I had a small discourse forum for a few years and it works well. I set up autobackups, but didn’t update discourse version for a long time. Server died, but I have backup. Backup is from the old discourse version, about a 2 years ago. When I’m trying to install the newest version and restore from backup, it doesn’t work. When I’m trying to install old version, it isn’t possible: setup script automatically pulls new commits and latest docker image, I even found these lines in launcher script and deleted, but some internal code in docker image also checks and updates git to latest version. What should I do? How can I run old discourse version or restore old backup on a new version?

You can just access the themes from the admin interface. You can first disable them all and then turn them on one at a time (or whatever).

[image] Sailormoon: When I’m trying to install the newest version and restore from backup, it doesn’t work. If you want help, you’ll need to be more specific. It should work. There’s a good chance that the issue will also not work if you were able to install the same version of Discourse that you had then. What was the error you got when you tried to restore?

There is no critical errors in ./launcher logs app output, but forum doesn’t work. Almost all buttons doesn’t work, there is no topics, and html is looking strange (buggy start page repeats itself and can be scrolled to the bottom without limit). I’m not professional tech guy, and I hope you can tell me which logs I can add to my report where can I find them.

Does anyone know, where I can find reliable logs?

Problem is that I can’t access /logs - “this page doesn’t exist or private”. And I cannot log in to check it.

Try using the admin login at https://forum.example.com/u/admin-login[1]. You learn something new everyday! ↩︎

Thanks for link, but it won’t work. It sends email, but I don’t have smtp server and using this plugin: Disable Email Verification for Discourse Plugin Maybe, some console commands on server are possible to check what happened?

AFAIK that plugin is broken. You may not want to use it (unless you are using the remake?).

There was no different solution to allow users create accounts without email confirmation, when I created a server. Maybe it’s broken now, but I’m trying at least to restore the old version of forum.

Currently I cannot access any data from forum, even I have a backup. Only forum logo and tags is shown, and all buttons are unusable.

Restore specific discourse backup version

Product Support

NateDhaliwal (Nate Dhaliwal) August 28, 2025, 9:47am 5

Are there any errors in /logs route of your forum?

Topic		Replies	Views
Hangs discourse and discourse restore FAILED Self-hosting	24	2507	August 26, 2020
How can I get the current version information from my backup? Product Support	14	608	May 31, 2025
Problem when updating Discourse Forum Self-hosting unsupported-install	20	2682	June 29, 2023
Discourse failed to backup on stable Product Support	34	3424	November 16, 2016
Restore from old version to a new version of discourse failed Self-hosting	16	2796	December 16, 2019

Restore specific discourse backup version

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