backup_nextcloud

An ansible role that creates a backup of a Nextcloud server. The backup is kept on the server (unless you fetch it).

Requirements

The roles requires the following tools to be available on the host:

• tar
• gzip
• rsync
• a mysql or postgreSQL client if the database has to be dumped.

You'll need enough space on the target file system, depending on the size of your nextcloud server.

Role Variables

Locating the nextcloud server

The role has to know where the server files are, how to access it and where to store the backup.

nextcloud_backup_target_dir: "/opt/nextcloud_backups"
nextcloud_webroot: "/opt/nextcloud"
# nextcloud_data_dir: "/var/ncdata" # optional.
nextcloud_websrv_user: "www-data" # you may need to change this to the nextcloud file owner depending of your setup and OS

Adjusting the backup owner

The backup owner can be adjusted with. This may be useful when operating user is different than nextcloud's process owner.

nextcloud_backup_owner: "www-data" # user name who will get owner on backup_target_dir and final archive
nextcloud_backup_group: "www-data" # user group who will get owner on backup_target_dir and final archive

Adjusting the backup name

The backup name can be adjusted with

nextcloud_instance_name: "nextcloud" # a human identifier for the server
nextcloud_backup_suffix: "" # some arbitrary information at the end of the archive name
nextcloud_backup_format: "tgz" # extension of the archive. use a supported format used by the archive module (Choices: bz2, gz, tar, xz, zip)

Or you can change it completely by redefining

nc_archive_name: "{{ nextcloud_instance_name }}_nextcloud-{{ nc_status.versionstring }}_{{ ansible_date_time.iso8601_basic_short }}{{ nextcloud_backup_suffix }}"

Adjusting the backup content

The role will always:

• backup the server's config
• create a list of installed & enabled applications(along with the version numbers)

You can adjust the scope of the backup by enabling/disabling some flags defined in default:

nextcloud_backup_download_server_archive: true
nextcloud_backup_app_data: true
nextcloud_backup_user: true
nextcloud_backup_database: true

Adjusting nextcloud-server archive included in backup

Role can download the proper server archive from the nextcloud download site and add it to backup archive. It can be turned on using: nextcloud_backup_download_server_archive variable.

Adjusting app data backup

You may want to exclude some app_data folders from the backup. But you cannot target a specific app to backup, this requires knowledge of the app's code.

nextcloud_backup_app_data_exclude_folder:
  - preview

By default the preview folder is excluded from the backup as it can be notoriously large

Adjusting user backup

You can exclude a list of user(s) from the backup

nextcloud_backup_exclude_users: []

You can also decide to include or not some side-folders.

nextcloud_backup_user_files_trashbin: true
nextcloud_backup_user_files_versions: true
nextcloud_backup_user_uploads: true
nextcloud_backup_user_cache: true

Fetching backup from remote to local machine

You can fetch created backup from remote by setting these variables. WARNING: user which you are used in Ansible has to be set as backup owner due to Ansible limitation on using become with ansible.builtin.fetch

nextcloud_backup_fetch_to_local: true
nextcloud_backup_fetch_local_path: "/local_path/nextcloud_backup"

Other

You can leave the server in maintenance mode at the end of the process by turning false

nextcloud_exit_maintenance_mode: true

The Dependencies

None

Example Playbook

Running a full backup of your nextcloud server

- hosts: nextcloud
  roles:
    - role: aalaesar.backup_nextcloud

Making a partial backup with only the app_data

- hosts: nextcloud
  roles:
    - role: aalaesar.backup_nextcloud
  vars:
    nextcloud_backup_suffix: _only_app_data
    nextcloud_backup_user: false
    nextcloud_backup_database: false

License

GPL-3.0