Backups and restore

Backup on the server

mikan backup

The archive mikan-YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS.tar.gz appears in /opt/mikan/backups. It holds .env, compose.yaml, a consistent database snapshot, the panel’s certificates, node data and payment adapter settings. All of the server’s secrets are inside, so the folder is accessible only to root.

Before risky operations mikan makes backups by itself and keeps a few of the latest:

When	How many are kept
before an update	5
before moving to PostgreSQL	3
before a restore	3

Your own mikan-* archives are never deleted automatically.

Note

Your own site from /opt/mikan/data/panel/www is not part of the backup, so keep it separately.

Restore

mikan restore /opt/mikan/backups/mikan-20261001-031500.tar.gz

Before restoring, the program checks the archive, stops the containers and saves a snapshot of the current state. If a step fails, everything goes back as it was. The server’s own database password, image and version are kept, so a backup can be moved to a freshly installed server. A panel backup will not fit a node, and the other way round.

• -y asks no questions.
• --no-db-snapshot does not copy the current database before replacing it: for a PostgreSQL that is so broken it cannot be dumped. If the restore fails, the current data is lost.

An archive with only the database (like a backup from Telegram) restores only the database, while settings, certificates and adapters stay as they are. Old SQLite backups restore onto a PostgreSQL panel too. A restore replaces the whole database.

Backups to Telegram

Telegram → Infrastructure → Backups to Telegram: every day at the chosen hour (UTC) the panel sends an encrypted database backup to the admin chat. You need to connect the admin chat, see Alerts.

• Encryption password: at least 20 characters, with a “Generate” button. A lost password cannot be recovered.
• “Send now” sends a backup right away.
• The backup holds only the database: users, plans, settings, the bot token. It has no .env, certificates or node keys, so keep server backups for those.
• The file is at most 50 MB, which is the limit for Telegram bots.

To restore on the server (you need the age utility):

age -d -o mikan.tar.gz mikan-….tar.gz.age
mikan restore mikan.tar.gz