Restoring Discourse when you can't make a backup

Support
1

Hi,

Is there some kind of trick to restoring Discourse if you can’t access the interface to make a backup?

A machine is in a bad way, but I was able to get /var/discourse entirely.
I tested installing Postgres on a local machine and changing the data directory and can see the database is there.

If I copy everything over and run ./launcher rebuild app, I see the next user wizard when I log in to Discourse. During the rebuild, I also get:

I, [2018-06-15T18:21:18.896019 #14]  INFO -- : > cd /var/www/discourse && su discourse -c 'bundle exec rake db:migrate'
2018-06-15 18:21:22.501 UTC [416] discourse@discourse ERROR:  relation "users" does not exist at character 566
2018-06-15 18:21:22.501 UTC [416] discourse@discourse STATEMENT:                SELECT a.attname, format_type(a.atttypid, a.atttypmod),
	                     pg_get_expr(d.adbin, d.adrelid), a.attnotnull, a.atttypid, a.atttypmod,
	                     c.collname, col_description(a.attrelid, a.attnum) AS comment
	                FROM pg_attribute a
	                LEFT JOIN pg_attrdef d ON a.attrelid = d.adrelid AND a.attnum = d.adnum
	                LEFT JOIN pg_type t ON a.atttypid = t.oid
	                LEFT JOIN pg_collation c ON a.attcollation = c.oid AND a.attcollation <> t.typcollation
	               WHERE a.attrelid = '"users"'::regclass
	                 AND a.attnum > 0 AND NOT a.attisdropped
	               ORDER BY a.attnum
	
2018-06-15 18:21:22.952 UTC [416] discourse@discourse ERROR:  relation "user_actions" does not exist at character 566
2018-06-15 18:21:22.952 UTC [416] discourse@discourse STATEMENT:                SELECT a.attname, format_type(a.atttypid, a.atttypmod),
	                     pg_get_expr(d.adbin, d.adrelid), a.attnotnull, a.atttypid, a.atttypmod,
	                     c.collname, col_description(a.attrelid, a.attnum) AS comment
	                FROM pg_attribute a
	                LEFT JOIN pg_attrdef d ON a.attrelid = d.adrelid AND a.attnum = d.adnum
	                LEFT JOIN pg_type t ON a.atttypid = t.oid
	                LEFT JOIN pg_collation c ON a.attcollation = c.oid AND a.attcollation <> t.typcollation
	               WHERE a.attrelid = '"user_actions"'::regclass
	                 AND a.attnum > 0 AND NOT a.attisdropped
	               ORDER BY a.attnum

Is there something I need to set to stop Discourse from creating a new database each time?

I believe a ./launcher rebuild app was running when the other node experienced a problem. I hope that the database is not in a partial state.

Thanks in advance

Sam

2

I don’t know what the problem was.

pg_dump and restoring seems to have fixed it. I then re-ran bundle exec rake db:migrate.

2 Likes
3

Glad you got it. FWIW, if you stick the backup in /var/discourse/shared/standalone/backups/default you can

./launcher enter app
rails c
discourse enable_restore
discourse restore

You’ll then be presented with a set of backups and can copy/paste the restore command with the backup you want to restore.

4 Likes
4

Thank you very much for this advice.

I wasn’t able to take a tarball based backup, and the backups I had were several hours old, hence the need to restore the Postgres DB.

Sam

1 Like
5

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