SOLVED Is it possible to remove / reset the listed backups in an app?

[d19dotca]

I ask this question because I was running into a lot of issues with backups the other day and this has caused a lot of unnecessary backup links in the backup pages of some apps (the ones that didn't cause issues, lol). And since some of the ones past 3 days or so are no longer accessible either, is it possible I can simply reset this somehow?

I think since all of the backup issues, I may once I get a final solution in place just wipe the backups from the backup disk and start fresh with that part, and as such I'd love to have the backup links removed from the apps too. Is this possible at all?

[girish]

Currently, they are tied to the periodic backup cleaner cron job. There is no way to manually delete backups or trigger manual deletion of those entries. I will mark this as a feature request.

[d19dotca]

@girish Hi Girish. Just wanted to check on this as quite a long time has passed now (crazy how quick time moves). I still don't see a way to remove old backups, unless I'm missing it?

Right now I am in a situation where I migrated servers and as such the backup method changed just prior, meaning the old backups in my display of backups performed are no longer valid as they do not exist, and I'm unsure how to clear them.

I don't think the retention policy is an cleaning those up either but I suspect because I remember you saying at one point that it keeps previous versions and such as backups for a longer period. Hoping that'll go away on it's own then even if it can't actually delete the files from anywhere since the files no longer exist from 3 weeks back for example.

[girish]

I think it's a good idea for the "cleanup backups" button to check if the backup exists remotely and "cleanup" these entries.

The bigger feature request of deleting backups from Cloudron itself, I am a bit hesitant. If there is a security issue and some admin's credentials got compromised, I don't want an attacker to be able to delete backups. That will clean out everything, too dangerous.

[d19dotca]

@girish That's fair, if the Cloudron backup process can check for existing backups and remove from its system what no longer exists on the backup device would be perfect.

[girish]

@d19dotca Yes indeed, not sure why we didn't think about that before! Will try to get this in the next release.

[girish]

This is implemented in the next release (6.2). If you click on Clean Backups, it will check if the files exist in remote and they will get removed from the listing.

[d19dotca]

@girish Thanks Girish! That seriously helps my OCD, haha.

[d19dotca]

@girish A couple ideas / things to check:

• Will the task also remove backups from the app-specific backup listings too, or just the overall Cloudron backups? Hopefully app backups too.
• Will it recognize backups if switching between two backup sources at all? For example, let's say I had a backup source #1, then switched to backup source #2 which in-turn removes backups from the list since they are no longer present in backup source #2, but then I switch it back later to backup source #1... will it recognize the backups stored in backup source #1 again? I wonder if this should be extended in a way to not only remove on cleanup task, but recognize on any backup location changes. It's probably a very fringe scenario, but I'm thinking maybe a scenario where one has a backup source used regularly but then maybe once a month or something does a full system backup to another location and flips it back again afterwards.

[girish]

@d19dotca said in Is it possible to remove / reset the listed backups in an app?:

Will the task also remove backups from the app-specific backup listings too, or just the overall Cloudron backups? Hopefully app backups too.

Yes, app backups also.

Will it recognize backups if switching between two backup sources at all?

Unfortunately, no. Note that the cleanup itself only happens when you click "cleanup backups" or the nightly cron job. If you somehow avoid the "race" with the cron job, you should be OK...

I think one general issue with Cloudron backup system is that it doesn't have multiple destinations. We don't keep track of previous backup settings (intentionally, for security purposes) but this means that we cannot cleanup old backups properly and cannot restore/clone etc as we ll. I think we will add this soonish. After all the 3-2-1 methodology wants to have 2 backups in different locations which is currently not easily possible.

[d19dotca]

@girish Oh yeah that's a good expansion actually, I was in the mindset of Cloudron only backing up to one place, but I think a good feature improvement for the future would be what you just wrote about... multi-location backups. I like that idea.

[atridad]

@girish This is perfect. I love the idea of a local backup and an S3 backup

[girish]

@atrilahiji https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/3818/backups-ability-to-add-multiple-storage-provider-location

[robi]

@girish can we add more detail on the behavior of the clean up backups button, and how it is supposed to work to the docs site?

The button isn't mentioned:
https://docs.cloudron.io/backups/#retention-clean-up

[girish]

@robi I have added a note at https://docs.cloudron.io/backups/#cleanup-backups now

[robi]

@girish thanks, can you add what pressing the button does exactly?

the previous expectation was to remove all on disk which are not in DB, which didn't work. Does it now?

[girish]

@robi it's the other way around. it removes all in database which are not in disk. There is no way to remove a backup db entry.

"Cloudron also keeps track of the backups in it's database. The Backup Cleaner checks if entries in the database exist in the storage backend and removes stale entries from the database automatically."

[robi]

@girish so what cleans from disk?

[girish]

@robi only the retention policy - https://docs.cloudron.io/backups/#retention-policy