Backup and Restore

Backup and Restore

Your financial history is worth protecting. LekhaMint backs up on its own, but a backup on the same disk is not enough: keep a copy somewhere else (another disk, a NAS, a cloud-synced folder).

Automatic server backups

The server writes a backup every 24 hours into <data dir>/backups and keeps the latest 14. Change this with LEKHAMINT_BACKUP_INTERVAL, LEKHAMINT_BACKUP_KEEP and LEKHAMINT_BACKUP_DIR (Configuration).

Database	Backup file	Notes
SQLite	lekhamint-YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS.db	A consistent snapshot taken while the server runs; open it with any SQLite tool
PostgreSQL	lekhamint-YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS.ndjson.gz	A portable dump that restores into SQLite or PostgreSQL

Where the data folder is:

Installed with	Data folder
Linux installer	/var/lib/lekhamint
macOS installer	~/Library/Application Support/LekhaMint
Windows installer	C:\ProgramData\LekhaMint\data (or %LOCALAPPDATA%\LekhaMint\data)
Docker	the lekhamint-data volume, mounted at /data

Back up now

sudo -u lekhamint lekhamint backup --data-dir /var/lib/lekhamint              # SQLite snapshot
sudo -u lekhamint lekhamint backup --data-dir /var/lib/lekhamint --format json
docker compose exec lekhamint /lekhamint backup                               # Docker

Restore the whole server

1. Stop the server (sudo systemctl stop lekhamint, docker compose stop, or Stop-ScheduledTask LekhaMint).
2. Restore:

   sudo -u lekhamint lekhamint restore --data-dir /var/lib/lekhamint --from /path/to/lekhamint-20261024-020000.db

   With Docker:

   docker compose run --rm -v "$PWD:/restore" lekhamint restore --from /restore/lekhamint-20261024-020000.db

   The current database is kept next to it as lekhamint.db.pre-restore-<time>, so a restore can be undone.
3. Start the server again. Phones and browsers pick up the restored data on their next sync. A phone that synced after the backup was taken sends everything it has again, so changes made since the backup are not lost as long as some phone still has them.

One book at a time

• Export: web app → Settings → Your data → Export (JSON) downloads the whole book. The Android app and the server use the same format. Transactions → CSV exports for spreadsheets.
• Import: Settings → Your data → Import (JSON) merges an export into the open book, on this server or another one. Nothing is deleted, newer versions win, and repeating it adds nothing. A failed import changes nothing.

On the phone

The Android app keeps encrypted .kosh backups daily (More → Backup & restore) in a folder you choose; they can be restored on a new phone with your backup password. These work with or without a server.