FabledSteward/docs/core/backups.md

Backups: Steward backing itself up, and coming back

Steward sends a backup of itself to an S3 bucket once a day. Fabled Archives is the intended target. A backup is one file. Settings → Backups restores it on a running Steward, first-run setup restores it on a new one, and steward restore brings Steward back from it when Steward can't start.

What a backup holds

steward-<UTC time>.tar, containing:

Member	What it is
steward.dump	pg_dump --format=custom of Steward's database
secret.key	The key Steward's stored passwords and tokens are sealed with
manifest.json	Format, Steward version, migration heads, time, and the tables whose rows were left out

A backup is for system recovery: it holds what you would otherwise have to set up again, and no logs or history.

Kept:

• settings, with the passwords and keys they hold;
• users and API tokens;
• hosts and their agent enrolments, so agents don't need enrolling again;
• monitors, alert rules, maintenance windows and maintenance cadences;
• Ansible inventory and schedules;
• dashboards and share links;
• SNMP devices, Prometheus targets and widget templates, UniFi client names.

Left out (the tables come back empty and fill again as Steward runs):

• the audit log;
• alert history and alert state. Each rule starts inactive and is watched again within a minute;
• metric anomalies and their reviews;
• metrics, their rollups and learned normals;
• monitor check results;
• Docker, Traefik and UniFi history;
• Ansible run records and maintenance job history;
• the email queue, pending invites and password-reset links.

The list is steward/backup/contents.py. A test fails when a new table appears in neither list, so whoever adds a table decides.

The secret key is in the file. That makes a restore complete on its own. It also means anyone holding a copy can read every password and key Steward keeps. Keep the bucket private.

Setting it up with Fabled Archives

1. In Archives, make a backup target for Steward with an S3 key. The default append-only key is enough: Steward only uploads and never deletes. How long backups are kept is set on the Archives side.
2. In Steward, open Settings → Backups and fill in:
   • Endpoint: the S3 address Archives shows for the target, without the bucket (for example http://archives:8081). Requests are path-style: endpoint/bucket/file.
   • Bucket: the target's bucket name.
   • Access key and Secret key: from Archives. The secret is sealed at rest; a blank box on save keeps the stored one.
3. Press Test the bucket. A key that may not list ("AccessDenied") still counts as reached: an append-only key can't list, and uploads work anyway.
4. Tick Back up every day, pick the hour (on your clock), and save. Back up now makes one straight away.

A day missed while Steward was down is made up when it comes back. A failed backup is tried again an hour later, never sooner. The last 30 runs are listed on the page, and each one is in the audit log (backup.made / backup.failed).

Alert when backups stop

While backups are on, Steward records two metrics under the source Steward itself, resource backup:

Metric	Meaning
backup_age_secs ("Newest backup's age")	Seconds since the last backup was sent, updated every 15 minutes
backup_bytes ("Backup size")	The size of the last backup sent

A rule such as backup_age_secs > 93600 (26 hours) fires when a daily backup has been missed.

Checking a backup

Settings → Backups → Check compares a backup with what is in place, without changing anything. It shows what a restore would bring back, change or remove. Each row under Recent backups has its own Check button, and Check a file takes a file downloaded from the bucket. From a shell:

docker exec -u app <steward container> steward check-backup /tmp/steward-20261015T030000Z.tar

The check reports:

• for each area (Settings, Users and API tokens, Hosts and agents, Monitors, Alert rules, Ansible, Dashboards, Plugins), how many entries are the same, differ, are only in the backup or are only here;
• each setting that differs, with both values. A password or key shows only "differs": sealed values are opened with their own key and compared, never shown;
• whether the backup's secret key is the one in use, and whether it opens the backup's own sealed values. A backup whose key can't open them fails the check, because its secrets would not come back;
• whether the backup was made by this Steward's schema, an older one or a newer one.

