Backup and Restore using Docker

Please read to the chapter Backup and Restore for basic information about the backup and restore scripts.

Considerations for running OTOBO under Docker

The standard scripts backup.pl and restore.pl can also be used with OTOBO running under Docker. However some Docker specific limitations have to be considered.

First, we need to make sure that the backup files are not created in the file system that is internal to a Docker container. Because in that case the created files would be lost when the container is stopped. This means that the backup directory must located within in a volume. For this manual we only consider the most simple case, where the backup directory is a local directory on the Docker host. The location of the backup dir in the container can be arbitrarily chosen. In this example we choose the local dir otobo_backup as the location on the host and /otobo_backup as the location in the container.

Secondly, commands in the Docker container usually run as the user otobo with the user id 1000 and the group id 1000. It must be made sure, that this user can write in the backup directory.

First we need to create the volume.

# create the backup directory on the host
docker_admin>mkdir otobo_backup

# give the backup dir to the user otobo, elevated privs might be needed for that
docker_admin>chown 1000:1000 otobo_backup

# create the Docker volume
docker_admin>docker volume create --name otobo_backup --opt type=none --opt device=$PWD/otobo_backup --opt o=bind

# inspect the volume out of curiosity
docker_admin>docker volume inspect otobo_backup

For creating the backup we need a running database and the volumes otobo_opt_otobo and otobo_backup. This means that the webserver and the OTOBO daemon may, but don’t have to, be stopped.

  # create a backup
  docker_admin>docker run -it --rm --volume otobo_opt_otobo:/opt/otobo --volume otobo_backup:/otobo_backup --network otobo_default rotheross/otobo:latest-11_0 scripts/backup.pl --extra-dump-options="--single-transaction" -d /otobo_backup

  # check the backup file
  docker_admin>tree otobo_backup

.. note::

  --extra-dump-options="--single-transaction" prevents the database tables from being locked, so OTOBO can still be used during the backup.

Note

To restore the database make sure that the database otobo exists and contains no tables.

To drop an existing otobo database and create a new one you can use the following commands. First, you have to connect to the MySQL CLI of the db container.

As soon as you are connected to the MySQL server, you can drop and recreate the otobo database.

mysql@4f7783595190:/$>DROP DATABASE otobo;
mysql@4f7783595190:/$>CREATE DATABASE otobo CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
mysql@4f7783595190:/$>GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON otobo.* TO 'otobo'@'%';

For restoring the backup we also need to specify which backup should be restored. The placeholder <TIMESTAMP> is something like 2020-09-07_09-38.

# restore a backup
docker_admin>docker run -it --rm --volume otobo_opt_otobo:/opt/otobo --volume otobo_backup:/otobo_backup --network otobo_default rotheross/otobo:latest-11_0 scripts/restore.pl -d /opt/otobo -b /otobo_backup/<TIMESTAMP>