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Improve Documentation Section 5.3.2. Configuration Backups

Open hadmut opened this issue 3 months ago • 0 comments

Hi, I'm currently installing a couchdb and wanted to take care for backup/restore, and found the documentation to be rather vague about this.

The dockerhub page at https://hub.docker.com/_/couchdb tells to just cover /opt/couchdb/data as a persistent volume.

But then, its entrypoint touches /opt/couchdb/etc/local.d/docker.ini, where couchdb writes some configuration in, i.e. at least

[admins] admin = ...

[couchdb] uuid = ...

[chttpd_auth] secret = ...

while https://docs.couchdb.org/en/stable/maintenance/backups.html recommends to backup the full /opt/couchdb/etc directory, and says

Simple back up the entire etc/ directory to ensure a consistent configuration after restoring from backup.

which not really states, what happens, if I don't have a backup of etc.

E.g. what happens if the uuid= or secret= .. is lost and the database is just started from scratch with a regenerated docker.ini.

What happens if the uuid or the hostname changes? Can I still access the database, will it accept the data files? Will it break replication?

What happens, if I start a new docker instance, and do mount a a docker.ini with old values into the etc directory, but don't make it writable?

What exactly does the statement "to ensure a consistent configuration after restoring from backup." mean? What will work, and what won't work, if etc has not been restored?

regards Hadmut

hadmut avatar Sep 24 '25 22:09 hadmut