Sshfs and backup

Installation
1

Hi,
I host discourse for a small community. We have a very small, old VPS. The disk space cannot accommodate backups anymore, so I did a quick trick and mounted remote file system (using sshfs) as /var/discourse/shared/standalone/backups/default . Everything seems to work, I can create / delete a file or directory in /var/www/discourse/public/backups/default/ , but when I try to run a backup it fails. Is there anything I can do to make it work? Permissions are set to 777.

Alternatively - maybe in next version of software option to disable compression for backups will finally exist? That would give us few years of storage :slight_smile:

Thank you!

[2023-02-25 04:41:33] pg_dump: executing SEQUENCE SET category_featured_topics_id_seq
[2023-02-25 04:41:33] pg_dump: executing SEQUENCE SET category_groups_id_seq
[2023-02-25 04:41:33] pg_dump: executing SEQUENCE SET category_required_tag_groups_id_seq
[2023-02-25 04:41:33] pg_dump: executing SEQUENCE SET category_tag_groups_id_seq
[2023-02-25 04:41:33] pg_dump: executing SEQUENCE SET category_tag_stats_id_seq
[2023-02-25 04:41:33] Finalizing backup...
[2023-02-25 04:41:33] Creating archive: p-e-2023-02-25-043914-v20230201192925.tar.gz
[2023-02-25 04:41:33] Making sure archive does not already exist...
[2023-02-25 04:41:34] EXCEPTION: /var/www/discourse/lib/discourse.rb:137:in `exec': rm: cannot remove '/var/www/discourse/public/backups/default/p-e-2023-02-25-043914-v20230201192925.tar': Permission denied

[2023-02-25 04:41:34] /var/www/discourse/lib/discourse.rb:171:in `execute_command'
/var/www/discourse/lib/discourse.rb:137:in `exec'
/var/www/discourse/lib/discourse.rb:33:in `execute_command'
/var/www/discourse/lib/backup_restore/backuper.rb:216:in `create_archive'
/var/www/discourse/lib/backup_restore/backuper.rb:40:in `run'
/var/www/discourse/script/spawn_backup_restore.rb:9:in `backup'
/var/www/discourse/script/spawn_backup_restore.rb:31: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>'
[2023-02-25 04:41:34] Deleting old backups...
[2023-02-25 04:41:34] Cleaning stuff up...
[2023-02-25 04:41:34] Removing '.tar' leftovers...
[2023-02-25 04:41:34] Marking backup as finished...
[2023-02-25 04:41:34] Refreshing disk stats...
[2023-02-25 04:41:34] Notifying 'siteadmin' of the end of the backup...
[2023-02-25 04:41:42] Finished!
2

Nobody? Any idea how to fix it (apart from some sort of I don’ t know, nfs over ssh tunnel)? :frowning_face:

3

Disk is cheap and Discourse migrations are some of the most simple. It’s probably worth considering migrating VPS. if you can’t currently accommodate backups then things like a postgres upgrade will be a total showstopper.

It’s not worth putting time into this for most because time is worth more than the couple of extra GB.

4

Hi!

This likely happens because the Discourse backup process runs with effective user ID 0, thus you will likely need to pass this option to sshfs:

sshfs -o allow_root SERVER:PATH MOUNT_POINT

Or if you’re using unprivileged containers, allow_other instead.

5

Would you be willing to donate some of that cheap disk? :wink:

6

Thank you, I will try it. It does make sense. :+1: