access is likely faster than doing everything directly in block storage.
Cleaning up the existing backup folder can be done manually to free the space once we see that this has worked.
Tested locally with:
Then checking expected files and symlinks were in place in the "block storage" location and not in the "database storage" location.