A database for Portabase? Who will backup it? :)

[f18m]

Hi,
New user here.
I was going to adopt this project but then I realized it needs a database itself?
I guess the idea is to install Portabase on a secure host / redundant setup?
However my use case is just my homelab, where I have a single host available and I just need to backup an SQLite database on my NAS.

Can I run portabase without its internal DB?
I'd love to be able to give Portabase a YAML configuration file and that's it (YAML would be easy to store in git together with the docker compose YAML, etc)

thanks!

[KillianLarcher]

Hi @f18m,

Good question. Portabase does require a PostgreSQL database (internal or external) to run. It’s used to store all the metadata around backups and restores—things like where backups are stored, their status (success/failure), scheduling, notifications, as well as system information (users, agents, etc.).

You can configure parts of the setup via environment variables, but the database itself is still mandatory, so a fully stateless/YAML-only setup isn’t supported at the moment.

That said, the actual backup data is never stored in PostgreSQL. It’s written to your chosen storage (local disk, S3, etc.). So even if the Portabase database is lost, your backups remain safe and can still be used.