# Confused with backing up Vaultwarden data folder

**URL:** <https://vaultwarden.discourse.group/t/confused-with-backing-up-vaultwarden-data-folder/1556>\
**Category:** Help\
**Created:** [April 10, 2022, 8:40am UTC](https://vaultwarden.discourse.group/t/confused-with-backing-up-vaultwarden-data-folder/1556 "2022-04-10T08:40:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 10\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tsch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/76d3ee/32.png) [@tsch](https://vaultwarden.discourse.group/u/tsch)\
**Post date:** [April 10, 2022, 8:40am UTC](https://vaultwarden.discourse.group/t/confused-with-backing-up-vaultwarden-data-folder/1556/1 "2022-04-10T08:40:30Z")

</div>

Being a linux-noob I have a problem understanding how exactly to proceed backing up my vault.  
I use your official image from docker-hub and so I now have a /vw-data directory on my docker host.

In your example for a basic backup command, assuming my data folder ist data you wrote in the wiki:

```auto
sqlite3 data/db.sqlite3 ".backup '/path/to/backups/db-$(date '+%Y%m%d-%H%M').sqlite3'"

```

Do I have to execute this command on the host meaning I have to change the folder into /vw-data or should this command be executed inside the container?

Kindest regards  
tsch

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![stefan0xC](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/vaultwarden.discourse.group/stefan0xc/32/1765_2.png) [@stefan0xC](https://vaultwarden.discourse.group/u/stefan0xC)\
**Post date:** [April 11, 2022, 4:22am UTC](https://vaultwarden.discourse.group/t/confused-with-backing-up-vaultwarden-data-folder/1556/2 "2022-04-11T04:22:00Z")

</div>

To my knowledge the container does not ship the `sqlite3` binary.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tsch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/76d3ee/32.png) [@tsch](https://vaultwarden.discourse.group/u/tsch)\
**Post date:** [April 11, 2022, 1:17pm UTC](https://vaultwarden.discourse.group/t/confused-with-backing-up-vaultwarden-data-folder/1556/3 "2022-04-11T13:17:39Z")

</div>

Thank you.

But if I execute the sqlite3 command on the host how can I be shure that I have a consistent backup of the DB running in the docker container?

At the moment this is my only concern, that keeps me from using my Vaultwarden. I have a lot of passwords but want to be safe having a backup which I can restore in case I need it.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![reinob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/96bed5/32.png) [@reinob](https://vaultwarden.discourse.group/u/reinob)\
**Post date:** [April 11, 2022, 2:06pm UTC](https://vaultwarden.discourse.group/t/confused-with-backing-up-vaultwarden-data-folder/1556/4 "2022-04-11T14:06:06Z")

</div>

The sqlite3 .backup command should take care of locking (as opposed to e.g. just copying the database file), so you should not lose anything.

I use .backup to maintain a replica of my “master” vaultwarden, and it works quite OK. Obviously, if you write a lot to the database (many users constantly changing/adding passwords) there could be a risk of having a backup which is not up-to-date, but at least consistency should not be an issue.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tsch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/76d3ee/32.png) [@tsch](https://vaultwarden.discourse.group/u/tsch)\
**Post date:** [April 11, 2022, 3:17pm UTC](https://vaultwarden.discourse.group/t/confused-with-backing-up-vaultwarden-data-folder/1556/5 "2022-04-11T15:17:36Z")

</div>

I (think) it worked!

After installing sqlite3 on my host I now have a backup of the database in another directory.

Thanks a lot for helping!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![cksapp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b9e5f3/32.png) [@cksapp](https://vaultwarden.discourse.group/u/cksapp)\
**Post date:** [April 11, 2022, 8:41pm UTC](https://vaultwarden.discourse.group/t/confused-with-backing-up-vaultwarden-data-folder/1556/6 "2022-04-11T20:41:05Z")

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I’d also like to note that the database backup is not the only factor here if you are wanting to restore.

Please see

> **[Backing up your vault · dani-garcia/vaultwarden Wiki](https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden/wiki/Backing-up-your-vault)**
>
> Unofficial Bitwarden compatible server written in Rust, formerly known as bitwarden\_rs - Backing up your vault · dani-garcia/vaultwarden Wiki

I would also recommend creating a cronjob to automate your SQLite backup command, this can allow you to have something like say a week of db backups in your other directory if something gets messed up.

You could even couple this backup strategy with something like rsync or rclone to have an off-site backup of your Vaultwarden instance too!  
This would allow you to easily restore if you had a system failure of some kind.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tsch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/76d3ee/32.png) [@tsch](https://vaultwarden.discourse.group/u/tsch)\
**Post date:** [April 12, 2022, 3:04pm UTC](https://vaultwarden.discourse.group/t/confused-with-backing-up-vaultwarden-data-folder/1556/7 "2022-04-12T15:04:34Z")

</div>

Thanks for your post cksapp.

