baudolo – Deterministic Backup & Restore for Docker Volumes 📦🔄

baudolo is a backup and restore system for Docker volumes with mandatory file backups and explicit, deterministic database dumps. It is designed for environments with many Docker services where:

• file-level backups must always exist
• database dumps must be intentional, predictable, and auditable

✨ Key Features

• 📦 Incremental Docker volume backups using rsync --link-dest
• 🗄 Optional SQL dumps for:
  • PostgreSQL
  • MariaDB / MySQL
• 🌱 Explicit database definition for SQL backups (no auto-discovery)
• 🧾 Backup integrity stamping via dirval (Python API)
• ⏸ Automatic container stop/start when required for consistency
• 🚫 Whitelisting of containers that do not require stopping
• ♻️ Modular, maintainable Python architecture

🧠 Core Concept (Important!)

baudolo separates file backups from database dumps.

• Docker volumes are always backed up at file level
• SQL dumps are created only for explicitly defined databases

This results in the following behavior:

Database defined	File backup	SQL dump
No	✔ yes	✘ no
Yes	✔ yes	✔ yes

📁 Backup Layout

Backups are stored in a deterministic, fully nested structure:

<backups-dir>/
└── <machine-hash>/
    └── <repo-name>/
        └── <timestamp>/
            └── <volume-name>/
                ├── files/
                └── sql/
                    └── <database>.backup.sql

Meaning of each level

• <machine-hash> SHA256 hash of /etc/machine-id (host separation)

• <repo-name> Logical backup namespace (project / stack)

• <timestamp> Backup generation (YYYYMMDDHHMMSS)

• <volume-name> Docker volume name

• files/ Incremental file backup (rsync)

• sql/ Optional SQL dumps (only for defined databases)

🚀 Installation

Local (editable install)

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e .

🌱 Database Definition (SQL Backup Scope)

How SQL backups are defined

baudolo creates SQL dumps only for databases that are explicitly defined via configuration (e.g. a databases definition file or seeding step).

If a database is not defined:

• its Docker volume is still backed up (files)
• no SQL dump is created

No database definition → file backup only Database definition present → file backup + SQL dump

Why explicit definition?

baudolo does not inspect running containers to guess databases.

Databases must be explicitly defined to guarantee:

• deterministic backups
• predictable restore behavior
• reproducible environments
• zero accidental production data exposure

Required database metadata

Each database definition provides:

• database instance (container or logical instance)
• database name
• database user
• database password

This information is used by baudolo to execute pg_dump, pg_dumpall, or mariadb-dump.

💾 Running a Backup

baudolo \
  --compose-dir /srv/docker \
  --backups-dir /Backups \
  --repo-name my-repo \
  --databases-csv /etc/baudolo/databases.csv \
  --database-containers central-postgres central-mariadb \
  --images-no-stop-required alpine postgres mariadb mysql \
  --images-no-backup-required redis busybox

Common Backup Flags

Flag	Description
--only-sql	Skip file backups only for DB volumes when dumps succeed; non-DB volumes are still backed up; fallback to files if no dump.
--only-files	Take no dumps at all; every volume is backed up as files. Needs no --databases-csv. Mutually exclusive with --only-sql.
--shutdown	Do not restart containers after backup
--backups-dir	Backup root directory (required)
--repo-name	Backup namespace under machine hash (required)
--databases-csv	Path to databases.csv (required)

♻️ Restore Operations

Restore Volume Files

baudolo-restore files \
  my-volume \
  <machine-hash> \
  <version> \
  --backups-dir /Backups \
  --repo-name my-repo

Restore into a different target volume:

baudolo-restore files \
  target-volume \
  <machine-hash> \
  <version> \
  --source-volume source-volume

Restore PostgreSQL

baudolo-restore postgres \
  my-volume \
  <machine-hash> \
  <version> \
  --container postgres \
  --db-name appdb \
  --db-password secret \
  --empty

Restore MariaDB / MySQL

baudolo-restore mariadb \
  my-volume \
  <machine-hash> \
  <version> \
  --container mariadb \
  --db-name shopdb \
  --db-password secret \
  --empty

baudolo automatically detects whether mariadb or mysql is available inside the container

🔍 Backup Scheme

The backup mechanism uses incremental backups with rsync and stamps directories with a unique hash. For more details on the backup scheme, check out this blog post.

👨‍💻 Author

Kevin Veen-Birkenbach

• 📧 kevin@veen.world
• 🌐 https://www.veen.world/

📜 License

This project is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0. See the LICENSE file for details.

🔗 More Information

• Docker Volumes Documentation
• Docker Backup Volumes Blog
• Backup Strategies

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Happy Backing Up! 🚀🔐