Backup and Restore

An AirTrail installation holds its data in two places:

• The PostgreSQL database: users, flights, tracks, roles, settings and API keys.
• The uploads directory: airline icons you uploaded (UPLOAD_LOCATION).

Back up both, regularly and before every update. A copy on the same disk is not a backup; keep one elsewhere.

Docker ComposeCopy Anchor Link

Run these commands in the directory with docker-compose.yml. They use the container names from the default Compose file and the DB_USERNAME and DB_DATABASE_NAME defaults; adjust them if you changed those.

Back upCopy Anchor Link

docker exec airtrail_db pg_dump -U airtrail -d airtrail --format=custom > airtrail-$(date +%F).dump

docker run --rm -v airtrail_uploads:/uploads -v "$PWD":/backup alpine \
  tar czf /backup/airtrail-uploads-$(date +%F).tar.gz -C /uploads .

Compose prefixes volume names with the project name, which is the directory name by default. Check yours with docker volume ls | grep uploads.

To back up automatically, run the two commands from a nightly cron job and copy the files off the machine.

RestoreCopy Anchor Link

Restoring replaces the current data. Stop the app first so nothing writes during the restore:

docker compose stop airtrail
docker exec -i airtrail_db pg_restore -U airtrail -d airtrail --clean --if-exists < airtrail-2026-01-31.dump
docker run --rm -v airtrail_uploads:/uploads -v "$PWD":/backup alpine \
  tar xzf /backup/airtrail-uploads-2026-01-31.tar.gz -C /uploads
docker compose start airtrail

Restore a backup into the same or a newer AirTrail version. When AirTrail starts, it applies any migrations the backup is missing.

Moving to another serverCopy Anchor Link

1. Take both backups on the old server.
2. Install AirTrail on the new server with the same .env, then stop it with docker compose stop airtrail.
3. Restore both backups as above and start AirTrail.
4. Update ORIGIN if the address changed.

Manual installationCopy Anchor Link

Use the same pg_dump and pg_restore commands against your PostgreSQL server, and copy the UPLOAD_LOCATION directory:

pg_dump --format=custom "$DB_URL" > airtrail-$(date +%F).dump
pg_restore --clean --if-exists -d "$DB_URL" airtrail-2026-01-31.dump