I’ve read the Wiki and I’m aware of the fact that backing up all other files in the directory where the database resides is important.  
I have to google around to find the needed linux “magic” I can use in a script and then automate the whole process with a cronjob running this script on a regular basis.  
Copying to a SMB fileserver (which is backuped to the cloud) would be the next and final step.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![reinob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/96bed5/32.png) [@reinob](https://vaultwarden.discourse.group/u/reinob)\
**Post date:** [April 14, 2022, 5:44pm UTC](https://vaultwarden.discourse.group/t/confused-with-backing-up-vaultwarden-data-folder/1556/8 "2022-04-14T17:44:11Z")

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It is helps, what do is the following:

at the server where vaultwarden runs, and in my case as the user “vaultwarden”, a cron job runs every day in the early morning that:

1. creates a backup of the sqlite3 database and stores it in a specific folder
2. copies the whole (host-side) data folder (which contains the database, the icons, etc.)
3. copies the docker environment (.vaultwarden.env) and my script for starting the docker container.

and packs all of that in a .tgz.

Then, from another computer at home (which I use as “NAS”) a cron job grabs the backup (with scp, but rsync would be OK too, though it’s a small file, so scp does the job just fine).

The above is enough for a backup.

In my case, from that backup the .sqlite3 file is extracted and copied to another computer (a raspberry pi) at a specific place.

Another job at the raspberry pi checks at that place if the copied database is newer/different than the previous one, and if so, stops the container, deletes the database files (db.sqlite3-\*), places the one from the backup in its place, and starts the container again.

This way the replica (here: raspberry pi) always has the data from the master vaultwarden.

It’s a bit complicated (I also delete old backups to keep only the last N copies), but it works quite good 🙂

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tsch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/76d3ee/32.png) [@tsch](https://vaultwarden.discourse.group/u/tsch)\
**Post date:** [April 14, 2022, 6:02pm UTC](https://vaultwarden.discourse.group/t/confused-with-backing-up-vaultwarden-data-folder/1556/9 "2022-04-14T18:02:01Z")

</div>

@reinob

Would you kindly post your scripts which you use daily with cronjob?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![reinob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/96bed5/32.png) [@reinob](https://vaultwarden.discourse.group/u/reinob)\
**Post date:** [April 14, 2022, 6:19pm UTC](https://vaultwarden.discourse.group/t/confused-with-backing-up-vaultwarden-data-folder/1556/10 "2022-04-14T18:19:48Z")

</div>

OK. They may be too specific for my use-case, but hopefully you can make sense of them.

This is what gets run as user vaultwarden on the “master” server:

```auto
#!/bin/sh

STAMP=$(date +"%Y%m%d%H%M%S")

VAULTWARDEN=/srv/vaultwarden
STORE=/srv/snap_vaultwarden

cd ${VAULTWARDEN} || {
 echo "cannot cd to ${VAULTWARDEN}"
 exit 1
}

umask 007

sqlite3 ./data/db.sqlite3 ".backup ${STORE}/snap_${STAMP}_vaultwarden.sqlite3"

tar czf ${STORE}/snap_${STAMP}_vaultwarden.tgz .vaultwarden.env vaultwarden.log vaultwarden.sh snap_vaultwarden.sh data

cd $STORE || {
 echo "cannot cd to ${STORE}"
 exit 1
}

ls -1tp snap_* 2> /dev/null | tail -n +5 | xargs -I '{}' --no-run-if-empty rm --force -- '{}'

# stable link
ln -f snap_${STAMP}_vaultwarden.sqlite3 snap_vaultwarden.sqlite3
ln -f snap_${STAMP}_vaultwarden.tgz snap_vaultwarden.tgz

```

Then from my “NAS” snap\_vaultwarden.tgz and snap\_vaultwarden.sqlite3 are fetched (this is run as a normal user with access to the server and to the replica server).

```auto
#!/bin/sh

# copy master (remote) database to raspi4
scp -3 \
  user@server:/srv/snap_vaultwarden/snap_vaultwarden.sqlite3 \
  root@raspi4:/data/vaultwarden/db.sqlite3.MASTER

```

as you see, the db.sqlite3 is placed as db.sqlite3.MASTER in the raspi4.

There, this runs (as root) as a cron job:

```auto
#!/bin/sh

cd /data/vaultwarden || {
 echo "$0: cannot cd /data/vaultwarden, exiting..."
 exit 1
}

RESTART=no

if [-f db.sqlite3.MASTER]; then
 if cmp db.sqlite3 db.sqlite3.MASTER; then
# nop if files are equal
  rm -f db.sqlite3.MASTER
 else 
# files are different, replace existing with MASTER
  echo "$0: new (master) db.sqlite3 found, updating.."

  systemctl is-active vaultwarden 1> /dev/null && {
   echo "$0: vaultwarden was active, stopping.."
   RESTART=yes
   systemctl stop vaultwarden
  }

  rm -f db.sqlite3 db.sqlite3-*
  mv db.sqlite3.MASTER db.sqlite3

  ["$RESTART" = "yes"] && {
   echo "$0: restarting vaultwarden.."
   systemctl start vaultwarden
  }
 fi
fi

exit 0

```

As I said, it works fine for me, but of course will have to be tweaked/changed for your use-case.

(and the obvious disclaimer: I take no responsibility if using this destroys your vaultwarden database and deletes all your backups and kills your kitten…)