Backup and Recovery

Target Audience: Administrators Difficulty: Intermediate Prerequisites: Database access; root or sudo access

What to Back Up

A complete MultiFlexi backup consists of:

  1. Database — all configuration, jobs, credentials, artifacts, logs

  2. Configuration file — /etc/multiflexi/multiflexi.env

  3. Encryption master key — ENCRYPTION_MASTER_KEY from the env file (critical!)

  4. Uploaded application JSON files (if any are stored locally)

Warning

The ENCRYPTION_MASTER_KEY is required to decrypt stored credentials. Without it, a restored database is useless. Store this key in a separate, secure location.

Database Backup

MySQL / MariaDB

# Full database dump
mysqldump -u root -p multiflexi > /backup/multiflexi_$(date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S).sql

# Compressed
mysqldump -u root -p multiflexi | gzip > /backup/multiflexi_$(date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S).sql.gz

# Non-interactive (using credentials file or .my.cnf)
mysqldump --defaults-file=/etc/mysql/multiflexi-backup.cnf multiflexi > /backup/multiflexi.sql

PostgreSQL

# As postgres user
sudo -u postgres pg_dump multiflexi > /backup/multiflexi_$(date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S).sql

# Compressed
sudo -u postgres pg_dump -Fc multiflexi > /backup/multiflexi_$(date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S).dump

SQLite

# Simple file copy (while services are stopped for consistency)
sudo systemctl stop multiflexi-scheduler multiflexi-executor multiflexi-eventor
cp /var/lib/multiflexi/multiflexi.db /backup/multiflexi_$(date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S).db
sudo systemctl start multiflexi-scheduler multiflexi-executor multiflexi-eventor

Configuration Backup

sudo cp /etc/multiflexi/multiflexi.env /backup/multiflexi.env_$(date +%Y%m%d)

Automating Backups

Example cron job (daily at 2:00 AM):

# /etc/cron.d/multiflexi-backup
0 2 * * * root mysqldump -u root multiflexi | gzip > /backup/multiflexi_$(date +\%Y\%m\%d).sql.gz && find /backup -name "multiflexi_*.sql.gz" -mtime +30 -delete

Adjust the retention period (-mtime +30) and backup path to match your policy.

Database Recovery

MySQL / MariaDB

# Stop services first
sudo systemctl stop multiflexi-scheduler multiflexi-executor multiflexi-eventor

# Drop and recreate database
mysql -u root -p -e "DROP DATABASE multiflexi; CREATE DATABASE multiflexi CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;"

# Restore
mysql -u root -p multiflexi < /backup/multiflexi_20250101_020000.sql

# Start services
sudo systemctl start multiflexi-scheduler multiflexi-executor multiflexi-eventor

PostgreSQL

sudo systemctl stop multiflexi-scheduler multiflexi-executor multiflexi-eventor

sudo -u postgres dropdb multiflexi
sudo -u postgres createdb multiflexi

# Plain SQL restore
sudo -u postgres psql multiflexi < /backup/multiflexi.sql

# Custom format restore
sudo -u postgres pg_restore -d multiflexi /backup/multiflexi.dump

sudo systemctl start multiflexi-scheduler multiflexi-executor multiflexi-eventor

Post-Recovery Checks

After restoring:

  1. Verify the configuration file matches the restored database:

    cat /etc/multiflexi/multiflexi.env

  2. Run pending migrations (in case the backup predates the current schema):

    sudo -u multiflexi php /usr/share/multiflexi/vendor/bin/phinx migrate -c /etc/multiflexi/phinx.php

  3. Verify services start cleanly:

    sudo systemctl restart multiflexi-scheduler multiflexi-executor multiflexi-eventor
systemctl status multiflexi-scheduler multiflexi-executor multiflexi-eventor

  4. Open the web interface and confirm companies, run templates, and credentials are present.

Disaster Recovery Checklist

In the event of total system loss:

  1. Install the operating system and add the MultiFlexi APT repository (see Installation Guide)

  2. Install MultiFlexi: sudo apt install multiflexi-mysql (or your DB variant)

  3. Restore /etc/multiflexi/multiflexi.env including the ENCRYPTION_MASTER_KEY

  4. Restore the database

  5. Install the same credential plugin packages that were previously installed

  6. Restart services

See Also