Documentation · CheckTick

Protect your CheckTick data with regular backups and disaster recovery procedures.

Backup Strategy

A comprehensive backup strategy includes:

Database backups - Survey data, users, responses
Media files - Uploaded images, documents
Configuration - Environment variables, docker-compose files

Database Backups

Manual Backup

With included PostgreSQL:

# Create backup
docker compose exec db pg_dump -U checktick checktick > checktick-backup-$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S).sql

# Compress backup
gzip checktick-backup-*.sql

# Verify backup
ls -lh checktick-backup-*.sql.gz

With external database:

# Direct backup
pg_dump postgresql://user:pass@external-host:5432/checktick > checktick-backup-$(date +%Y%m%d).sql

# Or using connection details
PGPASSWORD=yourpassword pg_dump \
  -h external-host \
  -U checktick \
  -d checktick \
  -F c \
  -f checktick-backup-$(date +%Y%m%d).backup

Automated Backups

Create a backup script:

#!/bin/bash
# File: backup-checktick.sh

BACKUP_DIR="/var/backups/checktick"
DATE=$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S)
KEEP_DAYS=30

# Create backup directory
mkdir -p $BACKUP_DIR

# Backup database
docker compose exec -T db pg_dump -U checktick checktick | gzip > "$BACKUP_DIR/db-$DATE.sql.gz"

# Backup media files
docker compose cp web:/app/media "$BACKUP_DIR/media-$DATE"
tar czf "$BACKUP_DIR/media-$DATE.tar.gz" "$BACKUP_DIR/media-$DATE"
rm -rf "$BACKUP_DIR/media-$DATE"

# Backup configuration
cp .env "$BACKUP_DIR/env-$DATE"
cp docker-compose*.yml "$BACKUP_DIR/"

# Delete old backups
find $BACKUP_DIR -name "db-*.sql.gz" -mtime +$KEEP_DAYS -delete
find $BACKUP_DIR -name "media-*.tar.gz" -mtime +$KEEP_DAYS -delete
find $BACKUP_DIR -name "env-*" -mtime +$KEEP_DAYS -delete

# Log completion
echo "$(date): Backup completed - $BACKUP_DIR/db-$DATE.sql.gz"

Make it executable and schedule:

chmod +x backup-checktick.sh

# Add to crontab (daily at 2 AM)
(crontab -l; echo "0 2 * * * /path/to/backup-checktick.sh >> /var/log/checktick-backup.log 2>&1") | crontab -

Cloud Storage Backup

AWS S3:

# Install AWS CLI
sudo apt-get install awscli

# Configure credentials
aws configure

# Add to backup script
aws s3 cp "$BACKUP_DIR/db-$DATE.sql.gz" s3://your-bucket/checktick-backups/

Azure Blob Storage:

# Install Azure CLI
curl -sL https://aka.ms/InstallAzureCLIDeb | sudo bash

# Login
az login

# Upload backup
az storage blob upload \
  --account-name youraccount \
  --container-name checktick-backups \
  --name "db-$DATE.sql.gz" \
  --file "$BACKUP_DIR/db-$DATE.sql.gz"

Media File Backups

Media files are stored in the media_data Docker volume:

# Backup media files
docker run --rm \
  -v census_media_data:/media \
  -v $(pwd)/backups:/backup \
  alpine tar czf /backup/media-$(date +%Y%m%d).tar.gz /media

# List media volume contents
docker run --rm \
  -v census_media_data:/media \
  alpine ls -lah /media

Restore Procedures

Database Restore

Complete restore from backup:

# Stop the application
docker compose down

# Start only database
docker compose up -d db

# Wait for database to be ready
docker compose exec db pg_isready -U checktick

# Drop existing database (WARNING: destroys current data)
docker compose exec db psql -U checktick -c "DROP DATABASE IF EXISTS checktick;"
docker compose exec db psql -U checktick -c "CREATE DATABASE checktick;"

# Restore from backup
gunzip < checktick-backup-20250126.sql.gz | docker compose exec -T db psql -U checktick checktick

# Start application
docker compose up -d

Partial restore (specific tables):

# Restore only specific tables
pg_restore -U checktick -d checktick -t specific_table backup.dump

Media Files Restore

# Extract media backup
docker run --rm \
  -v census_media_data:/media \
  -v $(pwd)/backups:/backup \
  alpine sh -c "rm -rf /media/* && tar xzf /backup/media-20250126.tar.gz -C /"

# Verify restoration
docker compose exec web ls -la /app/media

Configuration Restore

# Restore .env file
cp backups/env-20250126 .env

# Restart services with restored config
docker compose down
docker compose up -d

Disaster Recovery

Complete System Recovery

Scenario: Server failure, need to restore on new server.

