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Joplin Server

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joplin-server is a free open-source backup solution based on RSync/RSnapshot. It's basically a web wrapper around rsync/rsnapshot, which means that your backups are just files on a filesystem, utilising hardlinks for tracking incremental changes. I find this result more reassuring than a blob of compressed, (encrypted?) data that more sophisticated backup solutions would produce for you.

Joplin Screenshot

Joplin Server Requirements

Ingredients

Already deployed:

Related:

Preparation

Setup data locations

We'll need several directories to bind-mount into our container, so create them in `/var/data/``:

mkdir -p /var/data/joplin-server/
mkdir -p /var/data/runtime/joplin-server/db
mkdir -p /var/data/config/joplin-server

Prepare Joplin Server environment

Create /var/data/config/joplin-server/joplin-server.env, and populate with the following variables

SYMFONY__DATABASE__PASSWORD=password
EB_CRON=enabled
TZ='Etc/UTC'

#SMTP - Populate these if you want email notifications
#SYMFONY__MAILER__HOST=
#SYMFONY__MAILER__USER=
#SYMFONY__MAILER__PASSWORD=
#SYMFONY__MAILER__FROM=

# For mysql
MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=password

Create /var/data/config/joplin-server/joplin-server-db-backup.env, and populate with the following, to setup the nightly database dump.

Note

Running a daily database dump might be considered overkill, since joplin-server can be configured to backup its own database. However, making my own backup keeps the operation of this stack consistent with other stacks which employ MariaDB.

Also, did you ever hear about the guy who said "_I wish I had fewer backups"?

No, me either 🤷

# For database backup (keep 7 days daily backups)
MYSQL_PWD=<same as SYMFONY__DATABASE__PASSWORD above>
MYSQL_USER=root
BACKUP_NUM_KEEP=7
BACKUP_FREQUENCY=1d

Joplin Server Docker Swarm config

Create a docker swarm config file in docker-compose syntax (v3), something like the example below:

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version: "3"

services:
  db:
    image: mariadb:10.4
    env_file: /var/data/config/joplin-server/joplin-server.env
    networks:
      - internal
    volumes:
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
      - /var/data/runtime/joplin-server/db:/var/lib/mysql

  db-backup:
    image: mariadb:10.4
    env_file: /var/data/config/joplin-server/joplin-server-db-backup.env
    volumes:
      - /var/data/joplin-server/database-dump:/dump
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
    entrypoint: |
      bash -c 'bash -s <<EOF
      trap "break;exit" SIGHUP SIGINT SIGTERM
      sleep 2m
      while /bin/true; do
        mysqldump -h db --all-databases | gzip -c > /dump/dump_\`date +%d-%m-%Y"_"%H_%M_%S\`.sql.gz
        (ls -t /dump/dump*.sql.gz|head -n $$BACKUP_NUM_KEEP;ls /dump/dump*.sql.gz)|sort|uniq -u|xargs rm -- {}
        sleep $$BACKUP_FREQUENCY
      done
      EOF'
    networks:
    - internal

  app:
    image: joplin-server/joplin-server
    env_file: /var/data/config/joplin-server/joplin-server.env
    networks:
      - internal
      - traefik_public
    volumes:
       - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
       - /var/data/:/var/data
       - /var/data/joplin-server/backups:/app/backups
       - /var/data/joplin-server/uploads:/app/uploads
       - /var/data/joplin-server/sshkeys:/app/.ssh
    deploy:
      labels:
        # traefik common
        - traefik.enable=true
        - traefik.docker.network=traefik_public

        # traefikv1
        - traefik.frontend.rule=Host:joplin-server.example.com
        - traefik.port=80     

        # traefikv2
        - "traefik.http.routers.joplin-server.rule=Host(`joplin-server.example.com`)"
        - "traefik.http.services.joplin-server.loadbalancer.server.port=80"
        - "traefik.enable=true"

        # Remove if you wish to access the URL directly
        - "traefik.http.routers.joplin-server.middlewares=forward-auth@file"

networks:
  traefik_public:
    external: true
  internal:
    driver: overlay
    ipam:
      config:
        - subnet: 172.16.36.0/24

Note

Setup unique static subnets for every stack you deploy. This avoids IP/gateway conflicts which can otherwise occur when you're creating/removing stacks a lot. See my list here.

