It will be great if there is a way to restore a backup without reconfiguring the Discourse from the beginning.
For now, the differents steps to restore a backup from a server to another are :
1 - make a backup
2 - reinstall Discourse with ./discourse-setup and complete the questions : host, smtp, port etc
3 - configure SSL
4 - load the backup
Why should I complete the step 2 (and 3) if all the data are replace by the backup two minutes laters.
Proposition :
The discourse-setup script have an option where a backup is passed in parameter to direclty install the Docker and Discourse regarding the backup variables (host, smtp etc)
I believe the best solution is to restore the backup from command line @techAPJ has a howto for this. Then you can skip the web GUI configuration part entirely.
They aren’t replaced by the backup. Those settings live in your app.yml which isn’t contained in the backup. The container configuration and the discourse container contents are entirely separate. Hostname, let’s encrypt and plugins are all outside the backup and are used when the container is rebuilt.
The backup holds all the posts, users, attachments, customizations and site settings which can be configured from /admin.