The error seems to be related to moving the uploads out of the backup and into S3. These files already exist anyway so that may be part of the issue? or perhaps its just my S3 provider continuing to have issues, which is why I am trying to move away from them.
At any rate, digging around yielded this:
It seems like maybe this still applies.
Extracting the db dump from the backup and rezipping it, only to then have the software re-unzip it 
, is somewhat time consuming. Perhaps it could be useful to specify this either using a discourse command in the container or via app.yml. Maybe a section for ‘db settings override’ that the restore process looks at first? Mainly just spit-balling because I only pretend to look like I know what I’m doing here.
after modifying the requisite dump.sql the restore completes successfully but avatars seem broken and some thumbnails dont seem to work but when you click the image it loads properly.
I think maybe a rebake might cure the latter issue. I’m not super upset if all I lose is avatars.