Backups keep failing

Product Support Self-hosting

AI-generated summary

Backups are failing with a permission error when trying to create an archive in /var/www/discourse/public/backups/default/. darkpixlz reports the issue started after moving to a new machine, where they copied the app.yml file and restored from a backup. pfaffman suggests checking if the container is running as root and verifying the disk mappings in app.yml. crcoli7307 confirms the mappings, and gerhard points out that copying parts of /var/discourse might have caused permission issues. darkpixlz plans to inspect the container to check directory existence and write permissions.

1

Hello,

Whenever I try and backup my site, I get an error.

[2022-12-05 00:08:22] pg_dump: executing SEQUENCE SET custom_emojis_id_seq
[2022-12-05 00:08:22] Finalizing backup...
[2022-12-05 00:08:22] Creating archive: blackiron-2022-12-05-000759-v20221201035918.tar.gz
[2022-12-05 00:08:22] Making sure archive does not already exist...
[2022-12-05 00:08:22] Creating empty archive...
[2022-12-05 00:08:22] EXCEPTION: /var/www/discourse/lib/discourse.rb:131:in `exec': tar: /var/www/discourse/public/backups/default/blackiron-2022-12-05-000759-v20221201035918.tar: Cannot open: Permission denied
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

[2022-12-05 00:08:22] /var/www/discourse/lib/discourse.rb:158:in `execute_command'
/var/www/discourse/lib/discourse.rb:131:in `exec'
/var/www/discourse/lib/discourse.rb:28:in `execute_command'
/var/www/discourse/lib/backup_restore/backuper.rb:205:in `create_archive'
/var/www/discourse/lib/backup_restore/backuper.rb:41:in `run'
/var/www/discourse/script/spawn_backup_restore.rb:9:in `backup'
/var/www/discourse/script/spawn_backup_restore.rb:34:in `block in <main>'
/var/www/discourse/script/spawn_backup_restore.rb:4:in `fork'
/var/www/discourse/script/spawn_backup_restore.rb:4:in `<main>'
[2022-12-05 00:08:22] Deleting old backups...
[2022-12-05 00:08:22] Cleaning stuff up...
[2022-12-05 00:08:22] Removing '.tar' leftovers...
[2022-12-05 00:08:22] Marking backup as finished...
[2022-12-05 00:08:22] Refreshing disk stats...
[2022-12-05 00:08:22] Notifying 'darkpixlz' of the end of the backup...
[2022-12-05 00:08:29] Finished!

I’m not sure what’s causing this. It was working fine before yesterday, when we moved to a new machine, which was fresh before we copied over the app.yml file to include our config.

2

Are you running discourse as root? What is the disk mapping (in the app.yml)?

3

Yes I am, and I’ll check the disk layout.

5

These are the disk mappings:

volumes:
  - volume:
      host: /var/discourse/shared/standalone
      guest: /shared
  - volume:
      host: /var/discourse/shared/standalone/log/var-log
      guest: /var/log
6

Strange. I would enter the container and see what) whether that directory exists and if you can create a directory there.

7

Did you copy (parts of) the /var/discourse folder to the new server? That might have messed with the permissions/owner.

8

We ran the setup script, copied the app.yml, and restored from backup.

I will do that!