Serving

Launch joplin-server stack

Launch the joplin-server stack by running docker stack deploy joplin-server -c <path -to-docker-compose.yml>

Log into your new instance at https://YOUR-FQDN, with user "root" and the password default password "root":

joplin-server Login Screen

First thing you do, change your password, using the gear icon, and "Change Password" link:

joplin-server Login Screen

Have a read of the joplin-server Docs - they introduce the concept of clients (hosts containing data to be backed up), jobs (what data gets backed up), policies (when is data backed up and how long is it kept).

At the very least, you want to setup a client called "localhost" with an empty path (i.e., the job path will be accessed locally, without SSH), and then add a job to this client to backup /var/data, excluding /var/data/runtime and /var/data/joplin-server/backup (unless you like "backup-ception")

Copying your backup data offsite

From the WebUI, you can download a script intended to be executed on a remote host, to backup your backup data to an offsite location. This is a Good Idea™, but needs some massaging for a Docker swarm deployment.

Here's a variation to the standard script, which I've employed:

#!/bin/bash

REPOSITORY=/var/data/joplin-server/backups
SERVER=<target host member of docker swarm>
SERVER_USER=joplin-server
UPLOADS=/var/data/joplin-server/uploads
TARGET=/srv/backup/joplin-server

echo "Starting backup..."
echo "Date: " `date "+%Y-%m-%d (%H:%M)"`

ssh "$SERVER_USER@$SERVER" "cd '$REPOSITORY'; find . -maxdepth 2 -mindepth 2" | sed s/^..// | while read jobId
do
    echo Backing up job $jobId
    mkdir -p $TARGET/$jobId 2>/dev/null
    rsync -aH --delete "$SERVER_USER@$SERVER:$REPOSITORY/$jobId/" $TARGET/$jobId
done

echo Backing up uploads
rsync -aH --delete "$SERVER_USER@$SERVER":"$UPLOADS/" $TARGET/uploads

USED=`df -h . | awk 'NR==2 { print $3 }'`
USE=`df -h . | awk 'NR==2 { print $5 }'`
AVAILABLE=`df -h . | awk 'NR==2 { print $4 }'`

echo "Backup finished succesfully!"
echo "Date: " `date "+%Y-%m-%d (%H:%M)"`
echo ""
echo "**** INFO ****"
echo "Used disk space: $USED ($USE)"
echo "Available disk space: $AVAILABLE"
echo ""

Note

You'll note that I don't use the script to create a mysql dump (since Elkar is running within a container anyway), rather I just rely on the database dump which is made nightly into /var/data/joplin-server/database-dump/

Restoring data

Repeat after me : "It's not a backup unless you've tested a restore"

Note

I had some difficulty making restoring work well in the webUI. My attempts to "Restore to client" failed with an SSH error about "localhost" not found. I was able to download the backup from my web browser, so I considered it a successful restore, since I can retrieve the backed-up data either from the webUI or from the filesystem directly.

To restore files form a job, click on the "Restore" button in the WebUI, while on the Jobs tab:

joplin-server Login Screen

This takes you to a list of backup names and file paths. You can choose to download the entire contents of the backup from your browser as a .tar.gz, or to restore the backup to the client. If you click on the name of the backup, you can also drill down into the file structure, choosing to restore a single file or directory.

Chef's notes 📓

  1. If you wanted to expose the joplin-server UI directly, you could remove the traefik-forward-auth from the design. ↩

  2. The original inclusion of joplin-server was due to the efforts of @gpulido in our Discord server. Thanks Gabriel! ↩

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