Backups

Glyph state lives in three places. Back all three up to recover cleanly.

What to back up

The MySQL backup is the most important - it's the only place documentation lives. The data volume matters mainly for Local Upload projects (no remote to recover from).

Manual backup

Database

cd /opt/glyph  # your install directory
 
docker exec glyph-db \
  mysqldump -u glyph -p"$(grep MYSQL_PASSWORD .env | cut -d= -f2)" glyph \
  | gzip > backups/glyph-db-$(date +%F-%H%M).sql.gz

Data volume

tar czf backups/glyph-data-$(date +%F-%H%M).tar.gz volumes/data/

Meilisearch indices (optional)

docker compose stop meilisearch
tar czf backups/glyph-meili-$(date +%F-%H%M).tar.gz volumes/meilisearch/
docker compose start meilisearch

Stopping Meilisearch ensures a consistent snapshot. Skip the stop/start if a slightly inconsistent backup is acceptable (it can always be rebuilt).

Automated nightly backup

Save this as /opt/glyph/backup.sh:

#!/bin/bash
set -euo pipefail
 
BACKUP_DIR=/opt/glyph/backups
KEEP_DAYS=14
 
cd /opt/glyph
mkdir -p "$BACKUP_DIR"
 
DATE=$(date +%F-%H%M)
PASS=$(grep ^MYSQL_PASSWORD= .env | cut -d= -f2)
 
# Database
docker exec glyph-db mysqldump -u glyph -p"$PASS" glyph \
  | gzip > "$BACKUP_DIR/db-$DATE.sql.gz"
 
# Data volume (Git repos)
tar czf "$BACKUP_DIR/data-$DATE.tar.gz" volumes/data/
 
# Prune old backups
find "$BACKUP_DIR" -name 'db-*.sql.gz'  -mtime +$KEEP_DAYS -delete
find "$BACKUP_DIR" -name 'data-*.tar.gz' -mtime +$KEEP_DAYS -delete
 
echo "Backup completed: $DATE"

Make it executable and schedule with cron:

chmod +x /opt/glyph/backup.sh
crontab -e

Add:

0 3 * * * /opt/glyph/backup.sh >> /var/log/glyph-backup.log 2>&1

Runs nightly at 3 AM, keeps 14 days of backups.

Off-site copy

Local backups protect against accidental deletion but not server loss. Sync the backups/ directory off-site:

rclone to S3 / B2 / etc.

# In the cron job, after backup
rclone sync /opt/glyph/backups remote:glyph-backups

rsync to another server

rsync -az /opt/glyph/backups/ user@backup-host:/path/to/glyph-backups/

Borg / Restic

For incremental, deduplicated, encrypted backups, use a tool like restic or borg.

Restoring

See Database for the restore command. After restoring the database:

1. Restore volumes/data/ if needed.
2. Optionally restore volumes/meilisearch/ - or trigger sync on each project to rebuild.

Testing the backup

A backup that's never been tested is not a backup. Once a quarter:

1. Spin up a fresh Glyph instance on a separate machine or VM.
2. Restore the latest backup.
3. Sign in, browse a project, verify documentation is intact.

If anything fails, fix the backup script - not the production install.