Step 1: Install Prerequisites

# Install Docker and Docker Compose
curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sh
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

Step 2: Download Latest CheckTick

mkdir checktick && cd checktick
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eatyourpeas/checktick/main/docker-compose.registry.yml

Step 3: Restore Configuration

# Copy backed-up .env
scp old-server:/backups/.env .

# Or download from cloud storage
aws s3 cp s3://your-bucket/checktick-backups/env-latest .env

Step 4: Start Database

docker compose up -d db
sleep 10  # Wait for database to initialize

Step 5: Restore Database

# Download backup
aws s3 cp s3://your-bucket/checktick-backups/db-latest.sql.gz .

# Restore
gunzip < db-latest.sql.gz | docker compose exec -T db psql -U checktick checktick

Step 6: Restore Media Files

# Download media backup
aws s3 cp s3://your-bucket/checktick-backups/media-latest.tar.gz .

# Restore to volume
docker run --rm \
  -v census_media_data:/media \
  -v $(pwd):/backup \
  alpine tar xzf /backup/media-latest.tar.gz -C /

Step 7: Start Application

docker compose up -d
docker compose logs -f web

Point-in-Time Recovery

For external managed databases with point-in-time restore:

AWS RDS:

aws rds restore-db-instance-to-point-in-time \
  --source-db-instance-identifier checktick-db \
  --target-db-instance-identifier checktick-db-restored \
  --restore-time 2025-01-26T10:00:00Z

Azure:

az postgres server restore \
  --resource-group checktick-rg \
  --name checktick-db-restored \
  --restore-point-in-time "2025-01-26T10:00:00Z" \
  --source-server checktick-db

Backup Verification

Regularly test your backups:

#!/bin/bash
# File: verify-backup.sh

LATEST_BACKUP=$(ls -t backups/db-*.sql.gz | head -1)

echo "Testing backup: $LATEST_BACKUP"

# Create test database
docker compose exec db psql -U checktick -c "CREATE DATABASE census_test;"

# Restore to test database
gunzip < $LATEST_BACKUP | docker compose exec -T db psql -U checktick census_test

# Verify row counts
echo "Survey count:"
docker compose exec db psql -U checktick census_test -c "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM surveys_survey;"

echo "User count:"
docker compose exec db psql -U checktick census_test -c "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM core_user;"

# Cleanup
docker compose exec db psql -U checktick -c "DROP DATABASE census_test;"

echo "Backup verification complete!"

Backup Best Practices

Frequency

Small deployments: Daily database backups, weekly media backups
Medium deployments: Daily full backups, hourly incremental (if supported)
Large deployments: Continuous replication to standby database

Retention

Daily backups: Keep 30 days
Weekly backups: Keep 12 weeks (3 months)
Monthly backups: Keep 12 months (1 year)

Storage

3-2-1 Rule:
3 copies of data
2 different storage types (local + cloud)
1 offsite backup

Security

Encrypt backups at rest:

# Encrypt backup
gpg --symmetric --cipher-algo AES256 checktick-backup.sql.gz

# Decrypt when needed
gpg --decrypt checktick-backup.sql.gz.gpg > checktick-backup.sql.gz

Restrict access:

chmod 600 backups/*
chown root:root backups/

Monitoring

Create a monitoring script:

#!/bin/bash
# Check if backup was created today

BACKUP_DIR="/var/backups/checktick"
TODAY=$(date +%Y%m%d)

if ! ls $BACKUP_DIR/db-$TODAY-*.sql.gz 1> /dev/null 2>&1; then
    echo "ERROR: No backup found for today!"
    # Send alert email
    echo "No CheckTick backup created on $TODAY" | mail -s "Backup Alert" [email protected]
    exit 1
fi

echo "Backup OK: Found backup for $TODAY"

Database Size Management

Check Database Size

# Total database size
docker compose exec db psql -U checktick -c "
  SELECT pg_size_pretty(pg_database_size('checktick'));
"

# Table sizes
docker compose exec db psql -U checktick checktick -c "
  SELECT
    schemaname,
    tablename,
    pg_size_pretty(pg_total_relation_size(schemaname||'.'||tablename)) AS size
  FROM pg_tables
  WHERE schemaname NOT IN ('pg_catalog', 'information_schema')
  ORDER BY pg_total_relation_size(schemaname||'.'||tablename) DESC
  LIMIT 20;
"

Archive Old Data

For very large databases, consider archiving:

# Export old survey responses (older than 1 year)
docker compose exec db psql -U checktick checktick -c "
  COPY (
    SELECT * FROM surveys_response
    WHERE created_at < NOW() - INTERVAL '1 year'
  ) TO STDOUT CSV HEADER
" > archived-responses-$(date +%Y%m%d).csv

# Delete archived records (BE CAREFUL!)
# Only after verifying archive is complete

Next Steps

Database Options - Choose your database setup
Production Setup - SSL and security
Configuration - Customize your instance