ghost backup in docker container

[bvarick]

I'm trying to backup my instance of ghost, which is running in a container. When I run ghost backup as suggested by the docs, I get a message that "Ghost is not currently running. Would you like to start it?" If I try to start it, I get an error that "Port 2368 is already in use by another program." Looking into it, it seems that the docker image isn't built for running ghost-cli in it.

What's the best way to backup ghost when running in a container?

[dashohoxha]

For the time being, I am using a simple compose.yml file like this:

services:
  ghost:
    image: ghost:6-alpine
    restart: unless-stopped
    env_file: ghost.env
    volumes:
      - ./content:/var/lib/ghost/content

I also have an env file ghost.env that looks like this:

    # create ghost.env, if it does not exist
    local smtp_domain=${SMTP_DOMAIN:-${DOMAIN#*.}}
    local smtp_server=${SMTP_SERVER:-smtp.$smtp_domain}
    local from_address=${DOMAIN%%.*}@$smtp_domain
    [[ -f ghost.env ]] || cat <<EOF > ghost.env
NODE_ENV=production
url=https://$DOMAIN

database__client=mysql
database__connection__host=$DBHOST
database__connection__user=$DBUSER
database__connection__password=$DBPASS
database__connection__database=$DBNAME

mail__transport=SMTP
mail__options__host=$smtp_server
mail__options__requireTLS=false
mail__from=$from_address
EOF

I have a separate reverse proxy container and a mariadb container (because I am hosting other applications on the same server). For the time being I am not using ActivityPub, or traffic analytics, or tinybird.

For my case, the backup can be done like this:

docker compose down
tar -czf ../backup.tgz .
docker compose up -d

The archive file (backup.tgz) includes both the config files (compose.yml, ghost.env, etc.) and the volume directory ./content, which is the persistent data of the ghost container. I believe this is sufficient, but I am not sure.

If you include ActivityPub, tinybird, etc. maybe you have to include other things in the backup.