# What to Expect When Rebuilding Discourse

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-to-expect-when-rebuilding-discourse/387679
**Category:** Self-hosting
**Created:** [5 november 2025 om 12:13 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-to-expect-when-rebuilding-discourse/387679 "2025-11-05T12:13:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 4

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### Author: ![Ed\_S](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/ed_s/32/134015_2.png) [@Ed\_S](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Ed_S)
#### Post date: [5 november 2025 om 18:30 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-to-expect-when-rebuilding-discourse/387679/4 "2025-11-05T18:30:05Z")

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A bit of extra detail, on an underpowered machine the interruption could be some tens of minutes. On a fast machine, maybe a few minutes.

Because upgrades can go wrong, you should always start by taking a backup. Preferably for safety download a local copy too.

If the upgrade does go wrong, be ready to ask for help on this forum, with evidence from your logs: the last few hundred lines of output should be enough. Sometimes the first few lines of output.

In case of failure to upgrade, it might be that you can resurrect the previous state of your forum software:

> [@Rollback upgrades](https://meta.discourse.org/t/rollback-upgrades/116074/10):
>
> > [@Rollback upgrades](https://meta.discourse.org/t/rollback-upgrades/116074/9):
> >
> > What I’m asking is how I run the old docker container before the rebuild the failed. It is already created with an old version of Discourse so it should be possible to run it.
> 
> ```plaintext
> ./launcher start app
> 
> ```
> 
> Should do it, unless the database has migrated, in which case you can have problems.

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