What Steward records as it runs is left out of the comparison: when an agent or monitor was last seen, a schedule's last run, the backup history. These change by the minute. The list is ACTIVITY and STATE_SETTINGS in steward/backup/contents.py.

Each backup Steward sends is checked once it is written, and its row under Recent backups says so. A backup is sent even when its check can't run.

Checking a backup on the bucket reads it back from there. An append-only key may not be allowed to; the page then says AccessDenied, and the file can be downloaded and checked with Check a file instead.

Making a backup by hand

docker exec -u app <steward container> steward backup --to /tmp/backups

This writes the file and sends it nowhere. It needs the same database access as Steward itself.

Restoring

From the web UI

On a running Steward: Settings → Backups. Press Restore on one of the recent backups, or choose a file on the "Check or restore a file" card. Steward first shows what the backup would change: the same comparison as Check. Then it says what a restore does and asks you to type restore.

• A backup of this Steward's schema goes back in place. Settings, users, hosts, monitors, alert rules and dashboards become the backup's. The audit log and the history of everything still here stay. History of anything the backup doesn't have goes with it. It is one transaction: if anything fails part-way, nothing changes, and Backups says why.
• A backup from an older Steward replaces everything, history included, and you tick "Replace everything" as well. Steward brings it up to date as it starts.
• A backup from a newer Steward isn't offered. Update Steward first.

Before anything changes, Steward makes a safety backup of itself as it stands. It goes to /data/backups (the newest five are kept) and to the bucket, and it is listed under Recent backups as "before restore". A restore can be undone by restoring that.

While the restore runs:

• every page says Steward is restoring;
• agents get a 503 and keep their readings until Steward is back;
• scheduled work holds.

Then Steward restarts (it exits with code 3 so Swarm, compose or systemd starts it again), and you sign in as a user from the backup. If an older backup's full replace fails after the database was emptied, Steward starts at first-run setup, where the safety backup can be uploaded.

On a new Steward: first-run setup. Next to "Create the initial admin account" is Or restore from a backup: upload a backup file instead, and Steward comes up with its users, settings and key. There is nothing to keep yet, so no safety backup is made.

The backup's secret key is put in place as /data/secret.key. If STEWARD_SECRET_KEY is set instead, it must equal the backup's key, or the restore stops before anything changes.

From the command line

steward restore writes into an empty database. Pass --wipe to drop everything in the database's public schema first. Use it when Steward can't start at all.

steward restore --in-place does what Settings → Backups does for a backup of the same schema, from the shell: it replaces what the backup carries and keeps the audit log and history, in one transaction. Restart Steward after it so the restored settings load.

1. Stop Steward (scale its service to 0) so nothing writes during the restore.

2. Download the backup file from Archives.

3. Run the restore with the image, pointed at the database:

   docker run --rm \
     -e STEWARD_DATABASE_URL=postgresql+asyncpg://steward:…@db:5432/steward \
     -v steward_data:/data -v "$PWD":/restore \
     git.fabledsword.com/bvandeusen/steward:latest \
     steward restore /restore/steward-20261012T030000Z.tar
   

   • The backup's secret key is written to /data/secret.key.
   • If STEWARD_SECRET_KEY is set instead, it must equal the backup's key, or the restore stops and says so. Read the key with tar -xOf <file> secret.key.

4. Start Steward. On start it runs any migrations the backup is behind on.

How the restore works. pg_restore runs in its three sections: schema, then data, then constraints and indexes. Between the data and the constraints, a kept row that points at a left-out row is put right by its foreign key's ON DELETE:

• a SET NULL link is cleared and the row kept;
• a row whose foreign key would cascade or block is removed.

pg_restore 17 writes each section as a script for psql. It runs against Postgres 16 with one setting line dropped (transaction_timeout, which 16 doesn't know).

CI checks the whole path on every build. The built image backs up its own database and checks the backup against it. It changes a setting and puts the backup back in place: the setting returns and the audit log stays. Then it restores into a second, empty database, checks a setting came back and the metrics table and audit log are empty, and starts Steward on it.