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AlphOne

Updates and backups

How releases work

Section titled “How releases work”

Every AlphOne release is a git tag (v0.1.0, v0.2.0, …) that publishes a container image to ghcr.io/gopherium/alphone under three tags:

  • the version, e.g. :0.1.0
  • the exact commit, e.g. :sha-5495093
  • :latest, republished on every release

Migrations run automatically on container start, so updating is pulling a newer image and recreating the container.

Updating by hand

Section titled “Updating by hand”
Terminal window
cd /srv/alphone
docker compose pull alphone
docker compose up -d alphone

Updating automatically

Section titled “Updating automatically”

Any watcher that reacts to a republished :latest digest works. The compose file in Install already carries labels for What’s Up Docker (WUD):

  • wud.watch: "true" with wud.watch.digest: "true" on alphone watches the :latest digest and picks up each release.
  • wud.watch: "false" on postgres makes sure the database is never auto-updated. A major PostgreSQL jump breaks its data directory.

On the WUD side, configure a ghcr registry (a public image needs no token) and a trigger whose scope includes the alphone container. Start with a notification-only trigger if you want to review updates before they apply, then switch to auto once you trust the flow.

Rolling back

Section titled “Rolling back”

Pin the previous version and re-up:

    image: ghcr.io/gopherium/alphone:0.1.0
    labels:
      wud.watch: "false"   # pause auto-updates while pinned
Terminal window
docker compose up -d alphone

One caution: rolling the app back does not roll the database back. Migrations only move forward, so if the newer version already migrated the schema, restore the matching backup instead of just pinning the older image.

Backup scenario

Section titled “Backup scenario”

A nightly pg_dump covers a single-server install. Save this as /srv/alphone/backup.sh and make it executable:

#!/bin/sh
# Dump the AlphOne database and prune dumps older than 14 days.
set -eu


here="$(cd "$(dirname "$0")" && pwd)"
dir="$here/backups"
mkdir -p "$dir"


docker compose -f "$here/compose.yaml" exec -T postgres \
  pg_dump -U alphone alphone | gzip >"$dir/alphone-$(date +%F-%H%M).sql.gz"


find "$dir" -name '*.sql.gz' -mtime +14 -delete

Schedule it daily:

Terminal window
( crontab -l 2>/dev/null; echo '0 3 * * * /srv/alphone/backup.sh' ) | crontab -

Copy the backups/ directory somewhere off the server on your own schedule. A backup that lives only next to the database it protects is half a backup.

Restoring

Section titled “Restoring”

Stop the app, recreate the database, replay the dump, start the app:

Terminal window
cd /srv/alphone
docker compose stop alphone
docker compose exec -T postgres psql -U alphone -d postgres \
  -c 'DROP DATABASE alphone' -c 'CREATE DATABASE alphone OWNER alphone'
gunzip -c backups/alphone-<date>.sql.gz | \
  docker compose exec -T postgres psql -U alphone alphone
docker compose start alphone