Backuping and Restoring Pontoon

What to Backup?

You have to backup the following elements:

The database (you can make an SQL dump of your db),
The Pontoon’s configuration: /etc/opt/pontoon.env,
The Pontoon’s SSH keys folder: /var/opt/pontoon/.ssh/

You may be tempted to backup the media folder (/var/opt/pontoon/media) but it only contains cloned Git repositories, so they can be cloned again…

Backuping Pontoon

Backuping Files

Just copy the /etc/opt/pontoon.env file and the /var/opt/pontoon/.ssh/ folder.

Backuping the Database

To backup the database, fist login as the postgres user:

su postgres

Then dump the database:

pg_dump pontoondb > /tmp/pontoondb.dump.sql

Where:

pontoondb is the name of the database,
/tmp/pontoondb.dump.sql is a file where the dump will be written.

Restoring Pontoon

Important

Be sure to have the exact same version of Pontoon installed than the one you backuped. Follow the installation guide if you need to make a fresh install:

Installing Pontoon on Debian and Ubuntu

Restoring Files

Just copy back the /etc/opt/pontoon.env file and the /var/opt/pontoon/.ssh/ folder.

Note

The /var/opt/pontoon/.ssh/ folder must be owned by the pontoon user and have 0700 as permissions. You can fix both with the following commands:

chown -R pontoon:pontoon /var/opt/pontoon/.ssh/
chmod 700 /var/opt/pontoon/.ssh/

Restoring the Database

Clearing the Database

The database must be empty before restoring. The simplest way to achieve this is to drop the entire database and to recreate it.

To drop the database, first login to the postgres account:

su postgres

then open the PostgreSQL shell:

psql

and execute the following query:

DROP DATABASE pontoondb;

Where:

pontoondb is the name of the database,

Then create the database again following the PostgreSQL installation page of the manual.

Restoring the Dump

First login to the postgres account:

su postgres

Then restore the dump with the following command:

psql pontoondb < /tmp/pontoondb.dump.sql

Where:

pontoondb is the name of the database,
/tmp/pontoondb.dump.sql is the path of the SQL dump to restore.